Abstract
Pressure is mounting for states to become better at integrating its environmental policies into sector policy, a challenge often referred to as environmental policy integration (EPI). Policy research on EPI has grown to become a distinct and substantial field of study at the national and EU levels, where political commitment and interest in the topic have been large. In the study of international regimes, EPI analytical concepts have so far not been applied although the EPI quest is at least as important and critical at this level. This special issue addresses this gap, by combining these two sets of literature and examining various aspects of EPI in international regimes, its manifestations and its challenges. This introductory paper introduces key conceptual discussions underlying the development of this special issue, distils and discusses some of the key findings and messages from the four ensuing research articles and presents directions for future research. It finds that many EPI challenges and institutional barriers are strongly accentuated at international levels of governance, but also that similarities with the national level suggest that closer interactions between the two fields of study are warranted. At both levels, the EPI “game” is full of inherent tensions and goal conflicts, institutional constraints abound, and cognitive interactions and learning processes appear as key mechanisms to advance EPI. Suggestions for how to enhance EPI in international regimes are still tentative, and analysis beyond international relations and regime theory is needed to capture potential institutional innovations for advancing EPI.
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Notes
EPIGOV, a research network on “Environmental Policy Integration and Multi-Level Governance”, brought together nineteen environmental policy research centres from across the EU to coordinate and compare research on EPI at different levels of governance, from the local to the global. EPIGOV was supported by the European Commission‘s 6th Research Framework from 2006 to 2009. For more information about EPIGOV, see http://ecologic.eu/projekte/epigov/.
The EPIGOV project (Fn. 1) analysed EPI at various levels of governance drawing on a modes of governance perspective (Homeyer 2009).
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge financial support from the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme, under Grant No. 028661, Coordination Action “EPIGOV”. We would also like to thank all participants in the 3rd EPIGOV conference, held in Stockholm, 12–13 June 2008 for inspiring discussions.
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Nilsson, M., Pallemaerts, M. & von Homeyer, I. International regimes and environmental policy integration: introducing the special issue. Int Environ Agreements 9, 337–350 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-009-9108-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-009-9108-8