Policies

The objective of this Societal Challenge to analyze and advocate for effective and equitable cross-scale policies, institutions and social responses to address global environmental change.

Integrated action to mitigate and adapt to climate and environmental change requires orchestrating policy instruments - from taxes to labor institutions to environmental legislation - at different scales (municipal, regional, national, international). International agreements such as the Paris Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals have ambitious but non-binding goals, and the lack of national harmonization limits their effectiveness. What combinations of policies can best work in different contexts, and how can we get effective international agreements around effective and comparable instruments to mobilize action? Most importantly, what are the social forces that can lead to desirable political and policy change? Under what conditions may social mobilization and conflict act as a trigger of positive Political change?

In Societal Challenge 5, we will develop model- and case-based assessments of climate and other sustainability policy instruments. We will consider inter-relations and phasing of implementation in national and international contexts. Furthermore, we will examine the interaction between perceptions of climate change and global environmental policy more generally, social movements, and policy change, e.g. looking at how mobilization of
movements can push for positive policy change.

POLICY challenge represents a cross-cutting theme that has a standalone character, but also a transversal one. It will extend the corrent work conducted under the EVOCLIM, ENVJUSTICE, and GREENLULUS ERC projects.