Search

Municipalities across the globe are seeking to adapt to increasing climate change impacts, such as heavy rainfall, drought, heat waves, and floods. An important question is how to support the diffusion of innovations in local adaptation policy-making. Responses often lack consideration of the diversity of municipalities and their varying needs and capacities. This article addresses this gap by analysing how internal and external motivations for and barriers to adaptation policy and diffusion vary across municipalities of different sizes in the federal State of Hessen in Germany and in Finland. Hessen and Finland have comparable population sizes and settlement structures, but their municipalities are embedded in different multilevel governance architectures and climatic geographies. The analysis builds on quantitative data from two independent surveys among Hessian and Finnish municipalities. The results show that while there are similarities and some differences among the motivations, with municipalities in Hessen focusing more on extreme weather events and Finnish municipalities more on well-being, the barriers are strikingly similar, focusing on lack of resources as well as unclear responsibilities of different governance levels and within municipalities. Size is an important factor determining the adaptation needs and capacities of municipalities in both surveys. The findings highlight the need for a clearer adaptation governance framework, support from the closest governance level and more resources, but also context-sensitive policy support that has been discussed in theory and practice.

To achieve its ambitious climate targets, the European Union (EU) must adopt new policies, increase the impact of existing policies and/or remove dysfunctional ones. The EU has developed an elaborate system to monitor national policy mixes in order to support these challenging requirements. Data that member states have reported to the EU over the last ten years reveal that the average expected per-policy-instrument emission reduction has declined, while national policy mixes have remained generally stable over time. This is strikingly discordant with the EU’s ambitious commitment to become carbon neutral by 2050 (‘net zero’).

During policy change, the role of the actors communicating the change to different audiences is accentuated. The media plays an increasing role, either as an actor or by providing a stage for other...

Implementing policies for sustainability transitions calls for actors that translate policy aims into practical solutions. This is particularly important in cases where policies require the applica...

Most studies of climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability confine their attention to impacts and responses within the same geographical region. However, cross-border climate change impacts that occur remotely from the location of their initial impact can severely disrupt societies and livelihoods (Benzie et al., 2019; Carter et al., under review). In this paper we present a conceptual framework and accompanying terminology for describing and analysing such cross-border impacts. The conceptual framework distinguishes an initial impact that is caused by a climate trigger within a specific region. Downstream consequences of that impact propagate through an impact transmission system while adaptation responses to deal with the impact are propagated through a response transmission system.The framework recognises and classifies differences in the types of climate trigger, categories of cross-border impacts, scales and dynamics of impact transmission, targets and dynamics of responses and the socio-economic and environmental context. We will demonstrate how the framework can be applied using historical examples of cross-border impacts (e.g. the severe 2011 floods that affected industrial production in Thailand, propagating through the global economy) as well as prospective cases (e.g. multiple cross-border risks and opportunities presented by Arctic sea ice decline).We argue that the framework provides a simple, but flexible, structure to describe and analyse cross-border climate impacts and their consequences. It offers a foundation for consistent comparisons of different patterns of cross-border impacts in different sectors and geographies. It also aids understanding of adaptation strategies and their potential consequences. In particular, with systematic application of the framework it is possible to highlight gaps in our existing understanding of system dynamics, or gain new insights into particular leverage points within the system. These can be targeted in order to find ways of building resilience to climate change in the region of origin, along the impact transmission system and in the recipient region exposed to the propagated risk.AcknowledgementThis work is being undertaken as part of the European Commission Horizon 2020-funded project CASCADES (Cascading climate risks: Towards adaptive and resilient European Societies).ReferencesBenzie M, Carter TR, Carlsen H, Taylor R (2019) Cross-border climate change impacts: implications for the European Union. Regional Environmental Change 19: 763-776, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1436-1.Carter TR, Benzie M, Campiglio E, Carlsen H, Fronzek S, Hildén M, Reyer CPO, West C (in review) A conceptual framework for cross-border impacts of climate change.

Shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), developed at global scale, comprise narrative descriptions and quantifications of future world developments that are intended for climate change scenario analysis. However, their extension to national and regional scales can be challenging. Here, we present SSP narratives co-developed with stakeholders for the agriculture and food sector in Finland. These are derived from intensive discussions at a workshop attended by approximately 39 participants offering a range of sectoral perspectives. Using general background descriptions of the SSPs for Europe, facilitated discussions were held in parallel for each of four SSPs reflecting very different contexts for the development of the sector up to 2050 and beyond. Discussions focused on five themes from the perspectives of consumers, producers and policy-makers, included a joint final session and allowed for post-workshop feedback. Results reflect careful sector-based, national-level interpretations of the global SSPs from which we have constructed consensus narratives. Our results also show important critical remarks and minority viewpoints. Interesting features of the Finnish narratives compared to the global SSP narratives include greater emphasis on environmental quality; significant land abandonment in SSPs with reduced livestock production and increased plant-based diets; continued need for some farm subsidies across all SSPs and opportunities for diversifying domestic production under scenarios of restricted trade. Our results can contribute to the development of more detailed national long-term scenarios for food and agriculture that are both relevant for local stakeholders and researchers as well as being consistent with global scenarios being applied internationally.

Highlights • We define cross-border climate impacts and identify challenges they may pose. • We develop a conceptual framework to help understand them and their dynamics. • The framework can organise and offer useful insights into past and projected cases. • To demonstrate we use examples of the 2011 Thai floods and Arctic sea ice decline. • The complexity of impact dynamics suggests a need for diverse adaptation responses. Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability studies tend to confine their attention to impacts and responses within the same geographical region. However, this approach ignores cross-border climate change impacts that occur remotely from the location of their initial impact and that may severely disrupt societies and livelihoods. We propose a conceptual framework and accompanying nomenclature for describing and analysing such cross-border impacts. The conceptual framework distinguishes an initial impact that is caused by a climate trigger within a specific region. Downstream consequences of that impact propagate through an impact transmission system while adaptation responses to deal with the impact propagate through a response transmission system. A key to understanding cross-border impacts and responses is a recognition of different types of climate triggers, categories of cross-border impacts, the scales and dynamics of impact transmission, the targets and dynamics of responses and the socio-economic and environmental context that also encompasses factors and processes unrelated to climate change. These insights can then provide a basis for identifying relevant causal relationships. We apply the framework to the floods that affected industrial production in Thailand in 2011, and to projected Arctic sea ice decline, and demonstrate that the framework can usefully capture the complex system dynamics of cross-border climate impacts. It also provides a useful mechanism to identify and understand adaptation strategies and their potential consequences in the wider context of resilience planning. The cross-border dimensions of climate impacts could become increasingly important as climate changes intensify. We conclude that our framework will allow for these to be properly accounted for, help to identify new areas of empirical and model-based research and thereby support climate risk management.

Knowledge of how climate impacts occurring outside Europe might affect the continent is poor, and even less is known about what measures national governments and the European Union (EU) should take to address them. It is essential that policy-makers consider the risks of cross-border and cascading impacts and the Union’s range of influence for mitigating and preparing for them

This editorial highlights the diversity in studies of experimentation that aims for solutions to climate change and wider sustainability challenges. The diversity is reflected in the theoretical underpinnings, the agency behind experiments, the niches in which experimentation occurs, in the governance of the experiments and in experiments with governance, in the way experiments contribute to learning and sharing of knowledge across levels and scales. This implies that experimentation and experiments can contribute to transitions in very different ways and that experimentation also runs the risks of merely becoming a distraction that maintains status quo instead of contributing to transformative change. In moving forward research should explore the diversity even more, and critically evaluate and discuss the possible contributions to policy and polycentric governance.

Low-carbon experiments offer interesting opportunities for climate change mitigation. They can be seen as niche activities that eventually challenge the existing regime of energy production and consumption. The role of actors in these potential transitions has not been extensively studied. This study bridges this gap by analysing ten cases of joint procurement experiments of on-grid solar photovoltaic energy in Finland. The study deepens the understanding of how such experimenting can contribute to climate change mitigation in an area that in many countries is still a largely untapped source of change. The study shows that the expansion of solar PV can be enhanced through joint procurement experiments which thereby become strategic. The joint procurement lowered several barriers of adoption and can therefore accelerate diffusion of solar PV significantly, even when there is a lack of explicit political support in the form of a subsidy system. Joint procurements help to overcome one of the most important barriers of solar panel purchase – the price, but the joint procurement experiments also offer important social support to the peers. The positive image of solar electricity greatly empowers consumers and increases acceptance of large investment costs. Further mainstreaming of the experiments towards a regime shift would benefit from institutional support that eases the laborious process of joint procurement and that strengthens the small scale producers’ negotiating position relative to the utilities and power network operators in trading surplus electricity.

