The recognition that today’s best practice in environmental policymaking is insufficient to adequately address the persistent and potentially disruptive challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion has triggered a debate about future European Union (EU) environmental governance. Will new policy paradigms complement ecological modernization as the dominant approach, or will incremental change of the existing policy repertoire prevail? Against this backdrop, we develop a typology of potential future environmental policy paradigms. The typology distinguishes approaches to environmental policymaking along two dimensions: 1) their perspective on the relationship between humans and nature, which can be anthropocentric or ecocentric; and 2) the character of the proposed solutions, which can be technological or behavioral. We outline the four paradigms and illustrate them with examples of existing or proposed environmental policies and instruments.

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environmental policy,EU,climate policy,policy paradigms,EU environmental policy

• Ciências Políticas - Ciências Sociais