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What is sustainable finance and what role can it play in Europe’s shift to carbon neutrality? We asked the EEA’s lead expert on sustainable finance, Andreas Barkman, to explain what the EU has been doing to ensure that the financial sector plays its part in greening our financial system to support sustainable growth.
Faced with climate change, soaring energy prices and concerns about security of supply, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power seem an obvious way forward. What would it take to transform Europe’s existing energy system into one that is based on renewable sources?
Societies depend in many ways on moving people and goods economically and efficiently from one place to another. International trade gives us access to foreign products and markets. People need ways of going to school, work and other activities. Transport is an essential part of our way of life but, in its current state, it is dependent on fossil fuels and puts serious pressure on the environment and climate.
This briefing summarises some of the ways in which climate change is impacting Europe’s marine ecosystems. It identifies how various ecosystem features are influenced by climate change and spotlights potential areas of concern. It also highlights areas where marine life may be more impacted by climate change compared with other areas. This work supports the recent integration of climate change as a key consideration in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). It does this by presenting a spatial description of the vulnerabilities of marine areas to climate change.
Air pollution is currently the most important environmental health risk factor in Europe. It remains an important cause of poor health and contributes in particular to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. This briefing presents information for 2021 of the estimated harm to human health caused by three key air pollutants: fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3). This year’s assessment also presents an estimation of the health impacts associated with specific diseases to which air pollution contributes. Such impacts are expressed using burden of disease metrics, namely ‘morbidity’ (the state of having a disease or disability) and ‘mortality’ (deaths that have occurred due to a specific disease or a group of diseases).
Wider application of nature-based solutions (NBS) to climate change adaptation would deliver multiple societal benefits and contribute to biodiversity conservation. However, there is limited experience scaling solutions beyond local contexts. The lack of standardised methods for assessment and monitoring of NBS is a major challenge for replicating and applying them at a wider scale. This briefing looks into applied assessment frameworks and the scaling potential of selected NBS, and how they may contribute to ecosystem restoration outside protected areas.
The droughts, heatwaves and wildfires of summer 2022 were a stark reminder of why mitigating climate change is a defining challenge of the 21st century. The EU’s commitment to become climate neutral ...
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