ETC ST Report 2023/1: Emerging issues of policy relevance for land use and circular economy: Insights from the Eionet Participatory Horizon Scanning Pilot 2022
Horizon scanning is a systematic process encompassing the identification of weak signals of emerging trends, events and issues of policy relevance. Emerging environmental issues are phenomena that are completely new, which are known but new to environmental policymakers, or known but controversial or uncertain, including changes to the understanding, exposure or perception of an issue. Horizon scanning enables policymakers to gain new insights about future developments and make strategic decisions that strengthen the resilience of current policies to future shocks and uncertainty. In March 2022, the European Environment Agency and the European Topic Centre for Sustainability Transitions (ETC ST) initiated a participatory horizon scanning process involving the Eionet Groups (EGs) on Foresight and State of the Environment (SoE). One of the aims of the exercise was to identify and briefly characterise a set of emerging issues of relevance to the environment around a topic or topics of relevance to the Eionet countries. The topics selected by the participants were land use and the circular economy. This report presents the characterisation of eight emerging issues, four on land use and four on the circular economy. It aims to plant seeds and trigger curiosity around the risks and opportunities these issues may pose to the environment and environmental policy at the EU and at the country level. Depending on their nature, the emerging issues differ considerably in the availability of empirical data, knowledge of environmental impacts, and how uncertain their development is. What they have in common is that they all bear novel aspects and have environmental relevance.
29 Jan 2025
Lorenz Erdmann, Sylvia Veenhoff