EU Rural Policy’s Capacity to Facilitate a Just Sustainability Transition of the Rural Areas

Barbara Wieliczko,Agnieszka Kurdyś-Kujawska,Zbigniew Floriańczyk

doi:10.3390/en14165050

Abstract

The sustainability transition of rural areas is a must due to rapid climate changes and biodiversity loss. Given the limited resources of rural communities, policy should facilitate a just sustainability transition of the EU rural areas. The analysis of EU development policies, past performance and the envisaged scope of reform, presented in this study point to a serious inconsistency between the declaration and implementation of relevant policies. Namely, the marginal role rural areas perform in common agricultural policy and cohesion policy; a result of the lack of a complex approach to rural development. The analysis was based on the concept of good governance and took a multi-level perspective. It advocates territorial justice as an approach that should be at the core of creating a comprehensive policy for rural areas in the EU, including their diversity and empowering local communities to choose the transition pathway that is most in line with their current situation and development capacity. This analysis fills a gap in research on the evolution of the rural development policy in the EU. This research can inform the reprioritization and intensification of efforts to create equitable policies for EU rural development.

Highlights

Accepted: 11 August 2021Climate change and biodiversity loss caused by human activity has reached a point at which an immediate socio-economic transition into a circular and sustainable economy is the only way to save the existence of humanity on the Earth
The study focuses on identifying the aspects of the EU rural development policy that need to be modified in order to make this policy a catalyst for a just sustainability transition of the EU rural areas
Integrating the rural policy with the CAP can be seen as stating a close link between rural development and agriculture

Summary

Introduction

Climate change and biodiversity loss caused by human activity has reached a point at which an immediate socio-economic transition into a circular and sustainable economy is the only way to save the existence of humanity on the Earth. The needed sustainability transition is a concept well-established in the literature [2,3]. It can be defined as “pathways through which socio-material changes reduce environmental risks” [4]. The sustainability transition is a complex and dynamic process. Adaptive good sustainability governance is required [6] that is based on a holistic perspective integrating different systems and their dynamics [7]

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Conclusion