Environmental Policy Integration

Integrating environmental policies into the policies of all other sectors is the core European environmental policy. But there has been no thorough investigation of the political process involved. This volume provides the first. It analyses the process of policy integration - the greening of public policy - across the relevant sectors and countries. It finds significant variation from sector to sector and from country to country, and analyses the reasons for this. (Surprisingly the UK, traditionally the 'dirty man' of Europe is far more actively engaged than environmental 'progressives' such as Germany.) It identifies the obstacles to integration and offers solutions for policy formulation, decision making and implementation at the relevant political levels.

Environmental values and concerns are meant to be reflected through environmental policy, which is then integrated into mainstream economic and social policy that serves to govern society and the economy in different sectors. Yet effective environmental policy integration has proved to be very difficult in practice and it remains largely an elusive aspiration. This groundbreaking volume presents the first ever detailed examination of EPI at the national policy level, focusing on the key sectors of energy and agriculture within Sweden, a country that is widely recognized as a front runner in environmental management. The authors deconstruct EPI, look at what it means in policy formation and examine how environmental priorities are treated in relation to other political priorities. The final section of the book lays out the major findings and presents key lessons for international application, including institutional recommendations on how to enhance the potential for EPI. Most fundamentally, the book answers the questions of what works for EPI, why it works, and how it can be achieved in practice across sectors. The result is a rich and indispensable guide for all those involved in environmental and sustainable development policy issues.

An authoritative analysis of [a decade of] research on institutional architectures in earth system governance, covering key elements, structures and policy options.

. . . offering an enjoyable read in comparative politics and policy, it offers a point of reference for understanding the conceptual and empirical possibilities for further research in EPI. Darren McCauley, West European Politics . . . a bank of internationally based case studies written by leading environmental experts. The Environmentalist The organisation of th[is] book is exemplary, particularly for an edited volume. . . [A]n impressive intellectual contribution to the understanding of EPI. . . I strongly recommend it to scholars and students. . . and, crucially, also to politicians and civil servants who have attempted (or half-attempted) the task of remedying the historical neglect of environmental issues. Ian Bailey, Environment and Planning C Good social science may not raise our spirits, but it should improve our policy understanding. Andrew Jordan and Andrea Lenschow have produced a volume that provides a subtle and empirically informed understanding of environmental policy integration, using a design that looks both at the full policy cycle and at cross-national comparisons. From the foreword by Albert Weale FBA, University of Essex, UK Policy coordination is normally studied in hierarchical and institutional terms. This volume demonstrates the power of an idea to function as a framework for coordination. It offers an innovative study of policy coordination, as well as a thorough study of environmental policy. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, US This book deals with a critical challenge facing modern governments: how to integrate environmental thinking into all policy areas. It provides fascinating insights into the progress made in realizing this objective and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how far we have come, and how far we still have to go, in greening government for sustainable development. James Meadowcroft, Carleton University, Canada This collection brings together leading scholars in the field to explore the origins and applications of different instruments of environmental policy integration from a comparative perspective. This book is a must read for environmental policy practitioners and scholars with an interest in how environmental outcomes can and are being improved. Miranda A. Schreurs, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) is an innovative policy principle designed to deliver sustainable development. This book offers an unrivalled exploration of its conceptualization and implementation, drawing upon a set of interlinked case studies of the most common implementing instruments and the varied experience of applying them in six OECD states and the EU. Written by a team of international experts, it identifies and explains broad patterns and dynamics in what is an important area of contemporary environmental policy analysis. This insightful account of the state-of-the-art aims to offer a valuable resource for academics interested in environmental politics and policy analysis, as well as the broader, interdisciplinary theme of governance for sustainable development . It will interest advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in comparative politics, public administration and environmental politics and policy-making. Given the continuing political relevance of sustainability, it should also appeal to NGOs, think tanks and international bodies attempting to coordinate policies across and within different levels of governance.

The quest for policy integration crystallized in the 1990s as awareness was growing that the current supply of narrow, sectoral, and little coordinated, or even overlapping and conflicting, policies could not cope efficiently and effectively with contemporary complex, cross-cutting and interdependent socio-environmental problems. Combining and coordinating policies properly promises to address this institutional misfit, "add value" to policies, support planning at national and sub-national levels, and facilitate the transition to sustainable development more generally. This book proposes a comprehensive conceptualization of policy integration and negotiates pertinent theoretical, methodological and applied issues from the perspective of selected EU policies - rural development, regional development, transport, social, economic, environmental, water resources, and biodiversity policy. Mediterranean desertification, an exceptionally complex socio-environmental problem, is used as an illustrative example as the idea for this book transpired while researching the topic of policy making to combat desertification in the context of MEDACTION, an EU-funded research project.

This second and fully revised edition brings together some of the most influential work on the theory and practice of contemporary EU environmental policy. Comprising five comprehensive parts, it includes in-depth case studies of contemporary policy issues such as climate change, genetically modified organisms and trans-Atlantic relations, as well as an assessment of how well the EU is responding to new challenges such as enlargement, environmental policy integration and sustainability. The book's aim is to look forward and ask whether the EU is prepared or even able to respond to the 'new' governance challenges posed by the perceived need to use 'new' policy instruments and processes to 'mainstream' environmental thinking in all EU policy sectors.

The 2009 United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen is often represented as a watershed in global climate politics, when the diplomatic efforts to negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol failed and was replaced by a fragmented and decentralized climate governance order. In the post-Copenhagen landscape the top-down universal approach to climate governance has gradually given way to a more complex, hybrid and dispersed political landscape involving multiple actors, arenas and sites. The Handbook contains contributions from more than 50 internationally leading scholars and explores the latest trends and theoretical developments of the climate governance scholarship.

The book examines the integration of environmental protection requirements into EU external relations focusing on unilateral, bilateral and inter-regional instruments, which have been less explored than the multilateral dimension of EU environmental policy. The book also explores for the first time the complex interplay and mutual influences between EU environmental integration initiatives and environmental multilateralism. On the one hand it identifies the legal and other instruments used by the EU to support the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements in third countries (particularly developing ones). On the other hand, it singles out the legal and other tools employed by the EU as a means to build partnerships with third countries in order to influence ongoing multilateral negotiations concerning the environment and sustainable development, or to contribute to the development of new international environmental norms in the absence of such multilateral negotiations. Ultimately, the book traces the significant evolution of the various tools deployed by the EU to integrate environmental concerns in its external relations, with a view to identifying emerging challenges and future directions.