Key sustainability issues and the spatial classification of sensitive regions in Europe

Cross-cutting environmental, social and economic changes may have harsh impacts on sensitive regions. To address sustainability issues by governmental policy measures properly, the geographical delineation of sensitive regions is essential. With reference to the European impact assessment guidelines from 2005, sensitive regions were identified by using environmental, social and economic data and by applying cluster analysis, United Nation Environmental Policy priorities and expert knowledge. On a regionalised ‘Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics’ (NUTS) level and for pre-defined sensitive region types (post-industrial zones, mountains, coasts and islands) 31 % of the European area was identified as sensitive. However, the delineation mainly referred to social and economic issues since the regional data bases on environmental indicators are limited and do not allow the separation of medium-term vital classes of sensitive regions. Overall, the sensitive regions showed indicator values differing from the EU- 25 average.peer-reviewe

European achievements in soil remediation and brownfield redevelopment

With the aim of sharing best practices of soil restoration and management of contaminated sites among European countries and to raise awareness of the enormous efforts made to succeed in such difficult commitment, the experts of the EIONET Soil working group on contaminated sites and brownfields agreed to gather their country's interesting cases and successful stories of recovery of contaminated areas. This second edition of the monograph presents seventeen new cases from eight European countries and its Regions of how polluted sites and brownfields have been remediated like new methodologies of sustainable restoration of the subsoil, development of innovative technologies, and funding mechanisms etc. These stories have been compiled to present what national, regional or local governments are doing to improve the quality of the environment and the living conditions of their population. A second aim is the promotion of best practices among industry, consultancies and business operators.JRC.D.3-Land Resource

Ex ante impact assessment of policies affecting land use, Part B: application of the analytical framework

The use of science-based tools for impact assessment has increasingly gained focus in addressing the complexity of interactions between environment, society, and economy. For integrated assessment of policies affecting land use, an analytical framework was developed. The aim of our work was to apply the analytical framework for specific scenario cases and in combination with quantitative and qualitative application methods. The analytical framework was tested for two cases involving the ex ante impact assessment of: (1) a European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) financial reform scenario employing a modeling approach and combined with a comprehensive indicator analysis and valuation; and (2) a regional bioenergy policy scenario, employing a fully participatory approach. The results showed that European land use in general is less sensitive to changes in the Common Agricultural Policy, but in the context of regions there can be significant impacts on the functions of land use. In general, the implementation of the analytical framework for impact assessment proved to be doable with both methods, i.e., with the quantitative modeling and with the qualitative participatory approach. A key advantage of using the system of linked quantitative models is that it makes possible the simultaneous consideration of all relevant sectors of the economy without abstaining from a great level of detail for sectors of particular interest. Other advantages lie in the incontestable character of the results. Based on neutral, existing data with a fixed set of settings and regions, an absolute comparability and reproducibility throughout Europe can be maintained. Analyzing the pros and cons of both approaches showed that they could be used complementarily rather than be seen as competing alternatives