As we are at the mid-way point of the Icelandic Parliament's current four year term, Ungir umhverfissinnar (UU) are launching a project called Tunglið (eng. The Moon) to assess the Icelandic government's environmental progress in the past two years.
Tunglið is a follow-up project to Sólin, the Icelandic Young Environmentalist Association’s grading of the political parties’ environmental policies in the lead up to the Icelandic Parliamentary elections 2021. Tunglið will assess the progress made by the Icelandic government to address environmental challenges at the halfway point of this parliamentary term (2021-2025) based on their actions rather than their written policies.
The main goal of Tunglið is to push the Icelandic government to take the required action to prevent the destruction of nature and the climate. To achieve this overarching goal, the following sub-goals have been set:
Push the Icelandic government to live up to and go beyond the ambition of their environmental policies.
Increase accountability and transparency regarding environmental decision making.
Elevate young people’s voices in the public debate about environmental decision making.
Tunglið has been in the making since May this year when we sent out the first press release about the project. Members of UU lead the development of this project which included getting external expert advice. We also met with a few political parties at the end of September and beginning of October of this year to present an earlier draft version of the project and give the parties an opportunity to ask questions and get any suggestions across.
The project is now fully developed and a more detailed description of it can be found here. The government will be graded as one whole by using an adapted version of the criteria framework used in our previous project Sólin.
Information about Tunglið has been sent to all parliamentarians and parties and we have opened up for data submissions from the three government parties. The data that Tunglið will assess will be limited to legislative proposals (lagafrumvörp), parliamentary resolution proposals (þingsályktunartillögur), official policy documents (opinberar stefnur stjórnarráðsins), and official government action plans (opinberar aðgerðaáætlanir). All documents submitted must be publicly available documents and must have been published between November 23rd 2021 (the beginning of this parliamentary term) and December 4th 2023 (deadline for data submissions for Tunglið).
We have hired four employees to work on various aspects of Tunglið, such as graphic design, data analysis, and web design. Just as during Sólin, the utmost neutrality and professionalism will be maintained throughout the entire duration of Tunglið.
The final results of Tunglið will be presented at a launch event in early 2024.
___
For further information about Tunglið, please contact:
Finnur Ricart Andrason, chairperson of Ungir umhverfissinnar
Email: finnur@umhverfissinnar.is
Phone: 6261407