Policy monitoring is often seen as a crucial ingredient of policy evaluation, but theoretically informed empirical analyses of real-world policy monitoring practices are still rare. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on climate policy monitoring in the European Union, which has a relatively stringent system of greenhouse gas monitoring but a much less demanding approach to monitoring policies. It explores how institutional settings, policy implementation, and the quality of information may impact the practices and politics of policy monitoring. Drawing on quantitative regression models and qualitative interviews, it demonstrates that policy monitoring has evolved over time and is itself subject to implementation pressures, but also exhibits learning effects that improve its quality. In further developing both everyday policy monitoring practices and academic understanding of them, there is a need to pay attention to their design—specifically, the impact of any overarching rules, the institutional support for implementation, and the criteria governing the quality of the information they deliver. In short, policy monitoring should be treated as a governance activity in its own right, raising many different design challenges.

One of the most central and novel features of the new climate governance architecture emerging from the 2015 Paris Agreement is the transparency framework committing countries to provide, inter alia, regular progress reports on national pledges to address climate change. Many countries will rely on public policies to turn their pledges into action. This article focuses on the EU’s experience with monitoring national climate policies in order to understand the challenges that are likely to arise as the Paris Agreement is implemented around the world. To do so, the research employs – for the first time – comparative empirical data submitted by states to the EU’s monitoring system. Our findings reveal how the EU’s predominantly technical interpretation of four international reporting quality criteria – an approach borrowed from reporting on GHG fluxes – has constrained knowledge production and stymied debate on the performance of individual climate policies. Key obstacles to more in-depth reporting include not only political concerns over reporting burdens and costs, but also struggles over who determines the nature of climate policy monitoring, the perceived usefulness of reporting information, and the political control that policy knowledge inevitably generates. Given the post-Paris drive to achieve greater transparency, the EU’s experience offers a sobering reminder of the political and technical challenges associated with climate policy monitoring, challenges that are likely to bedevil the Paris Agreement for decades to come.

Forest governance is in a state of change as the competition between different forest uses increases and as new interests such as those motivated by biodiversity conservations or carbon sequestration enter the policy scene. These changes are reflected in the renewed Finnish Forest Act from 2014, which is based on an underlying assumption that increasing freedom in the management will support the objectives of the renewal such as the promotion of more active and innovative uses of forests. But a change in law does not change practice automatically or linearly. We study the role of intermediary actors facilitating the objectives by focusing on specialized forest journals. Informed by the Narrative Policy Framework and the role of media therein, we show how these actors contribute to institutional change. We suggest that their roles can be understood by analyzing five key functions: informing, activating, interest promotion, self-promotion and marketing. We argue that these functions affect how a policy change is turned into practice. In this change specialized journals are not just intermediaries transmitting messages of change. They can also act as street level bureaucrats that actively influence practice or as lobbies that anxiously aim to maintain their positions. A careful analysis of the roles helps to understand why specialized journals that should be in forefront of progress in practice often promote incremental change rather than innovative alternatives.

The widely recognized increase in greenhouse gas emissions is necessitating adaptation to a changing climate, and policies are being developed and implemented worldwide, across sectors, and between government scales globally. The aim of this article is to reflect on one of the major challenges: facilitating and sharing information on the next adaptation practices. Web portals (i.e., web sites) for disseminating information are important tools in meeting this challenge, and therefore, we assessed the characteristics of select major portals across multiple scales. We found that there is a rather limited number of case studies available in the portals-between 900 and 1000 in total-with 95 that include cost information and 195 that include the participation of stakeholders globally. Portals are rarely cited by researchers, suggesting a suboptimal connection between the practical, policy-related, and scientific development of adaptation. The government portals often lack links on search results between US and European Union (EU) web sites, for example. With significant investments and policy development emerging in both the United States and the European Union, there is great potential to share information via portals. Moreover, there is the possibility of better connecting the practical adaptation experience from bottom-up projects to the science of adaptation. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2016;12:627-631. © 2016 SETAC.

