“Living well within planetary boundaries” is not just an aspiration but a core vision of the EU. As climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapse accelerate, achieving this vision is increasingly urgent. Despite ambitious global frameworks, progress remains uneven. The Sustainable Human Development paradigm offers an integrated approach that balances...
As the European Union grapples with interlinked crises, sustainability offers a framework for balancing economic stability, social equity, and environmental resilience. Policymakers, in their effort to design effective regulations, businesses to adopt greener practices, can benefit greatly from understanding people attention towards sustainability. This attention is also a key factor...
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 European and global institutions have recently developed numerous policies and laws addressing climate change mitigation. The SPES Report 7.1 "The functioning and socio-economic impacts of the EU Emissions Trading System: updated evidence and insights" analyse the functioning and socio-economic impact of a particular climate policy instrument, namely carbon pricing....
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 frequency of natural disasters due to climate change is increasing, and institutions across different geographic areas are not equally ready to cope with such events. In fact, the lack of adequate institutional responses is likely to exacerbate the consequences of these events. Making the EU and developing countries better...
Beyond-GDP is more than an upbeat slogan especially if we embrace a Sustainable Human Development Paradigm that points to the overarching goal of promoting sustainable and inclusive well-being. However, this is still hampered by the presence of political, institutional and technical barriers accruing from mainstream governance mechanisms, institutions, financing and...
Robust evidence supports an increasingly shared consensus that economic growth, while crucial for improving well-being, does not automatically equate to Sustainable Human Development. The current scenario urges us to redefine the links between economic activity, well-being, and sustainability. The time to act is now, with shifts in the global landscape...
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....
