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

Climate change and biodiversity loss are intertwined challenges, yet governance responses are poorly coordinated. This incoherence risks policy inefficiency while reinforcing environmental degradation and social inequalities. This article introduces an analytical framework for analysing strategy coherence, defined as the extent to which a strategy is compatible with other strategies. Centring on the functions of strategies as governing tools, the framework dissects their premise, prescription, and politics. This enables identification of elements that generate synergies or conflicts and points of friction to address. We apply the framework to the EU's Climate Target Plan and Biodiversity Strategy to examine how they address interdependencies between climatic systems, ecological processes, and communities. The analysis shows that apparent goal synergies mask tensions rooted in divergent prescriptions and political priorities, with important implications for policymaking and practice. The article contributes to conceptual knowledge on strategy coherence and empirical knowledge on EU climate and biodiversity strategies.