Climate change adaptation (CCA) is argued to require coordinated policy responses because it is a complex, long-term, knowledge intensive, cross-sectoral, and multi-level governance challenge that involves many interdependencies and actors with different perceptions, goals, and approaches. This study, therefore, examines approaches of a set of European Union (EU) member states (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (England)) to pursue a more coordinated approach to CCA policy. It specifically addresses the co-ordination approaches that the selected countries use for the development and implementation of their national CCA policies in the immediate period following the publication of the EU&rsquo, s 2013 Adaptation Strategy. The analysis demonstrates that while useful coordination processes have been established in the analyzed EU member states, they have difficulty in challenging existing institutional hierarchies and decision rules. Consequently, longer-term opportunities for managing CCA conflicts and synergies among sectoral policies have to date been limited.

This chapter focuses on how one can place climate change and adaptation actions in a wider context of societal change. It examines ways of conceptualizing the societal context for adaptation actions and illustrates how it plays out in different regions and substance areas in Europe and how this information can be used in reflecting on possibilities for adaptation at different levels. It places adaptation to climate change in the frame of Representative Concentration Pathways and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, taking into account regional differences within Europe. The adaptation pathways are used as a central concept that helps to understand the range of available actions and the sequence of actions that can be taken under different scenarios of climate change and societal development. The chapter stresses the need to broadly understand the factors that affect adaptation challenges and that determine what one needs to consider in outlining future adaptation action.

This chapter explores how policies and policy-making perform to support climate change adaptation. It reflects on different tools that have been presented in Chapters 2–5 and that can be deployed to support decision-making. It also discusses how current adaptation measures operate to enhance the capacity to respond to climate change impacts in a coherent manner across sectors. In this the chapter draws on a database of tools that were developed as part of the Bottom-Up Adaptation Strategies for a Sustainable Europe project to support climate change adaptation. It also draws on an analysis of EU, national, and sectoral adaptation policy-making to document: (1) the mix of tools that have been used to develop adaptation policy in the EU, national policy contexts, and a number of different contexts; (2) the policy challenges of delivering climate change adaptation specifically related to autonomous and planned adaptation, public–private decision-making, bottom-up adaptation policy-making, and policy implementation; and (3) the extent to which adaptation has been mainstream in key sectoral polices in the EU from the supranational to the local level.

Adaptation is increasingly recognised as essential when dealing with the adverse impacts of climate change on societies, economies and the environment. However, there is insufficient information about the effectiveness of adaption policies, measures and actions. For this reason, the establishment of monitoring programmes is considered to be necessary. Such programmes can contribute to knowledge, learning and data to support adaptation governance. In the European Union (EU), member states are encouraged to develop National Adaptation Strategies (NASs). The NASs developed so far vary widely because of differing views, approaches and policies. A number of member states have progressed to monitoring and evaluating the implementation of their NAS. It is possible to identify key elements in these monitoring programmes that can inform the wider policy learning process. In this paper, four generic building blocks for creating a monitoring and evaluation programme are proposed: (1) definition of the system of interest, (2) selection of a set of indicators, (3) identification of the organisations responsible for monitoring and (4) definition of monitoring and evaluation procedures. The monitoring programmes for NAS in three member states—Finland, the UK and Germany—were analysed to show how these elements have been used in practice, taking into account their specific contexts. It is asserted that the provision of a common framework incorporating these elements will help other member states and organisations within them in setting up and improving their adaptation monitoring programmes.

Geoengineering evokes fears and hopes among the general public, media and scientists. Policy-makers thus face the dilemma of how to respond to this deeply controversial issue. In this paper we examine a wide variety of policy documents from different countries, international organizations and NGOs to gain insights into how geoengineering is perceived at the policy level. We use qualitative content analysis in order to determine specific aspects of framing of geoengineering: concerns and hopes to indicate risk perceptions and action proposals to account for directions in policy development. The policy documents contain a large variety of concerns, hopes and action proposals. Technical and risk-related issues dominate the concerns; the hopes express a wish for new solutions to climate change; and the action proposals emphasize the need for more research. Furthermore, there were clear differences between Anglo-American and German documents, indicating that international policy development on geoengineering will be a difficult task.

Policies governing forest ecosystems can mitigate climate change in many ways, making use of various ecosystem services. Although identification of ecosystem service trade-offs has received increasing analytical attention, the policies and mixes of policies generating the trade-offs have remained outside the focus. To advance the policy relevance of ecosystem service trade-off analysis, we analyse the coherence of Finnish policies affecting forest bioenergy and carbon sequestration, two contrasting means to use forests for climate change mitigation. In particular, we focus on the interactions that different policy outputs have with respect to these two ecosystem services. The analysed policy outputs represent different foci and levels and rely on different mechanisms. We identify the direct and indirect impacts that the policy outputs have on the supply and demand of the services by utilizing natural science and policy assessment approaches. We find forest bioenergy, representing a tangible ecosystem service exchanged in the market, to be governed more positively and with more explicit instruments compared to carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration policies remain at a higher level of abstraction, stating merely strategic objectives, possibly because these markets are only emerging and remain political and highly uncertain. Our analysis shows that trade-offs between the two ecosystem services are generated by policies supporting bioenergy, whilst general policies advance both services. The entire mix of policy outputs and its differentiated impacts on ecosystem services should be thoroughly considered when assessing the strategies for mitigating climate change and designing new policy instruments.

As a governance perspective, transition management views the engagement of a wide variety of stakeholders in policy development as a necessary element in furthering sustainability through enhanced social learning. Yet as a literature it has paid relatively little attention to public consultation on socio-technical change. Here we set transition management in the context of longstanding debates in science and technology studies, technology assessment and deliberative democracy. Empirically, we use national survey data on Finnish public opinion of state support for future transport options. Showing how transport practices and attitudes to transport innovation policy vary with both demography and geography, we argue that these differences have implications for policy legitimacy. We suggest that, both given and despite the practical difficulties of deliberative democracy, use of participative opinion surveying to better understand social groups with needs and interests that differ from national averages, may help to enhance policy legitimacy and hence the success of transition management.

We contribute to the discussion on transnational impacts of climate change by analysing the potential cross-border impacts climate change driven changes in the hydropower potential. We analyse this in the context of the Nordic countries where Norway and Sweden are likely to gain hydropower potential and Finland is likely to experience transnational impacts. We use an economic simulation model and a dynamic optimization model to study the impact of climate change to the production mix, the price of electricity, consumption of electricity and emissions from electricity production. We show that climate change might reduce prices through increased renewables supply, which decreases the profitability of power production. The changes in the inflow profile affect the hydropower profiles over the hydrological year such that the reduced inflow peak in the spring shifts the hydropower production from spring to autumn and winter. In addition the larger inflow increases the share of hydropower in production mix over the year. The emissions per consumed energy unit is going to be decreased because of the decreasing share of the thermal production in the system. However, increased hydropower production reduces prices which in turn increases the quantity demanded. This rebound effect somewhat dampens the emission reduction.

Geoengineering is an example of a highly political science-driven topic. We explore how researchers frame geoengineering and what implications these frames have for the science-policy interface and the politicization of science. Our analysis revealed three main ways to frame geoengineering in scientific literature. The “Risk-benefit” frame emphasizes calculation and further research, the “Governance” frame emphasizes the need to develop institutions and procedures, and the “Natural balance” frame focuses on the ethical aspects of geoengineering. The researchers’ frames have different political implications, indicating a need to ensure transparency and dialogue at the science-policy nexus.

