ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
The aim of the sixth EAP,Environment 2010: Our Future,Our Choice(2001–
10), is to correct some of the failings of its predecessor. It has four
priorities – climate change; protecting nature and biodiversity; environment
and health; resource and waste management – and five thematic strategies,
including environmental policy integration and more effective implemen-
tation of existing policies. Significantly, the EU launched a separate sus-
tainable development strategy document,ASustainable Europe for a Better
World,prepared for the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Develop-
ment, which set out a three-pronged approach based on pursuing economic
growth,social inclusion and environmental protection hand-in-hand. A
brief interim review in 2005 observed that despite some progress having
been made, much remained to be done; in particular, it called for ‘clearer
objectives, targets and related deadlines’ to give focus and allow accurate
monitoring of progress (European Commission 2005 :51)–ademand con-
stantly repeated for national and local level plans. Subsequently, a renewed
strategy document was published in June 2006 with four objectives: envi-
ronmental protection; social equity and cohesion; economic prosperity;
and meeting the EU’s international responsibilities (Council of the EU
2006 : 3–4).
Currently, there is little to suggest that the sixth EAP will succeed where
its predecessor failed, or that the ploy of producing a separate sustainable
development strategy will reap markedly better rewards. The ambitions are
worthy,limited improvements – both in the nature of policymaking and in
policy content – can and will be identified, but well over a decade of EU
plans based explicitly on sustainable development principles have failed to
break down the deeply entrenched sectoral divisions. One problem is the
lack of member state commitment, but that is hardly surprising given its
absence from the domestic planning process too.◗ National green plans
Since the late 1980s, most OECD countries, including nineteen of the EU25
states (EEA2005b:15), have published national sustainable development
strategies, or ‘green plans’, setting out long-term goals, policies and tar-
gets, which are also intended to improve both horizontal and vertical inte-
gration (J ̈anicke and J ̈orgens 1998 ; Lafferty and Meadowcroft2000a). The
most comprehensive initiatives have come from countries such as Norway,
Sweden and the Netherlands where the assumption that there must be a
trade-off between environmental and economic goals had been challenged
long before the Agenda 21 process pushed the idea of green plans onto
theinternational stage (see Andersen and Liefferink1997a). Australia was
also briefly ahead of the pack with its ‘ecologically sustainable development’
process in 1990 to produce its National Strategy document. However, many
documents were produced simply to satisfy the Agenda 21 requirement