Giurca Alexandru, Befort Nicolas, Taylor Amos
Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE), Heidelberg University, Germany.
Chair in Bioeconomy and Sustainable Development, the World We Want Aoe, NEOMA Business School, France.
J Clean Prod. 2022 Apr 10;344:131053. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131053. Epub 2022 Feb 23.
The COVID-19 crisis and its underlying health, socio-economic and environmental challenges warrants a discussion about transformative policies for a more sustainable, post-pandemic world. At EU level, policy packages and initiatives such as the European Green Deal (EGD), the Bioeconomy Strategy (BES) or the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) may have the prerequisites to support a sustainable socio-economic transformation. But can these initiatives live up to public imaginaries of a sustainable post-pandemic world? To answer this question, we conducted a qualitative media analysis in order to outline emerging public imaginaries, as well as different policy suggestions put forth by different media outlets. We then grouped these imaginaries into seven major themes ranging from finance to resource management and city planning. With the help of the Delphi approach, we discussed these themes with a panel of ten international experts in order to scope for different transformative policy options. The public imaginaries we identified represent a mix of imaginaries underpinned by different political ideologies, economic philosophies and sustainability rationales. The highest expectations were connected to the EGD, although none of the EU policy packages can singlehandedly tackle the urgent sustainability challenges posed by the pandemic. However, the current trajectory of the EGD is geared towards the business-as-usual. We discuss how EU policies can overcome this limitation and imagine more radical transformation pathways in order to jumpstart a sustainable post-COVID recovery that goes beyond pursuing green growth.
新冠疫情危机及其背后的健康、社会经济和环境挑战，值得我们探讨一些变革性政策，以打造一个更具可持续性的疫情后世界。在欧盟层面，诸如欧洲绿色协议（EGD）、生物经济战略（BES）或循环经济行动计划（CEAP）等政策包和倡议，可能具备支持可持续社会经济转型的先决条件。但这些倡议能否符合公众对可持续疫情后世界的想象呢？为回答这个问题，我们开展了一项定性媒体分析，以勾勒出新兴的公众想象，以及不同媒体提出的各种政策建议。然后，我们将这些想象归纳为从金融到资源管理和城市规划等七个主要主题。借助德尔菲法，我们与十位国际专家组成的小组讨论了这些主题，以探寻不同的变革性政策选项。我们所确定的公众想象代表了由不同政治意识形态、经济理念和可持续性原理支撑的多种想象的混合。尽管没有一个欧盟政策包能够单独应对疫情带来的紧迫可持续性挑战，但人们对欧洲绿色协议的期望最高。然而，欧洲绿色协议目前的发展轨迹仍倾向于照常行事。我们讨论了欧盟政策如何能够克服这一局限性，并设想出更激进的转型路径，以便启动超越追求绿色增长的可持续新冠疫情后复苏。