Policy development and implementation should ideally be informed by assessments and evaluations, but research has shown that their use is far from straightforward in politicised environments. Their role in the adoption and evolution of policy innovations, which fundamentally change policy, has not been extensively analysed. Here, I show that the role can be understood using a new framework that bridges the gap between an agency-dominated innovation management perspective and a process-oriented transition perspective. I apply this framework to examine the evolution of an important policy innovation: the EU emissions trading system (ETS). In the political struggle to introduce and maintain the ETS, the role of evaluations and assessments has changed from destabilisation and reframing to consolidation. The analysis underlines the importance of the interaction between Member States, EU institutions, and non-state actors in the often-neglected stabilisation phase of EU-level policy innovations.

A key dimension of the debate about policy innovation is the extent to which new policies achieve significant and lasting effects on the problems they purport to address. However, little is known about such effects. We break new ground by investigating how far current evaluation practices in a policy system with relatively ambitious climate policies – the European Union – identify the most effective (carbon-reducing) policies. We find that a small number of policy instruments are projected to deliver the lion’s share of emission reductions. Setting aside the special case of emissions trading, these instruments are not particularly innovative. If significant practical and political obstacles can be addressed, more (detailed) evaluations could enhance the evidence base and also the political prospects for delivering deeper emissions cuts through to 2050. An evaluation perspective could also offer a very different way to consider policy innovation dynamics.

Climate change adaptation (CCA) policies require scientific input to focus on relevant risks and opportunities, to promote effective and efficient measures and ensure implementation. This calls for policy relevant research to formulate salient policy recommendations. This article examines how CCA research may contribute to policy recommendations in the light of idealized set of knowledge production attributes for policy development in Finland. Using general background information on the evolution of CCA research and a case study, we specifically examine how the set of attributes have been manifested in research serving CCA and discuss how they have affected the resulting policy recommendations. We conclude that research serving CCA can be improved by more explicit reflection on the attributes that pay attention to the context of application, the methods of teamwork and a variety of participating organizations, transdisciplinarity of the research, reflexivity based on the values and labour ethos of scientists and novel forms of extended peer review. Such attributes can provide a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for knowledge production that strives to bridge the gap between research and policy.

Monitoring the health of ecosystems is imperative to achieve sustainability. In this, ecological indicators have a crucial and evolving role to play. Although indicators are vital to monitoring the state and trends of ecosystems and the consequences of anthropogenic pressures, they may not lead to necessary action unless they are coupled with identification and monitoring of drivers. This will provide a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of policy responses, thus providing information that is actionable by policy makers and the public. We argue that expanding the role of indicators will render them far more effective as a resource for combating ecosystem degradation. Using the Baltic Sea as an example we analyse the nature of this challenge and provide concrete solutions to problems hindering the effectiveness of ecological indicator use in restoring health to large-scale ecosystems.

We analyze how metaphors are used in presenting and debating novel technologies that could influence the climate and thereby also future climate change policies. We show that metaphors strengthen a policy-related storyline, while metaphors are rarer in purely descriptive accounts. The choice of metaphor frames the technologies. War metaphors are used equally in arguments that are for, against and neutral with respect to the further development of geoengineering, but differences arise in the use of metaphors related to controllability, health and mechanisms. Controllability metaphors are often used in justifying further research and development of good governance practices, whereas health metaphors tend to be used against the very idea of geoengineering by portraying technological interventions in the climate as an emblematic case of an unacceptable development. These findings suggest that metaphors are early indications of restrictions in the interpretative flexibility that influences future governance of geoengineering and geoengineering research.

The concept of sustainability has been a part of theory and practice in agriculture for a long time, but the diverse roots of the concept have led to a number of different definitions of sustainable agriculture. This paper provides an overview of the policy development of sustainable agriculture in Finland by examining internal and external discourses of sustainability and the evolution in different dimensions of sustainability. We show that the debate on sustainability within European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy and Finnish agri-environmental policy are reflected in attempts to implement and monitor sustainability in agriculture in Finland. However, indicators suggest a largely non-sustainable condition. This has contributed to a shift in policy objectives from sustainable agriculture to sustainable rural development, especially in the EU context. As there are commonly trade-offs between the economic, ecological and social dimensions of sustainable development, future developments in sustainable agriculture will inevitably be characterized by continuous redefinitions of problems, paradigm revisions and reassessments of actions already taken.

