We need to change – but to what? and how fast?

“cognitive dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change.”

We are living in a time of cognitive dissonance – on the one hand, many people (particularly in business) now realise that the economy can’t go on the way it is – with increasing climate changing emissions, pressure on resources and biodiversity – while at the same time taking the view that it’s not politically practical to do anything about it.

The most glaring example of this at the moment is the ‘carbon bubble’ – the markets are valuing companies based on large oil, gas, coal reserves, yet any sensible person knows that these reserves can’t be burnt without devastating our climate – for more read this in the Guardian, covering work by Carbon Tracker.

The parallels with the start of the financial crisis are very strong – people were going around selling sub-prime mortgages to poor Americans, when it was obvious that they were not going to be able to pay them back. This seemed to be working – until the (obvious!) failures of this approach came out of the woodwork.

It’s clear that we need to make a transition to a resource efficient, low carbon society – but this is not straightforward…

It’s not only quite challenging to work out how to make this transition (what tools, policies etc), but there will also be considerable opposition to any substantial changes.

Change is always going to worry those who are doing well out of the current situation – it may  worry even more those who aren’t doing so well, thinking that it could get worse (just look at Europe’s unemployment statistics). These concerns can be alleviated, for example though government support for training & new businesses – but this requires action from Governments, European Commission – and maybe  other businesses too.

The complexity of these issues – and the need to create solutions that are widely supported – led the European Commission to create the European Resource Efficiency Platform (EREP) – web site here – which brings together people from a wide range of backgrounds, including business, government ministers, Unions and environmental NGOs like Friends of the Earth.

The panel members are ‘high level’, including the CEO of Unilever, the Danish & German Environment Ministers, the EU Commissioners for Environment, Climate & Industry and the Secretary General of the European Trade Union Confederation. It’s chaired by John Bruton, former Irish Prime Minister.

Each of the ‘high level’ members of the panel is backed up by a sherpa (‘sherpas prepare the summit‘) – and I’m the Friends of the Earth Europe Sherpa, with Magda Stoczkiewicz, Director of Friends of the Earth Europe, as the panel member.

The panel has already produced a short ‘Manifesto‘ in December, and now we are preparing a declaration which will be finalised at a meeting of the panel on 17th June.

We sherpas are doing the background technical work, and it’s constantly challenging, trying to establish what we can call for, what will have sufficient impact, where is there sufficient agreement?

Coming back to the cognitive dissonance point – as the Manifesto acknowledges:

“In a world with growing pressures on resources and the environment, the EU has no choice but to go for the transition to a resource-efficient and ultimately regenerative circular economy“

So we all agree on what the outcome needs to be… but can we get our recommendations to be consistent with the scale of this task?

The declaration on Monday 17th of June will be the first test of this – so stay tuned to:

• my twitter account – @mwarhurst
• the Resource Efficiency Platform twitter account – @ec_orep

A more democratic EU? Stop government secrecy!

In UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s EU speech this week he talked of the need to increase the EU’s “democratic accountability”.

One little known fact is that the most secretive and undemocratic piece of the EU is actually ‘Council’, EU Governments (Member States) – including the UK – getting together to decide their view on EU laws.

Council is one of the two decision making bodies of the EU, see this page for a quick explanation, the other being the European Parliament – the European Commission only proposes legislation.

For example, look at this document on the Council’s web site, where the main content of the document is:

“DELETED FROM THIS POINT UNTIL THE END OF PAGE 5 “

And this is not some obscure piece of legislation. This is the negotiations on a new law that would force European mining companies to disclose what they are paying governments around the world, part of a global campaign on transparency – see the “Publish What You Pay” campaign site for more details.

There are thousands of censored documents on the Council web site, many saying useful things like “one Member State said” “Several Member States said”. Governments around Europe are hiding what they are doing at EU level.

So, the electorate is not permitted to see what governments are up to. Sometimes complete documents – or rumours – leak out, but it is a closed, secretive process. These leaks probably also go more often to industry interests than to civil society ones.

Contrast this with the elected EU parliament, where you can see who tables which amendments, and where votes are open & often available in full (‘roll call votes’). This detailed information enables people like VoteWatch and environmental groups to monitor exactly what each MEP is up to. VoteWatch also tries to analyse government voting patterns, but its only data is the formal votes that happen at the end of a process, not the real debate on what governments will or won’t accept.

So is David Cameron’s ‘reform’ plan going to include openness for council?

Will the UK take a unilateral decision to open up all of its negotiation documents?

