EU disgraced after report found bloc ‘offshores environment damage’

World leaders have mostly left Glasgow’s COP26 climate summit after striking a range of agreements on reducing carbon emissions and other elements of human-induced climate change. More than 100 countries promised to end and reverse deforestation by 2030, while a number of leaders joined an initiative led by the US and EU to cut emissions of methane by at least 30 percent by 2030. China, Russia and India were not among the names on the list.

India did, however, pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2070 – ending its position as one of the last major economies in the world to hold out on such a commitment.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a €1billion (£846million) contribution to the Global Forests Finance Pledge.

The five-year support package looks to help partner countries protect, restore and sustainably manage forests worldwide and deliver on the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Last year, the EU threw its weight behind the climate debate after announcing its ambitious Green Deal which was at the heart of its coronavirus pandemic recovery plan, and doubled up as a step towards federalism.

While the announced figure to help the cause was put at €750bn (£637bn), the European Commission said the real figure would be almost €2trillion (£1.7tn) after spending from future budgets was added in.

Many hailed the plans as outlining what the future looked like, with Ms von der Leyen declaring: “This is Europe’s moment.”

Yet, others were less convinced.

Richard Fuchs, Calum Brown and Mark Rounsevell, three scientists writing in a report for the science journal Nature, claimed that: “Europe’s Green Deal offshores environmental damage to other nations.”

They focused on the element of the deal which saw millions of tonnes of crops and meat imported into the bloc each year.

This is part of the bloc’s efforts to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, setting targets to reduce carbon emissions and enhance forests, farming, green transport, recycling and renewable energy – all of which Ms von der Leyen said will help the EU show “the rest of the world how to be sustainable and competitive”.

But, the authors said: “Problems lurk behind the rhetoric.”

The EU relies heavily on agricultural imports, only China imports more, with the EU in 2019 buying one-fifth of the crops and one percent of the meat and dairy products consumed within its borders.

his allows Europeans to farm less intensively, but “the imports come from countries with environmental laws that are less strict than those in Europe. And EU trade agreements do not require imports to be produced sustainably.”

The October 2020 paper notes the various deals the EU has signed in the past two years with countries and trade blocs around the world, which have covered nearly half of its crop imports.

The authors write: “The net result? EU member states are outsourcing environmental damage to other countries, while taking the credit for green policies at home.

“Although the EU acknowledges that some new legislation will be required around trade, in the short term, nothing will change under the Green Deal.”

Between 1990 and 2014, European forests expanded by nine percent, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Greece, some 13 million hectares (Mha).

Elsewhere around the world, however, some 11 Mha was deforested to grow crops that were consumed within the EU.

And, three-quarters of this deforestation was linked to oilseed production in Brazil and Indonesia.

These are regions of the planet that hold unparalleled biodiversity and are home to some of the world’s largest carbon sinks – crucial for mitigating climate change.

The paper goes on to note the various transformations that will take place within European agriculture under the deal: “A ‘farm to fork’ initiative aims to reduce fertiliser use in Europe by 20 percent and pesticides by 50 percent, with one-quarter of land to be farmed organically by 2030.

Continued on next page.

COP26: Changing food systems and how we treat animals is a major opportunity for climate change mitigation

31 October 2021

News

For too long, animal protection has been absent from the conversation around the climate emergency. However, animals and animal-related sectors play a significant role in ensuring a transition towards climate-resilient societies.

Today marks the start of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, where parties and world leaders will come together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

One of the main themes of this year’s COP is nature-based solutions to the twin crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. This provides an important opportunity to raise the profile of animal protection issues in the climate agenda.

Livestock farming represents a significant share of the planet’s emissions that cannot be ignored. The recent report on global warming from IPCC is clear: we have no time to lose in cutting methane emissions. Reducing livestock numbers could contribute significantly to achieving the Paris Agreement targets. Failing to reduce livestock numbers will put most of the UN SDGs out of reach.

Eurogroup for Animals’ contribution

To inform COP26 attendees about the environmental issues associated with animal-related sectors, as well as how improved animal welfare and transformed food systems can help build back better, Eurogroup for Animals have created a leaflet entitled “Protecting Animals to Protect the Planet”.

Download the leaflet here:

File

Protecting Animals to Protect the Planet1.2 MB

Our Trade & Animal Welfare Programme Leader Stephanie Ghislain will be speaking at the conference in November. Stay tuned for further details. 

Regards Mark

WAV Comment: People across the world need to change their habits to purchasing locally produced food. This cuts down on Carbon footprint – simple !

We hope this move by the UK government will encourage farmers to get animals out of intensive systems and move them back to the land. If they are to be paid subsidies for going greener, then this is the route they must take.

Also, it will encourage ‘less Green’ nations such as Australia to step up to the plate and make their green credentials better, if they want to sell their exported meat in the UK. We will always and only support people moving to a vegan (plant based) diet, for many reasons; but we also accept that there will always be some who want to continue eating meat.

If this is the case, get the animals out of intensive systems and move them back on the land. Hopefully, if UK farmers will be given subsidies to do this, it will be a massive positive for future animal welfare.

Regards Mark

Above – a free range pig farm in Suffolk, England.

Meat taxes will make British farmers go greener, says George Eustice

Emma Gatten  14 hrs ago

The farming minister has signalled his support for meat taxes, in an interview with The Telegraph.

On the eve of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, George Eustice has said that the UK will need to “move into the realms of things like carbon taxes” when existing EU agricultural subsidies are finally phased out.

Mr Eustice, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary, disclosed that the Government was already working on a new tax system for parts of the food sector that contribute most to global warming, such as meat and dairy.

By placing levies on high polluters, such a move could help cut down emissions, and is also likely to help British farmers compete with post-Brexit imports.

Any new tax could, however, raise the price of red meat. Mr Eustice said that according to the Government’s own modelling, prices were already set to increase in real terms by 10 per cent over the next five years.

Mr Eustice told The Telegraph that a planned restructuring of the £3.5 billion EU agricultural subsidies would encourage farmers to produce higher-welfare and more environmentally friendly food over the next seven years.

But he added: “Beyond that, you then start to move into the realms of things like carbon taxes. But we need to do the thinking about it now.”

It comes as Boris Johnson warned that civilisation could fall once again like the Roman Empire if the world failed to make sufficient progress on curbing climate change.

Speaking on Friday night as he landed in Rome for the G20 summit, the Prime Minister said being in the Eternal City should serve as a “fantastic reminder” and a “memento mori” that societies could go “backwards as well as forwards”.

“You saw that with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and I’m afraid to say it’s true today, that unless we get this right in tackling climate change we could see our civilisation, our world, also go backwards.”

Mr Johnson then deployed a football analogy to warn that humanity was currently “5-1 down” at half-time against the “formidable opponent” that is global warming.

The new carbon taxation system raised by Mr Eustice would be introduced after 2027, by which time the Brexit transition period for agricultural subsidies would have come to an end.

He said carbon border taxes would also be brought in and their purpose “would be to encourage countries like Australia, like New Zealand, to tackle their own greenhouse gas emissions”.

Mr Eustice said: “If there are other countries in the world that don’t pull their weight, and don’t do their share, you know, at some point you will have to find a way of reflecting that in international trade.”

He said: “The Treasury and BEIS [the business department] are doing a piece of work on this. Ideally for it to work obviously it would be agreed multilaterally.”

He added: “All of this is supposes that you would move in the direction of carbon emissions trading” first in the UK agriculture sector.

Continue reading on next page.