The environment and climate change are addressed in a myriad of multilateral, regional, and bilateral channels of dialogue, negotiations, and cooperation mechanisms; our focus in this volume was on the regional level. We set the aim to reflect critically on ongoing agendas on the environment and climate change in Europe and Latin America and to contribute to the dialogue between the European Union (EU) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) by advancing recommendations on how to improve the mechanisms to address these issues in the context of the EU-CELAC bi-regional strategic partnership. While in Europe the EU is a regional actor and a focal point for the debate, formulation, and implementation of environmental and climate change initiatives, in Latin America, there are many regional organizations; CELAC is the largest in membership, encompassing all 33 LAC countries, but it is primarily a political forum for debate and articulation of consensus; it does not formulate or implement policies. For this reason, we included in our analyses other regional organizations and institutions, such as MERCOSUR, UNASUR, PROSUR, ECLAC, regional development banks, and regional civil society alliances, and their relations with global multilateral institutions such as the United Nations System.

This edited volume was structured in three main sections: a section discussing the norms, institutions, and agenda on the environment and climate change within and among the EU and Latin American regional organizations; a section addressing the challenges to finance development and a “greener” economy; and a section assessing so-called new green solutions to climate change, including in the agriculture sector. The chapters contribute to the understanding of to what extent and how the regional level contributes to policy making in the fields of environment and climate change, vis-à-vis the global and the national levels by addressing various aspects of the four key axes of regional policy making advanced in the Introduction – regional redistribution mechanisms, regulations, rights, and cooperation.

From a comparative regionalism perspective, it is possible to affirm that in the fields of environment and climate change, the discrepancy between the EU and Latin American regional organizations is significant. EU policies are not a panacea, but a lot has been discussed and done to address the environment and climate change. Most authors have praised initiatives such as EU Green Deal (2019), the EU Climate Law (2021), EIB green mechanisms, and CAPs Agenda 2000, despite concerns such as procrastination, effectiveness, and asymmetric power relations among urban consumers and rural farmers.

Latin American countries have increasingly addressed environmental concerns and climate change in their domestic policies and in their participation in global multilateral institutions over the last years, but Latin American regional organizations have felt short of including these matters in their priorities. It is open to debate whether the regional level of social policy making may make a difference in Latin America, but as long as regional organizations include economic commitments, more or less liberal, orthodox, or heterodox, it is imperative that considerations about the environment and climate change are taken seriously, to at least avoid negative (non-intended) effects.

The remaining of this concluding chapter presents a compilation of key recommendations advanced by the authors of this edited volume to address the climate change. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the volume, which includes theoretical perspectives from international relations, law, economics, global ethics, and psychoanalysis, the recommendations refer both to the political and the policy level, as well as the institutional design of cooperation.

Diz & Oliveira (2024) explore the innovations and potential effectiveness and impact of the European Green Deal and the consequent European Climate Law in the local, regional, national, intra-community, and international relations of the EU, from a legal perspective and an analytical-conceptual and dogmatic-propositional methodology. They argue that the EU is a leader in proposing mechanisms such as policies, programs, and actions aiming to provide a fair, efficient transition that encompasses all productive sectors, especially those with the greatest impact on GHG emissions, but that the current context of economic and political crisis, generated by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine has, however, destabilized some of the efforts made so far. They recommend States and the EU to continue to make joint efforts to implement regulations that will minimize the effects caused by climate change and policies aimed at climate neutrality, including in the EU-Mercosur agreement.

Ribeiro Hoffmann (2024) draws on historical institutionalism and the concept of epistemic communities to assess the role of Latin American regional organizations in addressing climate change. She argues that despite the activism of these organizations during the last decades, they have not addressed climate change as a priority and that had (unintended) negative effects on the environment given their approach to development. The lack of epistemic communities and the strong lobby of agrobusiness sectors in most LAC countries, including Brazil, hindered the incorporation of stronger agendas at the regional level. Her main recommendation is that LAC regional organizations foment debates and include commitments to address environmental and climate change problems as a priority. She argues that the current context and critical juncture may provide a space for new initiatives at the regional and global level, including the EU-CELAC partnership.

Castiglioni (2024) argues that a key problem of the bi-regional relations is that each region departs from different assumptions about the nature of the problem of climate change: while the EU tries to reconcile commercial and political interests with the aim to act as a normative power in global governance, regions from the Global South such as MERCOSUR criticize EU’s attempts to ensure binding commitments in bi-regional agreements as imperialist or a cover trade interests. He explains these patterns drawing on the literature of global ethics and the debate between universal and virtue ethics, and universal and communitarian values, but he suggests a path to overcome this dichotomy based on the concept of the environment as a “global common good.” In this context, the allocation of responsibilities to different actors, including corporate social responsibility, might provide a path for the regions to overcome their differences.