Let’s wait and see…

Europe must transform itself into a resource efficient economy – and 2013 is the year to work out how

On Friday I attended the second meeting of the high level “European Resource Efficiency Platform” (EREP). I’m Friends of the Earth Europe’s ‘Sherpa‘ in this process, assisting Friends of the Earth Europe’s Director, Magda Stoczkiewicz, who is currently on maternity leave.

EREP was set up by the European Commission in summer 2012, and is made up of a diverse range of organisations organisations including the German and Danish Environment Ministers, Siemens, Unilever, the European Trades Unions Congress and UNEP.

The meeting on Friday agreed a “Manifesto for a Resource Efficient Europe“, which concludes that Europe must transform itself into a “resource-efficient and ultimately regenerative circular economy”. The manifesto also emphasises the importance of setting targets to reduce Europe’s resource use.

In my view the manifesto is an important start, and now we need to see real, specific, policy proposals emerging in 2013. The platform has already identified a good set of priorities, for these policy proposals, and it’s due to come out with specific proposals in a report in June 2013.

Targets are particularly important in my view, as there is massive evidence that targets are an effective way of creating change. In addition, there are a lot of easy wins around, notably in waste policy where there are also very substantial gains to be made by stopping burying and burning of any waste that could be recycled or composted.

We’re going to have a busy first half of 2013 trying to agree some substantive and effective policy proposals….

For more information on Friends of the Earth Europe’s work on Resource Efficiency, see:

http://www.foeeurope.org/resources

Measuring to manage: Commission launches consultation on measuring our use of resources

Ever thought it was strange that we measure – and try to reduce – our climate changing emissions, yet we don’t do the same with our resource use? In fact, there isn’t even general agreement on how to measure our use of resources.

This could be about to change though, as the European Commission’s Environment department have launched a consultation on “Options for resource efficiency indicators” - it’s available here. This is part of the Commission’s wider focus on resource efficiency, led by Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik.

I warmly welcome this consultation, as we identified this as important issue some years ago, and at Friends of the Earth Europe we’ve been working to solve this problem. The four indicators of resource use that we identified in this work are now proposed by the Commission in this consultation, which is a very positive step:

• Overall material use – how much material do we use, from wherever in the world it originates
• Land footprint – how much land we use, again from wherever it comes from in the world (e.g. the land used to grow soy in Paraguay to feed to chickens in Europe)
• Water footprint – the water used to make products
• Carbon footprint – the greenhouse gases released.

This is an important step forward, as the resources debate has been dominated by an academic argument between those who want to just measure the tonnes of stuff we use – maybe even just within Europe – and those who want everything to be translated into environmental impact. The former is too narrowly focussed, the latter is probably largely unachievable at an economy-scale, for example:

• What is the environmental impact of a tonne of wood? Is that wood from a plantation, or rainforest? What species? How much of the forest is left?

We believe that the four indicators above, taken together, give a vital tool to measure and manage our resource use – at product level, company level or at national or EU level. Many companies are already looking at their carbon footprint and water footprint – and identifying substantial reductions in resource use & economic savings. We believe that this approach can assist in making Europe more resource efficient – something that is economically very important in these troubled times.

The proposals in the consultation aren’t perfect – it’s unclear what the Commission proposes to do by when, and whether they will go with the data that is already available (e.g. see this presentation of mine), or delay considering the implications of our resource use until they have gathered ‘perfect’ statistical data.

The Consultation was launched on 26th July & closes on 22nd October – Friends of the Earth Europe will be producing a consultation response towards the end of the consultation period. For more information on our work on resource use, see this page on the Friends of the Earth Europe site.

Land – so important, yet so ignored….

People have been talking about resource use for years – we use too much, we don’t distribute it equitably, things are getting more expensive, running out, etc etc etc.

The thing that puzzles me is that these conversations tend to be about materials – in general, or specific materials (oil, metals, rare earths etc) – and most of the time a key natural resource is ignored – land.

It’s blindingly obvious that land is a limited resource – as Mark Twain said “Buy Land, they’re not making it anymore”. Across the world the pressure on land is increasing – from increasing demand for food (particularly meat & dairy), from the increasing use of biofuel and biomass as an energy source, and from growing urbanisation.

Land is obviously crucial to biodiversity – but it is also intimately  linked to people’s rights, history and incomes. The growing demand for land – combined with financial speculation – is creating a massive increase in land disputes, as companies and governments try to gain control of land.

