ABSTRACT Unlocking synergies while avoiding trade‐offs between climate and air pollution mitigation is key to policy effectiveness and cost‐efficiency. For maximum effect, these policies must be integrated not only horizontally within a governance level but also vertically across them. Yet, while integration is central to attaining environmental objectives, institutions implementing them often work in silos, limiting coordination across policy sectors and governance levels. Furthermore, interactions between horizontal and vertical processes of policy integration (PI) remain under‐researched. Using Löther & Yamineva's framework, I evaluate and trace developments in climate‐air pollution PI in the EU across three governance levels since 2016. Beside the EU‐level, case jurisdictions include two Member States, Italy and Finland, plus two cities, Milan and Helsinki. I analyse two rounds of climate and air pollution strategy documents for each to capture a progression over time, supplemented by key informant interviews. This lets me gauge where horizontal and/or vertical integration occurred, where it lacks, and what shapes these patterns. Findings show that, rather than a coherent cross‐level PI strategy, each jurisdiction follows its own approach to climate‐air pollution integration, varying widely in ambition but with shortcomings in all cases. Furthermore, PI has notably declined over time in most jurisdictions. Both horizontal and vertical integration thus remain insufficient. PI‐barriers include a general shift in priorities away from environmental goals but also specific flaws in European climate and pollution laws, whose revision offers opportunities to further integration. Lessons learned apply to other environmental policies, too, and demonstrate the importance of a multidimensional approach to PI research.
ABSTRACT This study examines how natural climate solutions (NCS) are institutionalised through carbon market governance in tropical contexts, focusing on Brazil's emerging Emissions Trading System (SBCE). It contributes to debates on the effectiveness, equity and governance of nature‐based climate action by analysing how carbon market instruments interact with biodiversity governance, land‐use regulation and socio‐ecological systems characterised by territorial diversity and inequality in Brazil. Using a qualitative multi‐method design combining statutory and document analysis, legislative process tracing, and computationally assisted text analysis, the study evaluates horizontal, vertical and functional coherence across climate, biodiversity, land‐use and territorial governance domains. The findings show that the SBCE represents a significant regulatory innovation, supported by a technically advanced architecture, particularly in monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems and registries. However, institutional coherence remains partial and uneven, with stronger integration in financial and technical domains than across biodiversity, land‐use and territorial governance systems. Stakeholder patterns are also uneven: governmental and financial actors have greater procedural visibility, while territorial, Indigenous and environmental actors are more strongly concentrated in formal or supplementary legislative records and are less consistently represented across procedural stages. These patterns indicate differentiated institutional access rather than, by themselves, a direct measure of stakeholder influence. The findings suggest that NCS governance in tropical contexts can be institutionalised through carbon‐market frameworks that operate alongside, rather than fully integrated with, broader socio‐ecological governance systems. These findings further suggest that deeper institutional integration and meaningful inclusion of territorially embedded actors are important conditions for effective and legitimate NCS governance.
ABSTRACT This paper aims to arrive at a better understanding of the integration of the diverse values of nature (instrumental, intrinsic, relational) into (environmental) law and policy, using peatland restoration in Scotland as a case study. It argues that adopting a pluri‐value approach is a useful tool for both the design and implementation of environmental law and policy. It can lead to a better understanding of which policy interventions are needed (framing) and enhance the implementation of environmental policy, by enabling fuller consideration of trade‐offs, contributing to a broader understanding of nature and improving early engagement by affected/interested parties. The paper first explores the pluri‐value approach as presented by the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. This serves as the background for the Scottish case study, which combines a review of scientific literature on peatland values, public survey data on perceptions of Scottish peatlands, and a documentary analysis of three key policy instruments. The findings reveal a discrepancy between the broad range of values attributed to peatlands by the public and the instrumental values, in particular climate‐related ecosystem services and economic opportunities, that are currently being emphasised in peatland restoration policy. This narrow framing risks overlooking key socio‐cultural drivers of degradation and constrains the effectiveness and legitimacy of restoration efforts. In this context, the establishment of partnerships is proposed as a mechanism to embed diverse values in decision‐making, establish long‐term collaboration among diverse interested/affected parties, foster peer‐learning and challenge persistent unsustainable narratives.
ABSTRACT European forests provide multiple ecosystem services but are increasingly under pressure from climate‐related disturbances such as droughts, storms and insect calamities. Forest policy is an important driver for the adaptation of forest management practices to climate change. The paper aims at exploring how individual policy actors from four European countries perceive and learn about various forest policy topics in the context of climate‐related disturbances. Informed by the Advocacy Coalition Framework, it addresses the research question of how flexible and divisive their beliefs about different topics are, in order to identify areas with high and low propensity for policy‐oriented learning. Based on focus group discussions and the assessments of policy actors' beliefs at three points in time between 2023 and 2025, we found for about half of the assessed forest policy topics a relatively high propensity for policy‐oriented learning through contestation or collaboration. All assessed empirical policy core beliefs about policy instruments and approximately half of the studied normative policy core beliefs on the perceived importance of forest uses and about whose welfare counts most in forest management showed a rather high degree of belief alteration. Contrary to theoretical expectations, the results did not show a higher degree of alteration for secondary beliefs than for policy core beliefs. The paper thereby makes an empirical contribution to research on forest and environmental policy and, through its analytical framework to assess the propensity of policy‐oriented learning, a theoretical contribution to the literature on policy learning and the Advocacy Coalition Framework.
ABSTRACT The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is a policy that prohibits access to the EU market for commodities that are linked to deforestation. We did a systematic review to understand perceived challenges, opportunities and potential impacts of the EUDR on producing countries of cocoa and coffee. The challenges include national laws that are incompatible with the EUDR, a lack of awareness and technical capacity, map misclassifications, and the burden on smallholder farmers. The opportunities include setting standards for fairer prices, improving human rights, and strengthening local collaboration and capacity building. The potential impacts are linked to country‐level legal alignments with the regulation and required investments to comply with the EUDR. The EUDR could become an incentive for more similar policies and more environmental policies at different levels. The EUDR might initially bring a financial burden to invest in formalising environmental compliance, but long‐term financial, economic and social benefits are expected.
