The European Union (EU) conditions access to its market on compliance with human rights, labour standards, and environmental policy and regulation. Its trade-related legislation falls into two categories: measures addressing partner governments and measures targeting the private sector. Within these two groups, only the first includes an instrument that specifically mentions democracy, namely the essential elements clause, which appears frequently in EU trade agreements yet has been invoked only once since 2014.
The EU is under domestic political pressure to deregulate in order to strengthen its competitiveness. The competitiveness agenda is cutting into the instruments the EU already has, especially amid geopolitical competition with China, making suspensionled conditionality against partner governments harder to enact. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Democracy protection stakeholders should shift their attention from suspension-led demo¬cracy support and conditionality aimed at partner governments towards the rules and incentives that run through the private sector. Even after the Omnibus reform’s narrowing scope, firm-facing rules remain in place. They are default-on and run through existing regulatory arrangements, and their potential geopolitical repercussions are smaller in comparison.
• Tender processes are one particular set of firm-facing rules. With the momentum behind the European Commission’s legislative proposal to revise the public procurement directive, corruption-based exclusion rules should be applied against operators linked to state capture in partner countries, as democratic backsliders often use public procurement to consolidate patronage networks.
• Firm-facing regulations also permit a different case to be made: stronger due diligence carries no measurable competitiveness penalty. Companies are not just subjects of regulation. They are also stakeholders with their own interest in transparent procurement and predictable rules. To bolster such a narrative, development cooperation should invest in developing compliance capacity, especially in autocratising states.
The European Union (EU) conditions access to its market on compliance with human rights, labour standards, and environmental policy and regulation. Its trade-related legislation falls into two categories: measures addressing partner governments and measures targeting the private sector. Within these two groups, only the first includes an instrument that specifically mentions democracy, namely the essential elements clause, which appears frequently in EU trade agreements yet has been invoked only once since 2014.
The EU is under domestic political pressure to deregulate in order to strengthen its competitiveness. The competitiveness agenda is cutting into the instruments the EU already has, especially amid geopolitical competition with China, making suspensionled conditionality against partner governments harder to enact. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Democracy protection stakeholders should shift their attention from suspension-led demo¬cracy support and conditionality aimed at partner governments towards the rules and incentives that run through the private sector. Even after the Omnibus reform’s narrowing scope, firm-facing rules remain in place. They are default-on and run through existing regulatory arrangements, and their potential geopolitical repercussions are smaller in comparison.
• Tender processes are one particular set of firm-facing rules. With the momentum behind the European Commission’s legislative proposal to revise the public procurement directive, corruption-based exclusion rules should be applied against operators linked to state capture in partner countries, as democratic backsliders often use public procurement to consolidate patronage networks.
• Firm-facing regulations also permit a different case to be made: stronger due diligence carries no measurable competitiveness penalty. Companies are not just subjects of regulation. They are also stakeholders with their own interest in transparent procurement and predictable rules. To bolster such a narrative, development cooperation should invest in developing compliance capacity, especially in autocratising states.
The European Union (EU) conditions access to its market on compliance with human rights, labour standards, and environmental policy and regulation. Its trade-related legislation falls into two categories: measures addressing partner governments and measures targeting the private sector. Within these two groups, only the first includes an instrument that specifically mentions democracy, namely the essential elements clause, which appears frequently in EU trade agreements yet has been invoked only once since 2014.
The EU is under domestic political pressure to deregulate in order to strengthen its competitiveness. The competitiveness agenda is cutting into the instruments the EU already has, especially amid geopolitical competition with China, making suspensionled conditionality against partner governments harder to enact. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Democracy protection stakeholders should shift their attention from suspension-led demo¬cracy support and conditionality aimed at partner governments towards the rules and incentives that run through the private sector. Even after the Omnibus reform’s narrowing scope, firm-facing rules remain in place. They are default-on and run through existing regulatory arrangements, and their potential geopolitical repercussions are smaller in comparison.
• Tender processes are one particular set of firm-facing rules. With the momentum behind the European Commission’s legislative proposal to revise the public procurement directive, corruption-based exclusion rules should be applied against operators linked to state capture in partner countries, as democratic backsliders often use public procurement to consolidate patronage networks.
