Across Europe, national climate advisory bodies exist in many shapes and forms. Most countries have one or more such institutions. While many of the existing advisory bodies bring together a range of stakeholders and cover a broad range of sustainability issues, over the past five years there has been a surge in the creation of independent scientific councils, dedicated to climate policy.

A recent analysis commissioned by the European Environment Agency mapped the current landscape of climate advisory bodies across 33 countries, developed a typology and looked at the workings of independent scientific councils in more detail. It also identified key characteristics of respective national climate policy governance systems in these countries.

This event presented the main results from the report and discussed its insights with a range of experts from different institutions, investigating the following questions:

• How can scientific advisory bodies support climate policy-making?
• What conditions make advisory bodies effective in fulfilling their role?
• How can national climate governance systems be strengthened in this context?

The discussion, moderated by François Dejean, Head of Group "Climate Change Mitigation, Energy and Transport", European Environment Agency, featured insights from a panel of experts:

• Professor John Fitzgerald, Member of the Climate Change Advisory Council of Ireland
• Terhi Lehtonen, State Secretary in the Ministry for the Environment of Finland
• Dimitris Ibrahim, Climate and Energy Policy Officer, WWF Greece
• Eva Jensen, Head of Programme, Climate Change, Energy and Transport, European Environment Agency – and former head of the secretariat for the Danish Climate Council

This event was organised by Ecologic Institute for the European Environment Agency.

The report presented and a summary EEA briefing paper are available at the EEA's website.

The analysis is a co-production between Ecologic Institute and IDDRI.