The European environment - State and outlook ... - IKZM-D Lernen

Foreword
This is the third state and outlook report on the
European environment produced by the European
Environment Agency (EEA) since 1994. Looking back,
the last report, published in 1999 concluded that,
despite 25 years of Community environmental policy,
environmental quality in the European Union (EU)
was mixed and that the unsustainable development
of some key economic sectors was the major barrier
to further improvements. That remains the EEA's
key conclusion, despite significant progress on some
issues demonstrating that environmental policy works.
Were we to fast-forward to the year 2010, it would
be my strong hope that in its next state and outlook
report, the EEA would be able to report significant
environmental improvements, not least as a result
of reversing unsustainable trends in sectors such as
energy, agriculture and transport.
Much has of course changed in Europe since 1999, most
notably through the biggest ever enlargement of the
EU. Despite this and other considerable successes, the
EU now recognises that it has to do more to convey
to Europeans that it understands their concerns and
that it has credible strategies in place to address them.
One response has been to reinvigorate the Lisbon
agenda initially launched in 2000 with the target of
creating new and better jobs through higher economic
growth. The EU has set itself the deadline of 2010 for
delivering on this agenda and against this backdrop
environmental initiatives are being rigorously
scrutinised. At the same time, opinion polls show
that the European public believes that environment
protection policies are an incentive for innovation and
not an obstacle to economic performance. The evidence
in this report shows that they are right.
The years since 1999 have also witnessed the adoption
of the EU's sustainable development strategy. At the
UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in the
summer of 2002, the EU showed global leadership by
setting out its broad, long-term vision for the future.
But long-term objectives must not mean postponing
action now. In formulating policy today, Europe has
an obligation to look beyond 2010 and beyond its
own borders. As this report shows, the international
stakes are high. Europe cannot continue down
the path of achieving its short-term objectives by
impacting disproportionately on the rest of the world's
environment through its ecological footprint.
Tackling clearly unsustainable trends in Europe will
require real integration of environmental objectives
across policy areas such as energy, transport,
agriculture, industry and spatial planning. Consumers
must also be given the information and incentives to
change the way in which their households and lifestyles
impact upon their local — and global — environments.
It is not easy to bring about such shifts in behaviour but
many of the environmental improvements that we need
in the coming years can only be brought about through
such changes. At the same time, the EU must remain
vigilant to ensure that the policy measures already in
place are fully implemented and properly enforced.
The European public's intuitive understanding that
environmental protection and economic growth can
go hand in hand is confirmed by this report. The same
applies to the widely held view that prevention works
better than cure. Many environmental problems stem
from incorrect pricing of what we consume at the time
we consume it. The challenge for European policymakers
is to ensure that the real costs of pollution and
resource inefficiency are internalised into the prices
of products and services, as opposed to later on at the
end of the chain in the form of a pollution clean-up bill,
damaged health or diminished ecosystems. The tools
of the market can provide incentives to bring about
some of the very necessary behavioural changes. And
as the EEA has shown in some of its earlier reports, the
cost of inaction can be many times the cost of sensible
preventive measures.
Some phenomena are more difficult to cost in
conventional market terms. As societies we have come
to rely on a range of ecosystem services upon which
we have not traditionally placed monetary values.
Healthy ecosystems deliver an abundance of free and
life-sustaining services such as productive land and
soil, forest products, or other, sometimes less well
recognised services, such as watershed protection
and water filtration, flood protection or carbon
storage. Our economies — like our societies — are
8 The European environment | State and outlook 2005