• Firm-facing regulations also permit a different case to be made: stronger due diligence carries no measurable competitiveness penalty. Companies are not just subjects of regulation. They are also stakeholders with their own interest in transparent procurement and predictable rules. To bolster such a narrative, development cooperation should invest in developing compliance capacity, especially in autocratising states.
Conservation needs reform as current approaches have failed to halt biodiversity loss. Increasingly, environ¬mentalists are questioning whether market-based approaches and conventional policy instruments, particu¬larly protected areas, can make a substantial contribution towards mitigating the bio¬diversity crisis. Moreover, serious concerns about their equity and justice implications have been voiced by indigenous rights organisations, peasant movements and scholars.
In light of these concerns, this policy brief provides a number of suggestions on how to make biodiversity conservation more just, equitable and effective. It builds on discussions held during the sixth Enjust Conference “Offsetting Justice? Environmental justice in the age of market and militarized con¬servation”, which took place in Bonn from 3 to 5 December 2025. The conference brought together environmental justice scholars, political ecologists, activists as well as development and conservation practitioners from around the globe.
Our reflections and proposals support policymakers, members of parliament, conservation practitioners, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LCs) at the local and regional levels in initiating reforms of the protected area system and other conservation mechanisms for more effective, trans¬parent and fair protection.
Key messages:
• Just conservation: Conservation policies that contribute to environmental justice have the greatest potential to achieve long-term, sustainable and legitimate conservation outcomes for people and the planet.
• Land rights-based conservation: Land rights reconfigure power relations and are a key pre¬requisite for environmental justice. Collective land titles such as Colombia’s Peasant Reserve Zones (ZRCs) are a promising instrument.
• Towards distributive justice by reforming conservation finance: IP&LCs should benefit more directly from forest, climate and biodiversity funding and should have a say in how money is spent in their communities. IP&LC-led funds and designated funding windows for IP&LCs are promising options.
• Basic Income for Nature and Climate (BINC): We suggest BINC as a promising measure to improve the livelihoods of IP&LCs and to overcome the transactional logic of market-based instruments. BINC compensates for past environmental injustices and enables recipients to make land-use decisions that are less influenced by precarity and market forces.
Professor Dr Fernanda Figueroa currently works at the Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Dr Lasse Loft is a senior scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Maano Ramutsindela is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cape Town and the UP-UCT Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations at the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Georg Buchholz is team leader of the International Forest Policy sectoral project at GIZ, Germany.
Dr Juan Sebastián Vélez Triana is a postdoctoral researcher with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS / UCLouvain, Belgium, and a research associate at the Centre for Alternatives to Development (CEALDES), Colombia.
Professor Dr Florian Dünckmann heads the Cultural Geography Research Group in the Department of Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dr Ina Lehmann is assistant professor of Governance of Global Biodiversity at the Environmental Policy Analysis section at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Professor Dr Silja Klepp is professor of Human Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dennis Schüpf is a PhD student in the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany.
Anne Rose Atkins is a doctoral candidate in the Social Geography of Coastal and Marine Areas working group at the Geography Department of Kiel University, Germany.
Dumisani Chirambo is the founder of Seeds of Opportunity in Malawi.
Felice Diekel is a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil Engineering & Management at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Salome Gikonyo is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany.
Dr Rina Mardiana is a lecturer in the Human Geography Study Program, Faculty of Social Sciences and Human Ecology, at IPB University in Bogor, Indonesia.
Dr Adnan Mirhanoğlu is an F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d’Études de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement (CECID), Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Kim Nierobisch is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany.
Kelly Peña is a PhD student at the Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Prakash C. Tiwari works at the Centre for Ecology Development and Research in Dehradun, India.
Conservation needs reform as current approaches have failed to halt biodiversity loss. Increasingly, environ¬mentalists are questioning whether market-based approaches and conventional policy instruments, particu¬larly protected areas, can make a substantial contribution towards mitigating the bio¬diversity crisis. Moreover, serious concerns about their equity and justice implications have been voiced by indigenous rights organisations, peasant movements and scholars.
In light of these concerns, this policy brief provides a number of suggestions on how to make biodiversity conservation more just, equitable and effective. It builds on discussions held during the sixth Enjust Conference “Offsetting Justice? Environmental justice in the age of market and militarized con¬servation”, which took place in Bonn from 3 to 5 December 2025. The conference brought together environmental justice scholars, political ecologists, activists as well as development and conservation practitioners from around the globe.
