Bringing EU policy into line with the Planetary Boundaries

The document argues that the EU is not "living within the limits of our planet," significantly exceeding its equal-per-capita fair share of the global safe operating space for climate change and biogeochemical flows. It proposes downscaling global boundaries to regional levels to create benchmarks for both production- and consumption-based performance, highlighting that EU consumption often exerts higher pressure than the global average. While the EU has various policy instruments addressing individual boundaries, the brief notes a lack of integration regarding interlinkages between processes and the EU's international environmental footprint.

• Based on an equal-per-capita allocation of the global safe operating space, the EU exceeds its fair share regarding climate change and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus).
• EU consumption per citizen creates higher pressure on the Planetary Boundaries for climate change, land use, biogeochemical flows, and water use than the global average.
• The EU's transgression of its downscaled share is most pronounced for climate change; to stay within an allocated budget of 70 Gt CO2, net emissions must reach zero within a few decades.
• Regarding land system change, the EU is a large net importer of agricultural products, and its consumption and imports account for approximately 10% of global trade-related deforestation, despite having no net deforestation internally.
• Analysis of nitrogen flows, based on data from Germany, shows the downscaled Planetary Boundary is exceeded by more than a factor of 2 from a production-based perspective and more than a factor of 3 from a consumption-based perspective.
• The EU remains within its equal-per-capita fair share for freshwater use in both production- and consumption-based performance, largely due to higher resource-use efficiency compared to the global average.
• While the EU has numerous policy instruments for individual environmental processes, these tools fail to address the interlinkages between different Planetary Boundary processes or the EU's environmental impact outside its own borders.

APA

Hoff, H., Häyhä, T., Cornell, S., & Lucas, P. (2017). Bringing EU policy into line with the Planetary Boundaries. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Bringing-EU-policy-v2.pdf

Chicago

Hoff, Holger, Tiina Häyhä, Sarah Cornell, and Paul Lucas. Bringing EU policy into line with the Planetary Boundaries. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2017. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Bringing-EU-policy-v2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Hoff |first1=Holger |last2=Häyhä |first2=Tiina |last3=Cornell |first3=Sarah |last4=Lucas |first4=Paul |title=Bringing EU policy into line with the Planetary Boundaries |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=24 April 2017 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Bringing-EU-policy-v2.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{hoff2017bringing, author = {Hoff, Holger and Häyhä, Tiina and Cornell, Sarah and Lucas, Paul}, title = {{Bringing EU policy into line with the Planetary Boundaries}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2017}, month = apr, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Bringing-EU-policy-v2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }