While decent living is necessary - and crucial for the political acceptability of ecological transition strategies, the energy and material cost of needs satisfaction cannot be overlooked in the 21st century. In this context, favouring the harmony between human and natural systems may call for yet untried post-growth strategies. Likewise,...
Transition to net-zero carbon is not merely technical but a complex socio-political endeavour with significant trade-offs involving inequality, well-being, sustainability, and political acceptability. While significant progress has been made in understanding the biophysical dimensions of climate change, the socio-political aspects remain largely underexplored by assessment models. The Working Paper “Transitioning...
Setting countries across the globe on environmentally sustainable paths requires large-scale systemic changes across a range of areas, including energy systems, industrial systems and individual consumption patterns. Public policy plays a fundamental role in inducing such changes. Examples of policy instruments include different combinations of regulations, tax measures and subsidies...
Energy poverty - i.e. a situation in which households are unable to access essential energy services and products - is a key concept of the just and fair transition towards climate neutrality. Over the past decade the European Union has increased its efforts in reducing energy poverty, however they remains...
The twin transitions—the green transition towards sustainability and the digital transition towards technological advancement—have become central to policy debates in Europe and beyond. The European Green Deal, a cornerstone of the European Union's strategy, aims to achieve a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. This initiative highlights the interconnectedness of environmental sustainability...
The search for new sustainable development indicators stems from the need to develop novel global measurement systems alternate to GDP, which is no longer able to accurately capture the state of social, economic and environmental development of specific geographical areas. SPES partners from TARKI Institute and University of Florence made...
As we navigate the path toward a more sustainable future, the need to study and measure the performance of sustainability transitions becomes crucial. In the past decades, the advent of innovative data sources has significantly expanded our ability to gauge the many dimensions of sustainability addressed by the SPES framework....
The current climate crisis has led European institutions to increasingly direct their policies towards sustainable development and ecological transition. To be effective, such sustainability transition initiatives should be socially equitable. SPES partners from the University of Florence are working in two separate mapping to highlight the relevance of sustainable human...
Presentation and discussion of the novel framework for Sustainable Human Development (SHD) in Europe to place economic growth and human flourishing within social and environmental boundaries. The framework combines the global policy framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with the theoretical insights of the Human Development paradigm and...
How do the EU policies integrate and articulate the notion of sustainability transition? There are some significant differences in the development and transition challenges and policy perspectives of low- and middle-income regions in the Global South when compared with the internal sustainability transition agenda of the EU. Furthermore, in the...