Our reflections and proposals support policymakers, members of parliament, conservation practitioners, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LCs) at the local and regional levels in initiating reforms of the protected area system and other conservation mechanisms for more effective, trans¬parent and fair protection.
Key messages:
• Just conservation: Conservation policies that contribute to environmental justice have the greatest potential to achieve long-term, sustainable and legitimate conservation outcomes for people and the planet.
• Land rights-based conservation: Land rights reconfigure power relations and are a key pre¬requisite for environmental justice. Collective land titles such as Colombia’s Peasant Reserve Zones (ZRCs) are a promising instrument.
• Towards distributive justice by reforming conservation finance: IP&LCs should benefit more directly from forest, climate and biodiversity funding and should have a say in how money is spent in their communities. IP&LC-led funds and designated funding windows for IP&LCs are promising options.
• Basic Income for Nature and Climate (BINC): We suggest BINC as a promising measure to improve the livelihoods of IP&LCs and to overcome the transactional logic of market-based instruments. BINC compensates for past environmental injustices and enables recipients to make land-use decisions that are less influenced by precarity and market forces.
Professor Dr Fernanda Figueroa currently works at the Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Dr Lasse Loft is a senior scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Maano Ramutsindela is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cape Town and the UP-UCT Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations at the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Georg Buchholz is team leader of the International Forest Policy sectoral project at GIZ, Germany.
Dr Juan Sebastián Vélez Triana is a postdoctoral researcher with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS / UCLouvain, Belgium, and a research associate at the Centre for Alternatives to Development (CEALDES), Colombia.
Professor Dr Florian Dünckmann heads the Cultural Geography Research Group in the Department of Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dr Ina Lehmann is assistant professor of Governance of Global Biodiversity at the Environmental Policy Analysis section at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Professor Dr Silja Klepp is professor of Human Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dennis Schüpf is a PhD student in the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany.
Anne Rose Atkins is a doctoral candidate in the Social Geography of Coastal and Marine Areas working group at the Geography Department of Kiel University, Germany.
Dumisani Chirambo is the founder of Seeds of Opportunity in Malawi.
Felice Diekel is a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil Engineering & Management at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Salome Gikonyo is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany.
Dr Rina Mardiana is a lecturer in the Human Geography Study Program, Faculty of Social Sciences and Human Ecology, at IPB University in Bogor, Indonesia.
Dr Adnan Mirhanoğlu is an F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d’Études de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement (CECID), Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Kim Nierobisch is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany.
Kelly Peña is a PhD student at the Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Prakash C. Tiwari works at the Centre for Ecology Development and Research in Dehradun, India.
Conservation needs reform as current approaches have failed to halt biodiversity loss. Increasingly, environ¬mentalists are questioning whether market-based approaches and conventional policy instruments, particu¬larly protected areas, can make a substantial contribution towards mitigating the bio¬diversity crisis. Moreover, serious concerns about their equity and justice implications have been voiced by indigenous rights organisations, peasant movements and scholars.
In light of these concerns, this policy brief provides a number of suggestions on how to make biodiversity conservation more just, equitable and effective. It builds on discussions held during the sixth Enjust Conference “Offsetting Justice? Environmental justice in the age of market and militarized con¬servation”, which took place in Bonn from 3 to 5 December 2025. The conference brought together environmental justice scholars, political ecologists, activists as well as development and conservation practitioners from around the globe.
Our reflections and proposals support policymakers, members of parliament, conservation practitioners, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LCs) at the local and regional levels in initiating reforms of the protected area system and other conservation mechanisms for more effective, trans¬parent and fair protection.
Key messages:
• Just conservation: Conservation policies that contribute to environmental justice have the greatest potential to achieve long-term, sustainable and legitimate conservation outcomes for people and the planet.
• Land rights-based conservation: Land rights reconfigure power relations and are a key pre¬requisite for environmental justice. Collective land titles such as Colombia’s Peasant Reserve Zones (ZRCs) are a promising instrument.
• Towards distributive justice by reforming conservation finance: IP&LCs should benefit more directly from forest, climate and biodiversity funding and should have a say in how money is spent in their communities. IP&LC-led funds and designated funding windows for IP&LCs are promising options.
