Governing environmental complexity: Exploring coherence across EU climate and biodiversity strategies

Area of Science:

• Environmental policy
• Governance studies
• Climate change adaptation
• Biodiversity conservation

Background:

• Climate change and biodiversity loss are critical, interconnected global challenges.
• Current governance approaches often lack coordination, leading to policy inefficiencies and exacerbating environmental and social issues.
• Understanding strategy coherence is vital for effective environmental policy integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and define an analytical framework for assessing strategy coherence.
• To examine the coherence between the EU's Climate Target Plan and Biodiversity Strategy.
• To identify sources of synergy and conflict in environmental policymaking.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel analytical framework to dissect strategy coherence based on premise, prescription, and politics.
• Application of the framework to analyze the interdependencies within EU climate and biodiversity strategies.
• Qualitative analysis of policy documents and their underlying assumptions and political drivers.

Main Results:

• The framework effectively identifies elements of synergy and conflict within and between strategies.
• Apparent goal synergies between EU climate and biodiversity strategies mask underlying tensions.
• Divergent prescriptions and political priorities create friction points, impacting policy implementation.

Conclusions:

• Strategy coherence is crucial for effective environmental governance, requiring careful analysis beyond stated goals.
• The EU's climate and biodiversity strategies exhibit significant coherence challenges despite shared objectives.
• Addressing these tensions is essential for efficient policymaking and achieving integrated environmental outcomes.