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Ecology


Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher. We use the values of freedom, sustainability and equality as the foundation on which we examine society’s most pressing challenges. We are committed to publishing cutting-edge thinking and new ideas from the most thought-provoking people. This archive page brings together Social Europe articles on ecology.

Will this be the last European Gas Conference?

Pascoe Sabido 24th March 2023

The IPCC says the world is in the last-chance saloon. Yet fossil-gas executives eye deals next week in Vienna.

Confronting the global water crisis

Mariana Mazzucato, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Johan Rockström and 1 more 23rd March 2023

To safeguard this most fundamental natural resource, we urgently need a global strategy for water as a common good.

Environmental stewardship yes, ‘carbon farming’ no

Wijnand Stoefs 22nd March 2023

Preserving nature, restoring soils and safeguarding biodiversity is essential—but calling it carbon removal is harmful.

How to promote green industry beyond subsidies

Patrick ten Brink and Luke Haywood 13th March 2023

The EU has more to offer green industry—a stronger regulatory framework and credible carbon pricing.

Corporate greenwashing—misusing ‘net zero’ pledges

Lindsay Otis 9th March 2023

Companies are making ‘carbon neutral’ claims based on dubious emissions offsetting and ‘insetting’—rather than actual cuts.

Green subsidies: what about the global south?

Rachel Thrasher 10th February 2023

The new green race between the United States and the European Union threatens to leave developing countries behind.

Europe’s industry and the ecological transition

Charlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin 2nd February 2023

Tackling deindustrialisation and degradation requires not a technological fix but a political alternative.

Europe’s energy transition starts to speed up

Dave Jones 31st January 2023

When Russia invaded Ukraine, many feared Europe’s green-energy transition would be collateral damage. Far from it.

Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injustice

Zareen Zahid Qureshi 30th January 2023

The $9 billion promised to Pakistan is only a sticking plaster until the west acknowledges the dire climate legacy in south Asia.

Towards a permanent EU investment fund

Philipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger 25th January 2023

Meeting the EU’s climate and energy goals will mean ramping up public investment via a permanent fund.

Embedding sustainability in a government programme

Johanna Juselius 25th January 2023

Sustainable development is a global task largely to be delivered by national governments. What can they learn from the leader—Finland?

An annual check-up for the climate movement

May Boeve 5th January 2023

The world made some progress in 2022 on climate change and protecting nature but entrenched interests remain to be overcome.

‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuels

Faye Holder 22nd December 2022

Documents from the International Gas Union have revealed the strategy of disinformation pursued by the powerful lobby.

Legal challenges by NGOs, citizens key to climate battle

Frederik Hafen and Romain Didi 22nd December 2022

Strong climate governance means holding governments to account. The EU institutions have shied away from doing so.

Biodiversity: the EU and the race against time

Laura Hildt and Ioannis Agapakis 21st December 2022

The EU’s Nature Restoration Law must implement key COP15 outcomes on biodiversity—in very short order.

Avoiding ‘carbon leakage’—adjustments needed

Werner Raza, Bernhard Tröster, Verena Madner and 2 more 14th December 2022

The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is ecologically justified but difficult to implement.

Exclusion of women could end up costing our planet 

Camilla Barungi 8th December 2022

COP27 in Egypt was massively dominated by male leaders. Yet African women are key agents in battling climate change.

Injustice is fuelling Europe’s energy crisis

Nick Meynen 1st December 2022

Europe needs to shift from a system locked into climate-wrecking fuels, extractivism and autocracies—towards ‘energy justice’.

Europe’s 2050 mission to a future-fit economy

Lydia Korinek and Jakob Hafele 1st December 2022

The step up to a sustainable economy is steep, but it is achievable with political leadership and unshackled public investment.

Progress and setbacks from COP27

Patrick ten Brink, Luke Haywood, Katy Wiese and 1 more 23rd November 2022

The European Union cannot rely on the United Nations process to deliver and must reinforce its own climate efforts.

The entrepreneurial state must lead on climate change

Mariana Mazzucato 7th November 2022

As a much-touted green alliance of financial institutions crumbles, the private sector has once again proved unequal to the task of climate leadership.

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Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

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The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


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Eurofound’s head of information and communication, Mary McCaughey, its senior research manager, Agnès Parent-Thirion, and research manager, Jorge Cabrita, explore the findings from the recently published European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) in an #AskTheExpert webinar. This survey of more than 70,000 workers in 36 European countries provides a wide-ranging picture of job quality across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups and by gender in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It confirms persistent gender segregation in sectors, occupations and workplaces, indicating that we are a long way from the goals of equal opportunities for women and men at work and equal access to key decision-making positions in the workplace.


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