Sustainable development is a key feature of national, European Union and global development strategies. The main research goal is to provide evidence on how impactful public policies on environmental sustainability in Portugal are at the regional level, in various policy areas. In this context, this paper analyses the main impacts of the Portuguese Operational Programme for Sustainability and Efficient Use of Resources (PO SEUR 2014–20). The research uses a territorial impact assessment (TIA) methodology (TARGET_TIA) to assess these impacts in five analytic dimensions (economy with low emissions, adaptation to climate change, risk prevention and management, environmental protection and resource efficiency) in the five mainland Portuguese NUTS 2. It concludes that, in overall terms, PO SEUR produced low to moderate positive impacts in all NUTS II and analysed dimensions, but it was particularly positive in measures fostering adaptation to climate change, and less impactful in measures supporting an economy with low emissions and resource efficiency in Portugal. Despite data limitations, the research provided adequate evidence that key public policies supporting environmental sustainability in Portugal are largely ineffective and inefficient in view of their policy goals and allocated funding. To turn this scenario around, the process of project selection needs to undergo significant improvements to better adjust the regional needs on environmental sustainability-related issues to the available funding. Moreover, on a policy strategic level, there needs to be support for a prosperous, modern, competitive and climate-neutral economy in Portugal via concrete actions exploring environmental capital and a green economy in urban areas.
Sustainable tourism is a main priority of European Union policies, with the aim of mitigating the potential harmful consequences of this sector on a given territory. The main research goal of this article is to better understand the impact of the public investments financed via EU Cohesion Policy in the tourism sector in the Portuguese Algarve NUT2. This paper focuses on the Portuguese Operational Programme for Sustainability and Efficient Use of Resources (POSEUR 20142020), which was an operational programme of a Portuguese framework to implement EU Cohesion Policy funds in Portugal between 2014 and 2020, and was specifically focused on supporting sustainable development processes. The sustainability performance of POSEUR in the Algarve was evaluated in five different dimensions of analysis: (1) low-emissions economy, (2) adaptation to climate change, (3) risk prevention and management, (4) environmental protection, and (5) resource efficiency. The results showed that POSEUR had a low impact in almost all dimensions in the Algarve, apart from the adaptation to climate change dimension, which exhibits a high impact score, mostly due to the support given for carrying out the Plans for Adaptation to Climate Change (PAAC).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.