Foreword
Synthesis report
- Foreword
- Executive summary
- 1. The changing context of European environmental policy
- 2. The European environment in a wider perspective
- 3. Protecting, conserving and enhancing natural capital
- 4. Resource efficiency and the low-carbon economy
- 5. Safeguarding people from environmental risks to health
- 6. Understanding the systemic challenges facing Europe
- 7. Responding to systemic challenges: from vision to transition
- References and bibliography
- Synthesis report content index
Global megatrends
- Setting the scene
- Diverging global population trends (GMT 1)
- Towards a more urban world (GMT 2)
- Changing disease burdens and risks of pandemics (GMT 3)
- Accelerating technological change (GMT 4)
- Continued economic growth? (GMT 5)
- An increasingly multipolar world (GMT 6)
- Intensified global competition for resources (GMT 7)
- Growing pressures on ecosystems (GMT 8)
- Increasingly severe consequences of climate change (GMT 9)
- Increasing environmental pollution (GMT 10)
- Diversifying approaches to governance (GMT 11)
European briefings
- Agriculture
- Air pollution
- Biodiversity
- Climate change impacts and adaptation
- Consumption
- Energy
- Forests
- Freshwater quality
- Green economy
- Health and environment
- Hydrological systems and sustainable water management
- Industry
- Land systems
- Marine environment
- Maritime activities
- Mitigating climate change
- Natural capital and ecosystem services
- Noise
- Resource efficiency
- Soil
- The air and climate system
- Tourism
- Transport
- Urban systems
- Waste
Cross-country comparisons
- Agriculture — organic farming
- Air pollution — emissions of selected pollutants
- Biodiversity — protected areas
- Energy — energy consumption and share of renewable energy
- Freshwater quality — nutrients in rivers
- Mitigating climate change — greenhouse gas emissions
- Resource efficiency — material resource efficiency and productivity
- Transport — passenger transport demand and modal split
- Waste — municipal solid waste generation and management
Countries and regions
- Albania country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Austria country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Belgium country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Bosnia and Herzegovina country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Bulgaria country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Croatia country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Cyprus country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Czech Republic country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Denmark country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Estonia country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Finland country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- France country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Germany country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Greece country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Hungary country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Iceland country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Ireland country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Italy country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Kosovo* country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Latvia country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Liechtenstein country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Lithuania country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Luxembourg country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Malta country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Montenegro country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- The Netherlands country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Norway country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Poland country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Portugal country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Romania country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Serbia country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Slovakia country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Slovenia country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Spain country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Sweden country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Switzerland country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Turkey country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- United Kingdom country briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Arctic region briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Black Sea region briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
- Mediterranean Sea region briefing - The European environment — state and outlook 2015
© Stephen Mynhardt / EEA
The European Union has provided global environmental leadership for some 40 years. This report synthesises the information resulting from four decades of implementation of a well-defined and ambitious EU policy agenda. It represents the tip of the knowledge available to EEA and its network, Eionet.
The overall findings point to successes in reducing environmental pressures. These achievements are especially remarkable when seen in the context of vastly changed European and global settings over the past decades. Without a strong policy agenda, the large growth of the economy over this period would have resulted in much stronger impacts on ecosystems and human health. The EU has demonstrated that well designed, binding policies work and deliver huge benefits.
In the 7th Environment Action Programme, 'Living well, within the limits of our planet', the EU formulates an engaging vision of the future to 2050: a low carbon society, a green, circular economy and resilient ecosystems, as the basis for citizens' well-being. Yet, looking ahead, this report, like its 2010 predecessor, highlights major challenges linked to unsustainable systems of production and consumption and their long-term, often complex, and cumulative impacts on ecosystems and people's health. In addition, globalisation links Europeans to the rest of the world through a number of systems that enable the two-way flow of people, finance, materials and ideas.
This has brought us many benefits alongside concerns around the environmental impacts of our linear buy-use-dispose economy, our untenable dependency on many natural resources, an ecological footprint that exceeds the planet's capacity, external environmental impacts on poorer countries, and unequal distribution of the socio-ecological benefits from economic globalisation. Achieving the EU 2050 vision remains far from self-evident. Indeed the very idea of what it means to live within planetary limits is something that we have a hard time grasping.
What is clear, however, is that transforming key systems such as the transport, energy, housing and food systems lies at the heart of long-term remedies. We will need to find ways to make them fundamentally sustainable, by decarbonising them, making them much more resource efficient and making them compatible with ecosystem resilience. Also relevant is the redesign of the systems that have steered these provisioning systems and have created unsustainable lock-ins: finance, fiscal, health, legal and education.
The EU is leading the way through policies such as the 7th Environment Action Programme, the 2030 Climate and Energy package, the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. These and other policies share similar goals and in different ways seek to balance social, economic and environmental considerations. Implementing and strengthening them smartly can help to push science and technological frontiers in Europe, create jobs and enhance competitiveness, while common approaches to solving shared problems make full economic sense.
As a knowledge actor, the EEA and its partners are responding to these challenges by designing a new knowledge agenda that links supporting policy implementation to an increased understanding of how to achieve more systemic long-term objectives. This is guided by innovations that break out of silo-thinking, facilitate information sharing and integration and provide new indicators to enable policymakers to compare economic, social and environmental performance. Last but not least, foresight and other methods will be increasingly used to inform the pathways towards 2050.
The opportunities and challenges are equally huge. They require common purpose, commitments, efforts, ethics and investments from all of us. Starting in 2015, we have 35 years to ensure that the children born today will live on a sustainable planet by 2050. This may seem like a distant future, but many of the decisions we make today will decide whether and how we are going to deliver on this societal project. I hope that the content of the SOER 2015 will support everyone who is looking for evidence, understanding and motivation.
Hans Bruyninckx, Executive Director
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Geographic coverage
The EEA's report SOER 2015 gives a comprehensive assessment of the European environment's state, trends and prospects, in a global context. The EEA's task is to provide timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information on Europe's environment.
For more information, see www.eea.europa.eu/soer or scan the QR code.
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