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3 - The evolution of climate policy in the European Union: an historical overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

By
Andrew Jordan  and
Tim Rayner
Edited by
Andrew Jordan ,
Dave Huitema ,
Harro van Asselt ,
Tim Rayner  and
Frans Berkhout
Andrew Jordan
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
Tim Rayner
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
Andrew Jordan
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Dave Huitema
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Harro van Asselt
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Tim Rayner
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Frans Berkhout
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Summary

Introduction

Having set out the main aims and objectives of this book (Chapter 1), and described the context in which important policy choices have been – or will in the future be – made in the EU with respect to climate change (Chapter 2), the main aim of this chapter is to summarise how European climate policy has evolved over time. The chief reason for doing this is to provide a clearer sense of the historical context in which choices were made in the five sub-areas of climate policy selected for more detailed analysis in Part II. The next section very roughly divides this history into six main time periods. The final section identifies some broad patterns and briefly relates them back to the main features – both formal and informal – of the EU's governance framework.

The evolution of EU climate policy

Pre-1988: the first stirrings of scientific concern

Concern about global climate change dates back as far as the 1950s, but until the 1970s it was mainly regarded as a scientific issue with little if any policy relevance. The 1972 Stockholm Conference agreed to intensify scientific research, a task later taken up by the newly created United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (Sjöstedt 1998: 233). In 1979, UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) organised the First World Climate Conference (Pallemaerts and Williams 2006: 22). However, it conspicuously failed to attract any policy makers (Bodansky 2001: 24).

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Climate Change Policy in the European Union
Confronting the Dilemmas of Mitigation and Adaptation?
 , pp. 52 - 80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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