Sustainability and well-being

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Land use

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Environment and health — 12 Mar 2008: A clean environment is essential for human health and well-being. However, the interactions between the environment and human health are highly complex and difficult to assess. This makes the use of the precautionary principle particularly useful. The best-known health impacts are related to ambient air pollution, poor water quality and insufficient sanitation.
Policy instruments — 04 Mar 2008: Policies have a key role in determining, and improving the state of our environment. European environmental policies have developed significantly since the first Environment Action Programme was decided in 1973. Since then several hundred legal acts addressing environmental issues have been adopted. Environmental policy evaluation helps to identify how and which policies work; and what their contribution can be for ‘living well, within the limits of our planet’.
Resource efficiency and waste — 06 Sep 2013: The global environmental problems we face today are largely the result of human overexploitation of natural resources, including (fossil) fuels, minerals, water, land and biodiversity. It has become increasingly clear that Europe's prevailing model of economic development — based on high resource use, waste generation and pollution — cannot be sustained in the long term. Today, the European Union (EU) is heavily reliant on imports and we need twice the total land area of the EU to meet our resource demands. Many of the resources are only in use for a short period of time, or they are lost to the economy through being landfilled or downcycled (involving a decrease of quality during recovery operations).