EEA briefing on how to future-proof sustainability policies

To become sustainable, Europe must change some of the ways people live, work, produce and consume. Using policy to achieve such complex and large-scale transformations is not easy. This briefing from the European Environment Agency (EEA) explores how to future-proof sustainability policies and avoid blind spots through a foresight-based framework, which includes several participatory exercises involving a multidisciplinary group of experts. Assessing future risks and their potential impacts can identify mitigation measures and safeguard strategies to encourage the transition to sustainability and feed future policy.

‘Future-proofing’ the transition to sustainability: focus on policy assumptions and foresight

Key messages

• Policies and decisions typically address multiple challenges and operate amid uncertainty. They must therefore work with assumptions. ‘Weak’, partial or invalid assumptions may be short-sighted, cause inadequate decisions and hamper policy objectives.

• Strengthening and future-proofing sustainability policies in the face of future risks requires a forward-looking assumption check.

• The consistent use of foresight to future-proof assumptions can improve the implementation of the Commission’s policy-driven sustainability agenda.

• To support the European Green Deal (EGD) beyond its initial mandate of 2019-2024, the EEA proposes a collaborative approach for assumption checking, which builds on an iterative framework adapted to policy cycles. An assumption check on key policy strategies for the circular economy, air quality, the bioeconomy and transport identified possible future-proofing measures.

The full briefing is available here.