Informe El medio ambiente en Europa: Estado y perspectivas 2020

PART 3
about using creative and participatory
processes to foster communication,
learning, agreement and commitment.
FIGURE 17.8
Sustainable
Backcasting analysis
Visions count for little if they are not
translated into actions. It is therefore
Short‐term implications
important to involve political actors
(or those with political influence) in
developing them. There is also a need
to translate visions and goals into
concrete policies and projects, backed
up by specific targets, implementing
agencies and monitoring frameworks.
Backcasting is often used to translate
future goals into a range of transition
pathways, which can then be used
to develop policy strategies and
programmes (Figure 17.8).
History
Expected trend
Challenge
Goals
Transformative action
Within Europe, the process of
translating visions into targets is well
advanced in some policy areas. For
example, the EU’s 2011 Roadmap for
moving to a competitive low carbon
economy in 2050 (EC, 2011) used
modelling and scenario analysis to map
out milestones and sectoral reductions
needed to achieve the EU’s 2050 target
of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
by 80-95 %. Subsequent frameworks
have elaborated much more detailed
targets and measures to achieve the
long-term goal.
Similarly, the EU’s circular economy
action plan (EC, 2015a) articulates a
vision and breaks it down into more
concrete sub-goals and focus areas
addressing topics such as plastics, waste
and critical raw materials. In contrast,
the food domain lacks an overarching
sustainability vision and long-term
goals, making it hard to develop policies
and targets to support food system
transitions. The SDGs and existing EU
strategies can provide a foundation for
engaging stakeholders and developing a
shared vision for the food system.
Another mechanism for translating
broad visions into concrete actions
comes in the form of missions that
convey a sense of urgency and
Source: van Vuuren and Hof (2018).
common purpose, thereby stimulating
innovation and investments. As
outlined by Mazzucato (2018),
targeted missions provide a means of
bridging between macro-level goals or
challenges and micro-level projects and
experimentation (Figure 17.9).
Like broader visions, missions are
intended to be motivational and foster
bottom-up activity, as well as creating a
frame for target setting and monitoring.
However, by shifting the focus from
broad challenges to more specific and
ambitious but achievable problems
(e.g. achieving 100 carbon-neutral cities
in Europe by 2030) they provide a more
specific focus for research, investment
and economic growth. In this way, they
aim to promote collaboration between
all actors in the innovation ecosystem,
including corporations and disruptive
start-ups, public institutions and users
(RISE, 2018).
17.5.2
Coherence across policy domains
and levels of governance
Time
Systemic changes necessarily link
to a broad range of policy domains,
extending well beyond environment and
sectoral policies, such as energy and
agriculture, to embrace cross‐cutting
areas such as innovation, competition,
tax, industry, education and welfare
(Figure 17.10). Actions in each of these
areas contribute to stimulating, orienting
and facilitating systemic change. In
practice, however, the fact that policies
— at all levels of governance — are often
developed in departmental silos with
contrasting objectives and expertise
means that misalignments and conflicts
are inevitable (Section 16.6). This
incoherence can slow down transition
processes, creating contradictory
signals about the direction of travel and
deterring investments (OECD, 2015).
404 SOER 2020/Responding to sustainability challenges