Climate policy development and implementation from the Sustainable Development Goals perspective : evidence from the European Union countries

Governments all over the world are investigating how to mitigate environmental risk and how to address climate policies to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study focuses on interactions between climate policy development and different SDGs. The study analyses panel data for the EU countries. Greenhouse gas emissions were used as a dependent variable. The study tests the non-linear effects, which allow Environmental Kuznets curve phenomena to be identified and extends this line of research by checking the non-linearity and time-lagging of all explanatory variables. The research results show that it is possible to achieve climate policy goals not only directly, but also indirectly by facilitating the implementation of other SDG goals like inter alia SDG9 (innovation and infrastructure), SDG11 (sustainable cities and communities) and SDG17 (environmental taxation). The impact of particular policies is also dependent on geographic-specific effects, analysed with the use of factorial analysis.