This is leading to deaths and imprisonments of local people, for instance 17 people were killed in June 2012 during a police-led eviction of peasant farmers in Paraguay. This was followed by the arrest of a local person who was working with Friends of the Earth, though he was later released following international pressure  (see Friends of the Earth International news story)

And yet, land just doesn’t seem to be front of mind when many people talk about resource use. For example, the UK Environment Ministry DEFRA has just launched a consultation on “Guidance for Business on Key Environmental Performance Indicators“. As you might expect, this includes measuring climate emissions, waste, material use, even water – but what about land?

Well, land use change gets a mention in the section on biodiversity, but not beyond this, in spite of the fact that scale of land use is so important as companies make decisions on bio-based materials and feedstocks – or even what to food to serve. Yet measuring impacts on biodiversity is much more difficult than measuring scale of land use.

There is a straightforward way to measure and manage the amount of land required by a company, an economy, or to produce an individual product – it’s called Land Footprint. This is a really straightforward measurement of  the real area of land required, in hectares. It doesn’t tell you everything, but it does work very well as a top-level metric, which facilitates further analysis (e.g. looking at where the land is, why we are using that land etc). If you want to know the land footprint of EU countries, see our report on “Europe’s land import dependency”.

For more about land footprint, see this talk I gave to a conference organised by the European Commission on soil sealing in May 2012.

We’ll be asking DEFRA – and indeed the European Commission – to make sure that future policies on environmental reporting & resource use do include land. We’d welcome the same message coming from other people and organisations too!!

 

Resource Efficiency flagship launches tomorrow

The European Commission’s President José Manuel Barroso will launch the Flagship Initiative on resource efficiency tomorrow. As mentioned in my previous post, this should start to spell out what the Commission intends to do to address the challenges posed by our increasing use of the world’s resources.

President Barroso’s web page is here, and the press release should appear on the “Midday Express” page at around 12.00 CET on Tuesday 26th.

Many groups will release press statements during the afternoon following the release, including Friends of the Earth Europe and the European Environment Bureau. I expect that it will also be covered by the news sites Euractiv and, in the early evening, ENDS Europe Daily.

Update: There should also be a live video feed here on the Commission’s web site; after the event you should be able to watch a recorded stream from the same page

The EU2020 Resource Efficiency Flagship Initiative – what is it?

At the start of March, the Commission published its new EU 2020 strategy, “A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”, which included a commitment to “Sustainable growth – promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy.“

In order achieve this transition, the Commission proposed a “Flagship Initiative” on a ”Resource Efficient Europe“:

The aim is to support the shift towards a resource efficient and low-carbon economy that is efficient in the way it uses all resources. The aim is to decouple our economic growth from resource and energy use, reduce CO2 emissions, enhance competitiveness and promote greater energy security.

In the months since this announcement, the big question has been: What does this actually mean in practice?

During this period, the Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik has been making clear his views on the importance of Resource Efficiency, for example in this speech to an event at Oxford University:

“..what the world doesn’t need is a blinkered pattern of consumption; production and usage that strips our planet without working out something fundamental from the word go: we don’t have enough to go round!

Resource efficiency for me is the philosophy against the next great extinction. We are trying to throw away, the throwaway generation.”

At Friends of the Earth Europe we decided that this was a good time to organise an event to discuss this initiative, and how to make sure it makes a real difference.

The event (which was in a small room & totally full, so I didn’t promote it here) happened last Thursday in the European Parliament; the presentations are now on-line, and in a few weeks we will upload a full write-up.

The presentations cover a range of issues, including how the supermarket REWE in Austria is using the SERI/FOEE resource use indicators, how business resource efficiency is being improved in North Rhine Westphalia in Germany, why Europe needs a binding energy efficiency target, and (from me) how measuring Europe’s resource use can help improve our resource efficiency, in particular the future pressures on land.

What the presentations don’t include (but will be in the write-up) is the introductory presentation by Robin Miege of DG Environment, and the panel discussion with contributions from DG Agriculture, DG Enterprise and DG Employment.

A number of points struck me in these presentations and discussions:

• The Commission (probably President Barroso himself) will launch a ‘Communication’ on the Resource Efficiency Flagship Programme in January.
• There is lots of work going on within Commission DGs as part of this communication & the various processes that will follow it. This includes studies, and more cross-Commission work than is normal.
• Although the Commission are doing a lot of internal communication on this subject, there is not much external visibility of these discussions.
• DG Environment are going to publish a ‘Road Map’ on Resource Efficiency in June or July, probably preceded by a consultation in January/February.
• Other DGs have linked processes going on, which should reflect or be part of this Flagship, including reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, a new Energy Efficiency Action plan and a Transport White Paper.
• There are also links with other EU2020 Flagship Initiatives, including on Innovation, Industrial Policy and Jobs & Skills.