The concept of sustainability has been a part of theory and practice in agriculture for a long time, but the diverse roots of the concept have led to a number of different definitions of sustainable agriculture. This paper provides an overview of the policy development of sustainable agriculture in Finland by examining internal and external discourses of sustainability and the evolution in different dimensions of sustainability. We show that the debate on sustainability within European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy and Finnish agri-environmental policy are reflected in attempts to implement and monitor sustainability in agriculture in Finland. However, indicators suggest a largely non-sustainable condition. This has contributed to a shift in policy objectives from sustainable agriculture to sustainable rural development, especially in the EU context. As there are commonly trade-offs between the economic, ecological and social dimensions of sustainable development, future developments in sustainable agriculture will inevitably be characterized by continuous redefinitions of problems, paradigm revisions and reassessments of actions already taken.

Ecological thresholds have raised considerable interest as a concept that may help to understand and manage environmental challenges in coastal areas. We present results from an international survey on ecological thresholds targeted at coastal and marine experts. The results show that experts are confident that coastal areas are affected by risks and changes related to ecological thresholds. Experts also are concerned that current coastal management structures and practices are not capable of preventing the crossing of the thresholds of harmful changes, especially those related to climate change. The results also show a high level of variability of views and suggest a need for the creation of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary platforms and processes of open-minded deliberation needed for the adaptive management of coastal areas.

This special issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production addresses system transformation by examining progress, stumbling blocks and opportunities for sustainable consumption and production in a specific country, Finland, set within a global context. The articles present and analyse top-down policy efforts, bottom-up efforts by municipalities, activities by companies and actions by consumers. They provide material for discussions on the shift from sustainability planning to enhancing system transformation, on the implications of globalisation for system boundaries, on the transformation of complex systems, on learning processes and on methods of assessing transitions. Without providing a singular solution, the articles show that issues of sustainability should be explored in different ways within different contexts, and experimented with. There is a continuous need for transformations and reflexive learning, since conditions are likely to become very different, not least due to climate change. The notion of change and transformation will be high on the agenda of the Rio+20 conference, as will similar efforts to promote large-scale transformations of consumption and production.

All member states of the EU have had to develop climate strategies following the commitment to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The evolution of the strategies provides insights into the learning that takes place at the level of policy development and offers material for analysing how ex ante and ex post evaluations have contributed to this learning. In the analysis, Finland is used as a case demonstrating different levels and types of learning, from deeper reframing to political learning. The results show that the full potential of the evaluations has not been utilised, partly because they have been constrained by their mandate. Greater openness and transparency in the policy processes would create favourable conditions for independent evaluations that could provide additional input to the policy processes. This would support social and reflexive learning and allow for greater adaptability.

To call for integration in risk assessment and governance as a self-evident goal is deceptively easy. For more insight, we ask: what level and kind of integration and for what purposes is needed and sufficient? What opportunities and obstacles can be identified for integrative treatment of risks? What causes and impacts are there of developments in risk integration? To answer these questions we investigate the socio-political processes and factors surrounding integrated risk assessment and risk governance through a combination of literature reviews and original research. We emphasize regulatory assessment and governance of risks associated with chemicals in the EU, but we link them with other areas to better grasp options and problems in integration. We relate the problems to political factors and barriers in sector and vertical integration, including deviating interests, and further to conflicting information, concepts and mindsets. Risk assessment and risk governance involve varying notions of risks and knowledge, with tensions between stressor- or impact-oriented, exclusive or inclusive, positivist or relativist, and fixed or reflexive notions and approaches. These tensions influence the trajectories of integration between sectors, actors and regions, constraining the fulfillment of ideals of integrated governance. We conclude that risk assessment and governance can be integrated, harmonized and innovated to a limit only, but this limit is variable and flexible, and provides opportunities especially if attention is paid to the socio-political contexts, value choices and decision structures in each case. Generally, the results underline a reflexive approach whereby the meanings, framings and implications of risk integration are probed in open processes of deliberation and negotiation, as a learning process to transcend the formal and prescriptive modes of regulation and knowledge generation.

