The Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework has been used by environmental agencies and others to assess environmental challenges and policy responses. However, in doing so, social justice or equity issues tend to come as an afterthought, while there is evidence that environmental challenges and policy responses are not equity (including gender-) neutral. Hence, this paper addresses the question: why should, and how can, equity issues and environmental justice be incorporated into the DPSIR framework? It presents a structure for including equity within DPSIR and applies it. It reviews the literature to bring together data that demonstrates that there is a clear equity perspective along the entire DPSIR analysis. It concludes that although individual environmental policies may succeed to achieve their specific goal in the short term; if they ignore the equity aspects, the policy strategies as a whole are likely to be environmentally unjust, and lead to exclusive and unsustainable development, which, in turn, could further exacerbate environmental challenges. This highlights the need for an integrated approach in efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable development.
The current COVID‐19 crisis raises the question of the role of transformative social policies (TSPs) during socio‐economic crises. We used recent findings from an UNRISD survey of vulnerabilities and ILO's Social Protection Spotlight to examine the different roles of TSPs in the response to the COVID‐19 crisis. We found that all TSPs are important, especially in terms of reaching vulnerable groups. They need, however, to be used simultaneously in an integrated manner to be successful and should be linked to crisis and disaster management. It is also important to enhance targeting of vulnerable groups within universalism to protect groups of individuals who require additional or different kinds of support, for example, migrant or informal workers. If these additional integrated policies become part of long‐term development policies, they could be instrumental in ensuring that no one is left behind when the SDGs are implemented.
This chapter offers an introduction to the volume Financial Crises, Poverty and Environmental Sustainability: Challenges in the Context of the SDGs and Covid-19 Recovery. The first part examines the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on socio-environmental sustainability. The pandemic crisis has triggered multiple and interacting social, economic and environmental impacts. The final outcome will depend on the policy actions taken not only to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, but most importantly to transform our current unsustainable socio-environmental model, i.e. whether we will manage to use the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to build forward better. The second part of the chapter assesses the Covid-19 support packages and recovery strategies. We find that existing policy actions are falling short from the transformation that is required to bring our planet onto a sustainable socio-environmental path. For instance, we observe social exclusion and leaving behind those most in need, increase in atmospheric emissions, and loss of biodiversity. In this context, we argue for a rethink of the underlying assumptions that have determined the economy-environment interaction in our societies. We advocate the need to move away from the commercialisation of nature and a 'netzero' rationale, towards a 'do no harm' and 'common good' approach. Our transition to sustainability requires nothing less than a new global eco-social contract. The third part of our chapter presents summaries of the volume's case-studies that inform the above analysis and demonstrate how the above challenges are manifested in countries and communities across the globe.
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