Some key definitions

Mainstreaming (environment and climate change): the deliberate and proactive integration of environmental concerns, including climate, into development policies, plans, budgets and actions (OECD-DAC, 2019).

Greening: beyond ‘mainstreaming’ (of environment and climate change), which refers to systematically integrating environment and climate change in EU cooperation, ‘greening’ aims to align EU international cooperation with its environmental and climate objectives; it emphasises the need not only to design actions that minimise their adverse effects on the environment and climate (do no harm/do no significant harm) but to identify actions and initiatives that make positive contributions to the green transition towards environmental sustainability, climate resilience and low-carbon development.

Green transition: the European Green Deal envisions an economy ensuring no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and economic growth decoupled from resource use (including through a circular economy), pollution and biodiversity loss.

Transformative change is a fundamental, system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values (IPBES Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services). Within the context of climate change, transformative change can be understood as a system-wide change that requires more than technological change through consideration of social and economic factors that, with technology, can bring about rapid change at scale (IPCC Global warming of 1.5ºC report).

Environment: the combination of elements whose complex interrelationships make up the settings, the surroundings and the conditions of life of the individual and of society, as they are or as they are felt (European Environment Agency). Environmental issues therefore include climate mitigation and adaptation; the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services; the preservation and sustainable use of natural resources; pollution prevention and control.

Climate change: refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use. Note that the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: ‘a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.’ (Special Report SR15 of the IPCC).

Click here to continue reading section 1.1.1.