The big question is: Will this Flagship Programme (and EU2020 as a whole) result in real policies that lead to a substantial reduction in Europe’s levels of resource use?

Of course, we also need to make sure that we are actually measuring our resource use, otherwise we won’t actually know if new policies are really reducing our resource use!!!

 

A quick catch-up

I’m sorry about the months of silence on this blog – things have just been too busy, and I didn’t seem to be able to make the time to post.

However, I’m hoping to change that now & post more regularly!

Here’s a few relevant things that we’ve been up to in the past few months:

• Our conference on “Measuring Europe’s Resource Use: A vital tool in creating a resource efficient EU“, mentioned in a previous post, happened at the beginning of June, and was very interesting and successful. We’ve produced a full write up, and all the presentations are available, see this page on the Friends of the Earth Europe site.
• We commissioned a study of how many jobs could be created in the EU if the current recycling target of 50% would be increased to 70% – the answer being over 500,000! For more details, see the press release and the full study.
• We organised another event on resource efficiency in the European Parliament last week – the talks are now on the web, but I’ll do another post about the event soon.

Measuring Europe’s resource use – a briefing and conference

We live in a finite world, and global use of natural resources – land, water, materials – continues to increase, as does our emissions of global warming gases. Yet the EU doesn’t consider resource use in its policymaking – it doesn’t even have a system to measure it!

The main focus of my work at Friends of the Earth at the moment is to change this. We’ve been working with Sustainable Europe Research Institute in Vienna to work out how we can effectively measure resource use, and how this can then be used to derive better EU policies.

We have selected four indicators – land footprint, water footprint, material use and carbon footprint – all of which evaluate the global use of resources created by Europe consumption. We’ve recently published a new briefing - available here – that explains these indicators & how they could be used.

We’re also organising a conference on the subject in the European Parliament on the morning of the 1st June – the agenda is here, and there’s a registration form here (ideally you should register by the 21st May):

Resource efficiency is rising up the European agenda, with the new Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik adopting it as one of his priorities, and a resource efficiency ‘roadmap’ in the EU2020 strategy.

But what is resource efficiency – what’s the global impact of Europe’s resource use – and why isn’t the EU currently even measuring how much of the world’s resources we use?

Friends of the Earth Europe has been working with Sustainable Europe Research Institute in Vienna to try to come to a workable yet effective solution to the problem of how to measure Europe’s use of the world’s resources. We have proposed four resource use indicators: material use, water use, land use and GHG emissions.

This event will offer the opportunity to discuss the implication of these indicators on EU policymaking, and the benefits of monitoring and reducing our resource use.

The event is hosted by Chris Davies MEP and Sirpa Pietikäinen MEP, and speakers include Stefan Giljum from Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Steve Evans from Cranfield University and Tim Rice from Actionaid and Michael Warhurst from Friends of the Earth, followed by an MEP panel discussion and opportunity to ask questions.

It’s worth noting that the conference is followed the same afternoon by the launch of the European Commission’s Green Week, a free event which includes high level speakers on resource use and biodiversity (advance registration required on the green week web site).

Commission nominees give written responses to Parliament’s questions

Next week in Brussels the European Parliament’s committees will be cross-examining the nominees for the new Commission – the timetable is here. The Parliament has sent written questions to the nominees already, and has now published their responses on their Hearings web site.

The Environment nominee Janez Potočnik says in his response that his “three priorities .. would be promoting a green economy, halting the loss of biodiversity and implementing and improving existing environmental legislation.”

He also puts a welcome emphasis on the importance of making Europe more resource efficient, which is a priority for my work at Friends of the Earth (see our Resources & Consumption campaign web page for more info):

Resource efficiency will be a critical component of any strategy to protect our environment and enhance our competitiveness. It will mean putting in place the right mix of smart regulation, incentives and market-based mechanisms to foster eco-innovation and sustainable consumption and production, finding ways to promote the changes needed which fully respect our levels of environmental ambition. This will include presenting action plans for eco- innovation, environmental technologies and the next phase of Sustainable Consumption and Production to make the EU more resource efficient.

He also acknowledges that environmental policy is not about selecting one “silver bullet” – ‘If we are to achieve ambitious environmental objectives, we must act on many policy fronts.’