The Council of Europe adopted its Strategy on the Environment 2025–2030, setting out a forward-looking vision that links environmental protection with the organisation’s core values of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. The Strategy responds to the so-called “triple planetary crisis” of biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change: resource use has already tripled in the last fifty years and is expected to grow another 60% by 2060. The CoE stressed that member states and civil society have recognised that these environmental threats pose not only risks to ecosystems but also to individuals and society as a whole. The Strategy is part of the broader environment package considered during the Committee of Ministers session on 14 May 2025, which also includes the new Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law.

The Strategy defines a set of values, principles, and approaches to guide future action:

• A human rights-based approach, ensuring that policies protect those in vulnerable situations;
• Good democratic governance, including principles of participation, accountability, transparency, and long-term orientation;
• Key environmental law principles such as sustainable development, prevention, precaution, non-regression, and the polluter-pays rule;
• Ecosystem-based and nature-based solutions supported by science;
• A One Health approach balancing the health of people, animals, and ecosystems;
• Mainstreaming of youth and gender perspectives, children’s rights, and the rights of minorities and persons with disabilities.

Building on these foundations, the Strategy has established five strategic objectives:

• To integrate human rights considerations into environmental legislation, policy, and action, and vice versa;
• To strengthen democratic governance in environmental matters;
• To support and protect environmental human rights defenders, environmental defenders, and whistle-blowers;
• To prevent and prosecute environmental crimes through effective criminal law frameworks that fight impunity, enhance accountability, and protect both the environment and victims;
• To protect wildlife, ecosystems, habitats, and landscapes.

Together, these objectives anchor the Council of Europe’s work for the next five years - aiming to ensure that present and future generations can live in a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.