This paper addresses obstacles and opportunities for the development and application of novel methods for integrated assessment of cumulative risks from chemicals, exemplified by the REACH legislation of the EU, in the context of multiple stressors and of chemicals policy. We examine the role of such methods in connection with REACH by models of integration and innovation of risk information in multi-actor risk governance; analyses of key documents on REACH; and interviews with EU regulators and stakeholders. We first explain the emergence of REACH as a response to tensions in EU chemicals, environmental and other policies. We then analyze the present configuration of REACH particularly in relation to key dimensions of risk integration: across stressors; exposed organisms; and impacts. Among the policy aspects of integrated risk information, we focus on its interaction with management and the contesting framings and interpretations of assessment. Avenues and barriers are identified for integrated treatment of risks under REACH and with other instruments. We emphasize how bounded, formal and static assessments interact with open and informal approaches that have more flexibility in integrating risks in new ways. We conclude with a generalizing discussion on the role of novel methods of integrated risk assessment in the development of reflexive and participatory governance under REACH and beyond.

Environmental and health risks caused by chemical substances have been intensively debated in various arenas of science and policy, and in news media. The impacts of risk debates on the public have been widely studied, while less attention has been paid to expert views. We present results from a cross-national survey charting expert views on the policy-level assessment, management, and communication of chemical risks. We focus on the need for reflexive concepts and approaches in risk assessment and governance when seen as social learning processes. Based on the results we present recommendations for improving risk communication of expert organizations.

Environmental policies have to deal with nonlinear changes, discontinuities, and thresholds that may unfold with the passing of time. A recursive and adaptive approach to policy evaluation can deal with these challenges. Key characteristics of adaptive evaluations are their recursive nature, systematic exploration of multiple intervention theories, and ability to probe into new issues in close interaction with the policy development itself. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We present an analysis of frameworks for information on integrated risk assessment and management, focusing on issues related to environmental and health risks of chemicals and their regulation at the EU level. By frameworks we understand the conceptual and procedural constructs within which information is assimilated, processed and given meaning. We examine different aspects of integrated risk information and how these are handled in different frameworks. We mainly address integration in relation to policy, specifically in risk evaluation and risk–benefit considerations, in interaction of assessment and management, and in policy level uncertainties. We show how the policy level influences the frameworks and hence the level and use of integrated assessments, and how they interact with new information and scientific frameworks in EU chemicals control such as the REACH legislation. We conclude that by paying better attention to the nature of the framework it is possible to focus on the most crucial aspects of integration. In this way it is possible to develop appropriate flexible assessments that focus on key complexities and issues without getting entrenched in details of minor significance for the policy problem at hand.

With a bang or with a whimper? A number of studies address this key question related to the ways in which ecosystems degrade. Our angle is slightly different. In this essay, we discuss what challen...

In this study, the impacts of different agricultural policies on agricultural production and nutrient leaching from agricultural land are evaluated using the economic DREMFIA agricultural sector model and the field-scale nutrient transport model ICECREAM. DREMFIA simulates competitive markets of agricultural products and includes an evolutionary scheme of technology diffusion which explicitly considers farm investments, evolving farm size structure and technological change. The technology diffusion model allows self-enforcing patterns of technical change driven by the spread of information and farmers' knowledge related to different technological alternatives. Hence, the long-term changes in agriculture due to policy changes may be essentially larger than those predicted by traditional static equilibrium models. Larger potential for changes in production provides a larger perspective for evaluation of environmental impacts. The modelled variables in ICECREAM are nitrogen and phosphorus losses in surface run-off and percolation. The considered environmental effect is eutrophication of surface waters. In this paper, the modelling strategy will be presented and highlighted using two case-study catchments with varying environmental conditions and land use.

Governance responses from the international climate regime have been widely critiqued. But fresh research is revealing that ‘new’ and more dynamic forms of governing are appearing in alternative domains, producing a more polycentric pattern. Some analysts believe that these ‘new’ forms will fill gaps in the regime, but this optimism is based on untested assumptions about their diffusion and performance. We conclude that the advent of more polycentric governance does offer new opportunities to govern climate change, but based on existing empirical research it is far too early to judge whether hopes about the performance of the ‘new’ forms are well founded. More time and vastly more coordinated research efforts are needed to comprehend their full potential; time that is in very short supply in governing climate change.