Ghymers (2024) develops an analysis based on economic systemic theory and identifies the underpricing of fossil energies as the key problem for tackling climate change. Short-term political interests and vested economic interests lead to “irrational procrastination.” He proposes to scrap subsidies to fossil energies, foster clean alternatives, and transfer resources to low-income households. To achieve this, he recommends the implementation of the “two-steps-two-tier method” to create trust among peers and foster the creation of collective mechanisms for monitoring the energy transition. The two-tier scheme in which experts dialogue in consultive, nondecision fora under confidential rules at the regional level is reproduced at the bi-regional level. He argues that while the EU and LAC cannot solve climate change problems on their own, a consensus among them would provide an important path to global-level cooperation.

Griffith-Jones & Carreras (2024) discuss the role of developing banks and more specifically the European Investment Bank to finance the green transformation. They argue that these banks’ tools such as the use of carbon shadow pricing to evaluate projects and venture debts are powerful mechanisms to allocate resources. They argue that the EIB has been central to financing the European Green Deal, it has stopped funding fossil fuels, and by 2025, it will have 50% of its lending in climate change-related activities, both mitigation and adaptation. They recommend the bank to continue this path of action and expand its funding abroad, including to Latin America.

Schulmeister (2024) draws on economic theory and theories of collective action and proposes an alternative approach to conventional carbon pricing and emission trading schemes, namely, the determination of a path of steadily rising prices in fossil energies such as oil, coal, and natural gas. The rising prices are to be accompanied by a monthly adjusted quantity tax to match the difference with global market prices, and these resources from fossil energy taxes can be used to fund ecological transformation. Since there is no world state to set these taxes, regional organizations such as the EU could lead the initiative. He argues that this is a better alternative to degrowth strategies, which in his view are not good as economic activities should aim at providing the basis for a good life for the greatest possible number of people, and the problem we currently face is more of collective action than economic.

Doukas, Vardopoulos & Petides (2024) draw on historical institutionalism to analyze the gradual integration of agri-environmental measures in the European Common Agriculture Policy’s (CAP) policy making, during the last two decades. They pay attention to the fact that these changes affect power relations among the stakeholders involved and recommend that the measures address the concerns of the European farmers and balance their needs with the environment, and the concerns of the society. In this sense, measures such as payments for ecosystem services and the use of target and flexible policies based on farm and local context can be promising to cope with the sustainability challenge. They also recommend that socioeconomic disparities in rural areas are addressed and that policies should avoid the concentration of land ownership and displacement of small farmers.

Maravegias, Doukas & Petides (2024) discuss the potential effects of the changes introduced by CAP in the area of research and innovation (R&I), in particular, the adoption of digital technologies and data to support the transition to a climate-neutral, circular, and resilient economy. They argue that technology applications are carried out locally, but their production is highly internationalized and concentrated in private companies, mostly multinational. These applications also require farmers to have professional training and support the initiatives of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development in this regard. Despite this, the authors call for further discussion on the implications of such transformations, and the potential economic disparities between the participants in the global food systems, within in the EU, and worldwide. This matter is particularly relevant to EU-CELAC relations given the place of agriculture in the bi-regional relations.

Teixeira & Jardim (2024) discuss the links between climate change, food systems, and food and nutrition security from the perceive of a human rights-based approach to development and the Food Nutrition Security (FNS) approach. They advocate that the right to adequate food must be placed at the center of the strategies to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change and five recommendations: promote multi-stakeholder partnerships and an intersectoral approach; foster nutrition-sensitive and climate-resilient value chains; address finance gaps; include gender equality and women’s empowerment perspective; and include a social behavior change communication strategy. They illustrate the potential of their proposals in a case study, IFAD’s Pro-Semiarid Project in Bahia – Brazil; this example and the best practices they analyze can be used in the EU-CELAC cooperation.

Sandrin (2024) unveils flaws of current proposals to mitigate climate change based on the concept of disavowal from a psychoanalytical perspective. Unlike climate denial, actors in circuits of climate disavowal do acknowledge climate change but insist on implementing ineffective responses notwithstanding ample contrary evidence and recurring failures. She illustrates this process with a case of EU-Brazil cooperation and the most recent project on green hydrogen, which she assesses as unlikely to contribute to tackling climate change and argues that this process creates (enjoyable) illusions that something is being done but recommends that a more accurate diagnosis of the current situation is done in order to avoid ecological collapse.

Despite the variation in theoretical perspectives, proposed mechanisms, and level of optimism, the authors of his edited volume agree on the pressing need to address the environment and climate change. Regional organizations in Europe and Latin America are relevant spaces for the debate, formulation, and implementation of redistribution mechanisms, regulations, rights, and cooperation in these fields and have a potential to complement the national and global level efforts. Further research, discussion, and actions are needed to avoid an ecological tragedy, and we hope that this volume is a small contribution in the direction to prioritize that agenda!