european think tanks group
The measures taken to fight the Covid-19 pandemic are changing our daily lives. Many see this as an opportunity to initiate more sustainable behaviours, and even hope that this experience of imposed sobriety will be transformed into a real awareness in favour of more virtuous lifestyles for the environment.
Discussions about the world that will emerge from the coronavirus pandemic have already started apace. Many commentators are wondering whether the crisis offers the opportunity to set the world on a more sustainable and equal path.
Scientists are particularly exposed in the current health crisis, where governments are using their advice to consolidate their decisions. Thus summoned as experts, also by the media, they find themselves both placed in collective responsibility, as is the case with the scientific council mobilised around the French government, and exposed individually. They also constitute a reference point, to which one can refer in order to gradually build up, as a citizen, an understanding of the situation. The role of science within society and in relation to the major political decisions that have to be made is thus extremely active, in various configurations, and subject to multiple pressures.
This is not to downplay the urgency of addressing the immediate impacts of the Corona crisis, but to turn towards a sustainable way forward that avoids the dead ends of apparent quick-fix solutions. Short-term economic impacts, as a result of Corona containment policies, are unavoidable. Yet, the very reason why climate action was not pushed forward hitherto was due to concerns on short-term economic impacts, notwithstanding the prospect of substantial gains in the long-run. Hence, the current disruptions should help rather than hinder policy adjustments and investments that pursue emissions reductions and a responsible use of natural resources while at the same time creating decent jobs and stimulating economic growth.
Rising case numbers are highlighting how the coronavirus crisis is escalating, both globally and in Germany. Some people have already begun to ask themselves a delicate question: besides the medical and societal challenges brought on by the pandemic, could we also find new forms of cooperation? Might we also take a different approach to other global problems afterwards?
More than two years have passed since the last African Union-European Union Summit in Abidjan. Ahead of the next 6th
As a follow up to the ETTG Policy Brief “Harnessing EU external cooperation to boost ambitious and coherent climate action” and one month before the ETTG roundtable event ’How to walk the Green Deal talk in EU external cooperation? Harnessing development cooperation to foster European climate leadership‘ (18th March in Brussels) the DIE researchers from Steffen Bauer and Gabriela Iacobuta are putting together the pieces of the “Green Deal” puzzle in our new ETTG blog.
The December Communication on the Green New Deal – in the words of the EC President presented as the “man on the moon moment” of the European Union – outlines the steps to shape the European Union climate strategy for the years to come.
In this paper, researchers from the European Think Tanks Group propose a set of actions the EU should consider to raise its climate ambition and exert credible climate leadership in a challenging global context.
In this ‘Agenda for Europe in the World’, we share concrete proposals for the new EU leadership, focusing on nine key domains where the EU can make a difference.
