Sustainable development governance & policies in the light of major EU policy strategies and international developments, ESDN Quarterly Report September 2011

This Quarterly Report (QR) provides an overview and analysis of sustainable development (SD) governance and policies at the EU and Member States level. Currently, the framework for SD governance and policy in the European Union is in a state of change. On the one hand, the EU SDS of 2006 requires the European Council in 2011 to decide "when a comprehensive review of the EU SDS needs to be launched" (para 45); a decision on the review will also influence the future of the EU SDS. On the other hand, SD issues and targets are increasingly included in other important EU policy strategies, most notably in the Europe 2020 strategy as well as the flagship initiative, "A resource-efficient Europe" (2011), and its Roadmap that was published on 20 September 2011. Additionally, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) will focus as one of its major themes on the institutional framework for SD and issues of SD governance, including SD strategy processes at the national level. All these recent developments call for a reflection on how SD governance and policies can be best addressed in current EU policy strategies and in preparation to the Rio+20 conference. Chapter one of this QR provides a general introduction about the link between SD and governance. Chapter two focuses on the EU SDS and the Europe 2020 Strategy (incl. the resource-efficient Europe Flagship Initiative and Roadmap); it presents how SD is included in these major policy strategies and provides a table on similarities and differences of the governance processes of both strategies. In chapter three, an overview is given on one of the two major themes of the Rio+20 conference, "institutional framework for SD" and which specific recommendations have been developed as of yet for SD governance in general.