Source: European Environment Agency, 2019.
Sustainable transitions: policy and practise
During the last two decades, the concepts of 'sustainability transitions' and 'transformations' have emerged with steadily growing prominence in academic literature. Since 2010, this trend has been matched by increasing uptake of the language and logic of sustainability transitions in European policy
and frameworks.
Based on a comprehensive review of the European environment, the EEA's last five-yearly report,
The European environment — state and outlook 2015 (SOER 2015), concluded that achieving the EU's long term sustainability objectives will require the fundamental transformation of core societal systems (EEA, 2015b). Achieving such transitions will require profound changes in dominant practices, policies and thinking. Encouragingly, EU policy documents increasingly reflect this shift, for example in the language and logic of the EU's new long-term strategy for a climate-neutral Europe, and the European Commission's reflections on how to achieve the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (EC, 2018g, 2019b).
Image credits
Icon image: illustratie transitiemanagement - Maria Fraaije