• Basic Income for Nature and Climate (BINC): We suggest BINC as a promising measure to improve the livelihoods of IP&LCs and to overcome the transactional logic of market-based instruments. BINC compensates for past environmental injustices and enables recipients to make land-use decisions that are less influenced by precarity and market forces.
Professor Dr Fernanda Figueroa currently works at the Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Dr Lasse Loft is a senior scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Maano Ramutsindela is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cape Town and the UP-UCT Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations at the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Georg Buchholz is team leader of the International Forest Policy sectoral project at GIZ, Germany.
Dr Juan Sebastián Vélez Triana is a postdoctoral researcher with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS / UCLouvain, Belgium, and a research associate at the Centre for Alternatives to Development (CEALDES), Colombia.
Professor Dr Florian Dünckmann heads the Cultural Geography Research Group in the Department of Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dr Ina Lehmann is assistant professor of Governance of Global Biodiversity at the Environmental Policy Analysis section at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Professor Dr Silja Klepp is professor of Human Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dennis Schüpf is a PhD student in the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany.
Anne Rose Atkins is a doctoral candidate in the Social Geography of Coastal and Marine Areas working group at the Geography Department of Kiel University, Germany.
Dumisani Chirambo is the founder of Seeds of Opportunity in Malawi.
Felice Diekel is a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil Engineering & Management at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Salome Gikonyo is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany.
Dr Rina Mardiana is a lecturer in the Human Geography Study Program, Faculty of Social Sciences and Human Ecology, at IPB University in Bogor, Indonesia.
Dr Adnan Mirhanoğlu is an F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d’Études de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement (CECID), Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Kim Nierobisch is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany.
Kelly Peña is a PhD student at the Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Prakash C. Tiwari works at the Centre for Ecology Development and Research in Dehradun, India.
This blog draws on discussions at a closed-door roundtable titled “EU Climate Diplomacy: Promoting EU and Global Climate Goals in the Evolving Climate Regime,” held in Brussels on 3 September 2026 and co-organised by ETTG, IDDRI and IDOS. The session convened senior officials from DG CLIMA, EU member states and experts. Views expressed reflect the range of positions raised in the discussion and are not attributed to individual participants or institutions; they do not necessarily represent the position of ETTG or its member institutes.
This blog draws on discussions at a closed-door roundtable titled “EU Climate Diplomacy: Promoting EU and Global Climate Goals in the Evolving Climate Regime,” held in Brussels on 3 September 2026 and co-organised by ETTG, IDDRI and IDOS. The session convened senior officials from DG CLIMA, EU member states and experts. Views expressed reflect the range of positions raised in the discussion and are not attributed to individual participants or institutions; they do not necessarily represent the position of ETTG or its member institutes.
This blog draws on discussions at a closed-door roundtable titled “EU Climate Diplomacy: Promoting EU and Global Climate Goals in the Evolving Climate Regime,” held in Brussels on 3 September 2026 and co-organised by ETTG, IDDRI and IDOS. The session convened senior officials from DG CLIMA, EU member states and experts. Views expressed reflect the range of positions raised in the discussion and are not attributed to individual participants or institutions; they do not necessarily represent the position of ETTG or its member institutes.
