Legislative conflict dimensions on environmental protection

Protecting and promoting biodiversity plays a key role in combating climate change, with climate change exacerbating biodiversity loss and measures to support biodiversity positively affecting the climate. Efforts to address climate change in the EU have mainly been pursued using financial instruments. The underlying logic for such instruments understands environmental damage as a distortion within the market, which therefore is best dealt with by means of market-based instruments, most prominently the Emissions Trading System. However, to protect biodiversity, economic instruments built on the assumption that economic growth is a necessity, are not be well suited. While the scientific literature broadly acknowledges the relationship between climate and biodiversity and the inherent incompatibility of the respective solutions, this is not reflected in the analysis of policy, nor the different political coalitions which support them. Aiming to fill this lacuna, this paper draws on data from the legislative process during the 9th European Parliament (2019-2024). Analysing all recorded votes on key pieces of environmental and climate change legislation, we document the different political coalitions which form on this topic depending on the policy instrument being considered, and how the voting behaviour of individual MEPs, EPGs, and national delegations vary across different instruments which would generally all be considered pro-environment.