ABSTRACT

The paper firstly summarizes the approach and findings to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental policies around the globe as it was undertaken in the Sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6; 2019). The data gathered in GEO-6 reveals (1) a high level of institutional innovation, increasingly from the global south, (2) a lack of environmental policy integration (3) spatial and temporal dynamics and (4) the importance of the policy design. Current environmental policies are, however, not sufficient to effectively preserve natural resources and limit emissions to a sustainable level. This has led to a general recognition of the need for a transformative change that goes beyond mere improvements of efficiency. The second part of the paper analyses how environmental policies could contribute in shaping such transformations to sustainability. Transformative policies can be built on social innovations and experimentation with institutional innovation. This is compatible with incremental and sectoral policy making. However, given the complexity and stability of social systems, the outcomes of such policies are uncertain. This is why we argue for strengthening conventional, strategic environmental policies and complementing rather than replacing them with transformative policies.

摘要

本文首先总结了第六次全球环境展望（GEO-6; 2019）中评估全球环境政策有效性的方法和结果。GEO-6收集的数据表明（1）来自全球南部的高水平的制度创新（2）缺乏环境政策整合（3）时空动态以及（4）政策设计的重要性。然而，当前的环境政策不足以有效地保护自然资源并将排放限制在可持续水平。这导致人们普遍认识到需要进行变革性变革，而不仅仅是提高效率。本文的第二部分分析了环境政策如何在促成这种向可持续发展的转变中做出贡献。变革性政策可以建立在社会创新和体制创新试验之上。这与增量和部门政策制定兼容。但是，鉴于社会系统的复杂性和稳定性，此类政策的结果尚不确定。这就是为什么我们主张加强常规的战略性环境政策，并补充而不是用变革性政策代替它们。