Seit 2024 hat die EU in rascher Folge mit zwölf Staaten Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspartnerschaften (SDPs) geschlossen, vom Vereinigten Königreich über Kanada bis Indien und Australien. Diese Studie analysiert das neue Instrument in acht Fallstudien sowie mit Blick auf die Türkei und die Ukraine, zwei enge Sicherheitspartner der EU ohne formale SDP. Gemeinsamer Antrieb aller Partnerschaften ist die Diversifizierung von Sicherheitsbeziehungen. Angesichts des russischen Angriffskriegs, der chinesischen Großmachtpolitik und unsicherer US-Sicherheitsgarantien suchen die EU und ihre Partner zusätzliche Standbeine für ihre strategische Absicherung, keinen Ersatz für die USA oder die Nato. Trotz des Anspruchs, jede Partnerschaft »maßgeschneidert« konfiguriert zu haben, enthalten die zwölf Abkommen teils wortgleiche Passagen. Diese werden aber je nach Partner unterschiedlich ausgefüllt. Allianzen mit Beistandspflichten entstehen dabei bewusst nicht. Der Nutzen variiert erheblich: Am größten ist er bei Staaten, die der EU absehbar nicht beitreten, aber für Europas Sicherheit wichtig sind. Die Ukraine übertrifft ohne SDP alle Partner in der Tiefe der Kooperation, während eine SDP mit der strategisch bedeutsamen Türkei politisch blockiert bleibt. Trotz des Fokus auf Sicherheit und Verteidigung bleibt die größte Anziehungskraft der EU wirtschaftlicher Natur; am attraktivsten ist der Zugang zur Rüstungsfinanzierung über SAFE. Langfristig werden die Sicherheitspartnerschaften nur tragen, wenn die EU ihre eigenen sicherheitspolitischen Instrumente konsequent ausbaut und intern kohärenter auftritt. Die EU und ihre Mitgliedstaaten sollten die Rahmenwerke nun mit konkreten Projekten füllen und Prioritäten setzen. Die Studie empfiehlt zudem eine gezielte Erweiterung des Partnerkreises, die Nutzung der SDPs als Brücke zwischen EU und Nato und die Zusammenführung von SDP-Partnern in neuen Konfigurationen jenseits bilateraler Formate.
Several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have launched initiatives to produce green hydrogen for their own use and for export, raising the question of what environmental and social effects such initiatives may generate, and how these can be anticipated and mitigated. Oman and Morocco are among the region’s frontrunners. Because all projects in these countries are still in the preparatory phase and no large-scale facility is yet in commercial operation, they offer the unusual opportunity to observe how safeguards, stakeholder participation and risk management are being configured before build-out, that is, before conditions are created that may not be easily reversed, thereby creating path dependencies.
Drawing on desk-based analysis, a comparative media review, and stakeholder interviews conducted in both countries, this study examines the environmental and social impacts of hydrogen projects in the two countries through the lens of four inter-related dimensions: (i) resource endowments, (ii) environmental risks, (iii) decision-making and governance arrangements, and (iv) social equity dynamics. It finds that the two states have developed different institutional settlements.
While environmental and social safeguards are increasingly integrated into hydrogen development, often drawing on international standards, their practical implementation often remains shaped by complex and fragmented institutional arrangements. This raises questions about the allocation of mandates, the distribution of responsibilities, the consistency of procedures and the capacity for long-term monitoring and traceability. The study therefore argues that institutional design is central to sustainable hydrogen development, as environmental and social risks may otherwise evolve faster than regulatory capacities, highlighting the need for robust impact assessment, monitoring frameworks and transparent reporting mechanisms.
Dr Tobias Zumbraegel is a senior researcher at the University of Heidelberg and sustainability consultant at Momentum Novum GmbH.
Several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have launched initiatives to produce green hydrogen for their own use and for export, raising the question of what environmental and social effects such initiatives may generate, and how these can be anticipated and mitigated. Oman and Morocco are among the region’s frontrunners. Because all projects in these countries are still in the preparatory phase and no large-scale facility is yet in commercial operation, they offer the unusual opportunity to observe how safeguards, stakeholder participation and risk management are being configured before build-out, that is, before conditions are created that may not be easily reversed, thereby creating path dependencies.
Drawing on desk-based analysis, a comparative media review, and stakeholder interviews conducted in both countries, this study examines the environmental and social impacts of hydrogen projects in the two countries through the lens of four inter-related dimensions: (i) resource endowments, (ii) environmental risks, (iii) decision-making and governance arrangements, and (iv) social equity dynamics. It finds that the two states have developed different institutional settlements.
While environmental and social safeguards are increasingly integrated into hydrogen development, often drawing on international standards, their practical implementation often remains shaped by complex and fragmented institutional arrangements. This raises questions about the allocation of mandates, the distribution of responsibilities, the consistency of procedures and the capacity for long-term monitoring and traceability. The study therefore argues that institutional design is central to sustainable hydrogen development, as environmental and social risks may otherwise evolve faster than regulatory capacities, highlighting the need for robust impact assessment, monitoring frameworks and transparent reporting mechanisms.
Dr Tobias Zumbraegel is a senior researcher at the University of Heidelberg and sustainability consultant at Momentum Novum GmbH.