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…

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.

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!!!

 

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.’

Interesting post on different approaches to foreign affairs between Commission and governments

The ‘Charlemagne’ blog from the Economist has an interesting post discussing what he learnt from his contacts as he wrote an article about the new EU representative for foreign affairs, who heads up the new External Action Service (EAS), and the issue of who should be in the driving seat, the Commission or EU governments:

‘One is the very deep cultural difference between the European Commission and the national governments, when it comes to foreign policy, or “external relations” in the Brussels jargon.

National diplomats tend to see the world, ultimately, in rather Hobbesian terms. Strip away the talk of co-operation and values, and at the end of the day they are paid to promote their countries’ national interests in a rough and at times wicked world.

The European Commission has a different culture. The commission has instruments that help it exercise soft power: it gives out money for projects and programmes, or makes proposals to ease visa rules for citizens of country X or Y. It signs trade deals, and reports on whether countries that want to join the EU are fit to do so.

These are all important things, but Kissinger it ain’t. In other words, the commission can only function in a rational world, and as long as a legitimate partner is sitting on the other side of the table, pen in hand, ready to sign an action plan, or agree to some new programme or partnership accord.

National diplomats, for all their smooth manners, have to be prepared to go a bit more off-road, if you know what I mean’

He also makes a second – quite controversial – suggestion:

‘A second big point kept coming up. I would put it to interviewees that I had heard anger from some national governments about, say, the way the European Parliament was flexing its muscles and trying to assert control over the new EAS.

Well what did they expect, the Lisbon Treaty gives them powers over the budget of the EAS, my interviewees would say. More than once, I heard the same despairing phrase, said of EU foreign ministers and heads of government: “the problem is, they signed the treaty without reading it”, or “they should have read the treaty, and worked out the consequences.”

I do not want to fuel the most outlandish Eurosceptic fantasies here: I am sure that such phrases have their share of hyperbole. Most European governments will have tried to work out if the Lisbon Treaty contained things that should worry them.

But there is something to the jibes though. I have no doubt that British ministers, for example, were probably briefed during the drafting of the EU constitution (the first version of the Lisbon Treaty), that it could cause problems to give more powers to the European Parliament. But they were so busy seeking opt-outs from things like immigration policy that they did not have time to focus on things like the powers of the parliament.

And the shorthand for that process is the phrase that several senior people used this week, when talking to me: “they should have read the treaty before they signed it.’

Barroso outlines responsibilities of Commissioners-designate

European Commission President Barroso has sent letters to all the people he has nominated as Commissioners, outlining his view of their priorities. All the letters are available on the Commission web site here.

(I got this link from the excellent ENDS Europe Daily email newsletter).

Some challenges for the new Environment Commissioner (updated)

So, Commission President Barroso has nominated his new Commission, and moved around some roles.

Given the name of this blog, clearly the Environment Commissioner is particularly important, and President Barroso has nominated the current Slovenian DG Research Commissioner, Janez Potočnik.

Commissioner Potočnik has a blog already, as DG Research Commissioner, and he has posted quite a few entries on climate/low carbon economy, and also on the broader issue of sustainable development, including the following statement:

“Our ability to sustain will depend on whether we can and want to change our behaviour, both at global and at local levels in our daily lives. It will hinge on whether can find a new model of economic development that marries economic, social and environmental objectives: profit, people and planet. Sustainability is no longer an issue of morality only; it is also becoming an issue of self-interest”

Update: He has also posted a brief statement on his nomination as Environment Commissioner.

In his new job (assuming he is accepted by the parliament) he will be in an important position to address the challenge of sustainable development.

It’s true that DG Environment has lost climate policy to the new DG Climate Action, but there are many other important policy areas still in the DG, which have an important part to play in reducing our climate impacts, as well as moving us towards a more sustainable world.

For example:

• We in Europe are using an ever-increasing amount of the world’s resources, and we are particularly dependent on imported resources. Yet Europe is not even measuring its resource use, nor does it have any targets to reduce it (we have some ideas that could help). This is in spite of the fact that resource efficiency is also economically beneficial.
• The EU has been developing policies on waste for many years, yet we still dispose of more than €5 billion per year of valuable resources by landfill or incineration; if these materials were recycled it would save climate emissions equivalent to taking around 47 million cars off the road every year.
• The EU has a target to halt the loss in biodiversity within the EU by 2010 – this will not be met, according to the European Environment Agency. At the same time, the global biodiversity situation is even worse, with the EU directly responsible for some of this through the impacts of our consumption. For example, the impacts on wildlife of soy production in South America – soy that is used to feed Europe’s chickens, cows and pigs.

[For a longer list of policies for the new Commission, see the Spring Alliance manifesto.]

Some important changes in the new Commission

Following on from the previous post, Barroso has made a number of changes to the division of responsibilities in the new Commission – here’s some notable changes:

• A new DG Climate Action has been created, made up of the climate section of the old DG Environment
• Energy and Transport have been separated, creating a DG Energy and a DG Transport
• DG Health and Consumer Policy (which has often been called DG Sanco) has been strengthened with the transfer of some key regulatory dossiers – pharmaceutical products and cosmetics, including the Medicines agency (from DG Enterprise) and biotechnology & pesticides (from DG Environment)
• DG Enterprise is now called DG Industry and Entrepreneurship, and though it looses pharmaceuticals, it retains the regulation of chemicals. This is unfortunate, given the inherent conflict of interest between a department that both promotes an industry and regulates its environmental and health impacts.

A full description of the new Commission structure is available in this document.