The key environmental policies of interest under this topic are those addressing climate change and biodiversity loss and actions should foster integrated approaches for addressing these interdependent challenges. Innovative and out-of-the-box approaches are strongly encouraged.

Actions are expected to investigate limitations of mainstream economic theory and models used for environmental policy assessment. They should also consider alternative approaches that could be applied to assess environmental policies. Issues such as measurement of environmental/climate damages  and the treatment of uncertainty, are expected to be addressed. Moreover, actions should also examine the performance of different types of regulatory strategies such as a comparison of market-based vs traditional (command and control) regulation, a comparison among different types of market-based approaches (taxes, emissions trading, green certificates, subsidies, etc.), evaluation of the performance of information-based mechanisms (such as labelling) for purposes of environmental policy-making. The analysis should take into account public acceptance dimension.

Actions should formulate and implement strong dissemination plan towards key actors in relevant decision-making processes with an aim to testing the proposed methods in real conditions and towards educational institutions in order to facilitate broad cross-fertilisation of the insights created.

The work should encompass in-depth ex-post evaluation of the actual performance of selected climate and environmental policies at European, national or regional level.

Applicants should take into account the advances in economic thinking and the evolution in behavioural insights, study of public and political acceptance, as well as progress in other relevant fields such as sociology, natural and political sciences, humanities, gender and intersectional studies, public health and disaster risk reduction, as well as key trends that have influenced the evolution of the European environmental policy-making. Lessons from the COVID-19 crisis should also be taken into account. Participation of and co-creation with relevant stakeholders and key actors should be part of the action.