Events

© Paul Talbot on Unsplash 

Background

UN Sustainable Development Goals are meant to guide decision-making within and across different policy sectors to tackle the persistent environmental and social challenges of our time. In the European context, many environmental issues are among those sustainability questions that require most pressing action as e.g. the SOER2020 report highlights. This means that environmental issues can no longer be addressed in isolation and that the interconnections of environmental and social phenomena need to be addressed both in policy making and evaluation.

Sustainability transformations are hindered and promoted by a whole range of policies that do not abide to sectoral domains. This makes policy evaluation increasingly complex both in terms of encompassing mixes of policy goals and instruments within and across sectors, as well as taking into account the long timeframes and complicated causal chains linked to transformation.

Themes

The European Environmental Evaluators Network Forum (EEEN 2020 Forum) addresses these challenges by concentrating on the following topics:

1. Development of environmental evaluation approaches from the SDG and transformation perspectives
2. Learning from and across (environmentally focused) sustainability evaluations and audits in different settings
3. Evaluations of sustainability actions in city-level governance, including action within urban settings and by intermediary organisations
4. Role of evaluation in Agenda 2020 and 2030
5. Risk assessment as a tool for advancing sustainability in environmental evaluation

Programme

The programme and session descriptions are available below:

• Programme in Central European Time
• Programme in Eastern European Time
• Track A Session Descriptions
• Track B Sessions: Abstracts

Speakers

Key note speeches will be delivered by the following speakers:

Hans Bruyninckx , Executive Director, European Environment Agency (EEA)
Jordi Molas Gallart, Research Professor, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV)
Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki, Program Director/Research Coordinator, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS)
Stefano D'Errico, Head of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

Professor Ortwin Renn, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) will share his views of risk assessment in a special session organised by PEER (Partnership for European Environmental Research) in the EEEN2020 Forum on Thursday November 5, 2020. 

Key note presentations

• “New Challenges for the Evaluation Community: timely responses in times of urgency” Key note presentation by Hans Bruyninckx (European Environment Agency). Watch the recording on YouTube.

• "Evaluating Transformative Innovation Policies: implications and challenges” Key note presentation by Jordi Molas-Gallart (INGENIO (CSIC-UPV)). Watch the recording on YouTube.

• “Evaluation to connect national priorities with the SDGs” Key note presentation by Stefano D’Errico (International Institute for Environment and Development). Watch the recording on YouTube. 

• “What can sustainability science offer for transformative policymaking?” Key note presentation by Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki (Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS)) 

Certificate of attendance

If you wish to have a certificate of attendance/presentation, please contact the conference coordinator.

Side Event: Integrating the evaluation and management of risks and sustainable development: a solutions workshop, 6 November 2020

Please see the PEER-TRISD Workshop programme in Central European Time. Participation in the workshop does not require registration for the EEEN 2020 Forum and you can participate in either one or both of them. The PEER-TRISD will also organise a special session at the EEEN2020 Forum on Thursday November 5, 2020.

The Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER) project on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “Tackling and managing risks with SDGs (PEER-TRISD)” invites public and private sector decision-makers seeking depth in their risk management or ambition in their SDG implementation to share solutions for integrating risk evaluation and management with SDGs. This workshop builds on co-generation work on how risks and SDGs are addressed in decision-making, literature analysis on risk systematization, multilevel analysis of measuring SDG and risk indicators, and experiences from integrating the assessment and management of SDGs and risk in water, urban and biodiversity conservation contexts.

The workshop will bring together representatives of government, cities, finance, industry and insurance, to address the question: what solutions support integrating the evaluation of risks and sustainable development goals? The workshop will engage participants to present and process solutions, through short presentations and facilitated discussions. The co-organizers of the workshop are Eeva Primmer (Finnish Environment Institute - SYKE) and Kurt Jax / Robert Lepenies (Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ).

Previous EEEN Forums

• 2018 EEEN Forum: 7th European Environmental Evaluators Network Forum: The impact of evaluating environment and climate policies
• EEEN Forums in 2012-2017