The Commission presented a list of headline indicators for monitoring progress towards the EU’s environment and climate goals to 2030, as well as the 2050 long-term vision to ‘live well, within planetary boundaries’. Resulting from intense consultations with stakeholders and Member States, the new Monitoring Framework under the 8th Environment Action Programme aims to foster transparency and inform Europeans about the impact of EU climate and environmental policy.
EU policies have to ensure that the EU gets back on track to living and working within planetary boundaries. As such, the indicators capture progress towards environmental wellbeing, including also economic and social aspects. As such, they could pave the way for measuring the health of our economies and societies based on wellbeing, and beyond the most well-known economic indicator, GDP.
Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans, in charge of the European Green Deal, said: “We have very ambitious environmental and climate targets to help us deliver the just green transition that Europe and the world needs. But what you cannot measure, you cannot manage. To keep us on track, we need to keep a close eye on whether we are meeting our goals. These indicators help us do so.”
The headline indicators follow the structure of the 8th Environment Action Programme building on the European Green Deal and include the 2-3 most policy relevant and statistically robust indicators for each of the thematic priority objectives to 2030, covering climate mitigation, climate adaptation, circular economy, zero pollution, and biodiversity. In addition, the list includes five indicators to measure progress towards addressing the main environmental and climate pressures. In line with European Green Deal objectives, this covers the transition we need to see in the coming years towards sustainable systems for energy, industry, mobility and food.
Moreover, the headline set includes indicators to monitor progress towards the main enabling conditions, covering sustainable finance, the ‘polluters-pay principle’, and phasing out environmentally harmful subsidies. The last chapter of the monitoring framework includes systemic indicators that aim to capture progress towards the three dimensions of environmental wellbeing, to cover also economic and social aspects beyond nature protection.
Source: European Commission
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