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5. Sustainability trends, prospects and responses

Page Last modified 14 Jun 2022
1 min read
We will only achieve ambitious environmental goals by stimulating fundamental changes in unsustainable lifestyles, production and consumption. The EEA assesses trends and prospects across environmental priorities, sectors, systems and policies, and engages stakeholders on the innovations and other responses needed to achieve the European Green Deal.

The path towards sustainability requires interconnected responses to a complex web of drivers throughout society. In 2021, the EEA delivered assessments and indicators in support of EU sustainability ambitions and underlying policy processes, including:

 

2021: key facts and figures

3 Sustainability card.png

 

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On our Youtube channel, EEA experts discuss the most relevant topics and recent publications. Here we talk about narratives for change and foresight to achieve sustainability.

Related content

Related publications

Publication Urban sustainability in Europe - Learning from nexus analysis This report presents the detailed analysis of eight urban environmental sustainability nexus. These constitute examples to help understand the complexity of urban systems and explore how, in practice, using nexus analysis can help identifying existing challenges, potential trade-offs and co-benefits on actions to achieve urban sustainability objectives and opportunities to move towards better coordinated and integrated policy and action. Findings have been summarized in the main Urban Sustainability in Europe – Avenues for change report.
Publication Reflecting on green growth Creating a resilient economy within environmental limits
Publication Knowledge for Action - Empowering the transition to a sustainable Europe Addressing Europe’s unprecedented environmental challenges will require policies, investments and knowledge to be brought together to transform the systems driving unsustainability while maximising the environmental, social and economic co benefits. This raises the question of whether it is sufficient to address the existing knowledge gaps — or do we need a new knowledge system for systemic transformation?
Publication Urban sustainability in Europe - A stakeholder-led process Reflecting the EEA’s mandate, the focus of this report is on urban sustainability from an environmental perspective. It presents an urban sustainability conceptual framework based on an extensive knowledge review and has incorporated a broad stakeholder-led process involving both internal (EEA and EIONET), external experts and cross institutional contributions.

See also

Page 4. Circular economy and resource use The EEA monitors the progress of Europe’s transition towards a circular economy, as well as the environmental and climate benefits such changes deliver. We assess Europe’s efforts towards reducing the impacts caused by society’s production and consumption, with a focus on raw materials, products, services and waste.
Page 1. Biodiversity and ecosystems Faced with continued biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, Europe seeks reduce and reverse these losses, while bringing nature back into our lives. The EEA monitors this transition and supports the implementation and evaluation of actions in this area.
Page Areas of work The remit of the EEA is to provide reliable and timely information and knowledge to policy makers, the academic community, the general public and other stakeholders.

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For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/EEA-2021-the-year-in-brief/sustainability-trends-prospects-and-responses or scan the QR code.

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