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The emergence of the concept of 'natural capital' in recent decades reflects a recognition that environmental systems play a fundamental role in determining a country's economic output and social well-being — providing resources and services, and absorbing emissions and wastes.
According to this way of thinking, a nation's wealth is grounded in four core stocks of capital: manufactured capital (e.g. machines and buildings), human capital (e.g. people, their skills and knowledge), social capital (e.g. trust, norms and institutions) and natural capital (e.g. minerals and ecosystem services). In addition, financial capital plays an important role as a medium of exchange between the four underlying capital stocks and, sometimes, as a source of economic imbalances and instability.[1][2]
Natural capital is the most fundamental of the forms of capital since it provides the basic conditions for human existence, delivering food, clean water and air, and essential resources. It sets the ecological limits for our socio-economic systems, which require continuous flows of material inputs and ecosystem services (Figure 1 and Box 1). Yet, it is not accounted for in nations' wealth accounting systems.
Many aspects of natural capital such as biodiversity, clean air, land, and water are both limited and vulnerable. The complexity of natural systems and irreversibility of much environmental change mean that replacing natural capital with other forms of capital is often impossible or carries significant risks.
Mismanagement of natural capital often occurs because its full value is not reflected in policy trade-offs and economic choices. This problem pervades decision-making at all scales, from the microeconomic (e.g. via market prices that fail to reflect a product's full costs and benefits), up to the macroeconomic (e.g. in excluding environmental values from national accounts and shifting environmental impacts to other countries).
The European Union (EU) and many neighbouring countries have introduced a substantial volume of legislation to protect, conserve and enhance ecosystems and their services. Examples include the Water Framework Directive,[5] the Marine Strategy Framework Directive,[6] the Air Quality Directive,[7] the Habitats and Birds Directives[8][9] and the Landscape Convention.[10] A wider range of European policies affect natural capital and ecosystem services including the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, cohesion policy and rural development policies.
Source: based on EEA Multiannual Work Programme 2014–2018
Box 1: Natural capital and ecosystem services
Natural capital comprises two major components:
Ecosystem capital is normally renewable if managed sustainably but can be depleted or degraded if mismanaged. A Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) has been developed to support environmental accounting.[3] CICES takes the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment[4] classification of ecosystem services as a starting point but modifies the approach to reflect more recent research and does not include supporting services to reduce the risk of double-counting of benefits.
The three main ecosystem service categories under CICES are provisioning services (e.g. biomass, water, fibre); regulating and maintenance services (e.g. soil formation and composition, pest and disease control, climate regulation); and cultural services (the physical, intellectual, spiritual and symbolic interactions of humans with ecosystems, lands and seascapes).
Assessing the status and trends of natural capital, in particular ecosystem services, is a significant challenge in view of the enormous scale and diversity of environmental stocks and flows. The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020[11] is an important policy driver of improved knowledge of ecosystems and their services. Key actions include mapping and assessing ecosystems and their services by 2014, assessing the economic value of such services, and promoting the integration of these values into accounting and reporting systems at the EU and national levels by 2020.
While a comprehensive assessment of the state and trends of Europe's ecosystems and related services has not yet been undertaken, important progress has been made. For example, the work under the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) initiative will improve the knowledge base on ecosystems and their services in Europe (Figure 2).[12][13]
Source: Maes et al.[14]
Information is already available for many ecosystem types and services. For example:
Climate change has already affected ecosystems and their services in Europe in diverse ways, including ocean acidification, increasing water temperatures, shifts in the timing of biological processes and increases in the frequency and intensity of droughts. Ecosystem service flows are mostly projected to decline in response to climate change although this varies by European sub-region.
The UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) provides an international framework for developing integrated physical and monetary environmental-economic accounts. Within this context, the EU Regulation on European environmental-economic accounts provides a legal basis for harmonised collection of comparable data from countries.[16]
The Regulation was amended in 2014 and accounting modules now include both physical accounts (addressing air emissions, material flows and physical energy flows) and monetary accounts (addressing environmental taxes, environmental protection expenditure and environmental goods and services sectors).
There is not yet an agreed methodology or statistical standard for ecosystem accounting — although a framework for experimental ecosystem accounting has been developed as part of the UN system (SEEA). Within this context the EEA is developing Ecosystem Capital Accounts, which are foreseen as the approach to delivering ecosystem accounts for Europe. They record changes in the extent and condition of ecosystems and some of the services they provide, as indicated by physical land, biomass carbon and water accounts.
In terms of monetary valuation of ecosystem services and the underlying natural capital stocks, a diverse mixture of techniques exists for estimating values. Approaches are also available to enable values generated in one location to be applied elsewhere or at broader scales.[16][17] While there are many uncertainties and difficulties in applying these valuation methods, they can offer insights and play a role in communicating the value of nature and in designing environmental policy and tools.
While Europe has undoubtedly made progress in preserving and enhancing its natural capital in certain areas, overall degradation of ecosystems persists. In addition, abiotic resources and ecosystem capital are under significant pressure across the world and demographic and economic projections suggest that these pressures are likely to grow.[18]
In recent years, EU environmental policies such as the 7th Environment Action Programme (7th EAP)[15] and the Biodiversity Strategy to 2020[11] have shifted towards a more systemic perspective on the managing the environment, explicitly addressing natural capital. For example, a priority objective of the 7th EAP is 'to protect, conserve and enhance the Union's natural capital'. There are many synergies and co-benefits to a more integrated management approach. Implementation of ecosystem-based management approaches that consider the entire ecosystem, including humans, offers much potential. Adopting this approach in the management of human activities in the aquatic environment and in developing green infrastructure development will provide important evidence and learning.
The 7th EAP states that 'further efforts to measure the value of ecosystems and the cost of their depletion, together with corresponding incentives, will be needed to inform policy and investment decisions. Work to develop a system of environmental accounts, including physical and monetary accounts for natural capital and ecosystem services, will need to be stepped up. This supports the outcome of Rio+20, which recognises the need for broader measures of progress to measure well-being and sustainability to complement GDP.'
EU bodies, Member States and researchers are responding to this challenge and developing more comprehensive environmental accounting systems, including approaches for measuring the condition of ecosystems and their services. This supports the EU's current efforts to develop new more inclusive indicators of social, economic and environment progress via the 'Beyond GDP' initiative.[19][20]
The analyses presented in the report provide policy makers with a tool to target economic incentives and information campaigns, encouraging a shift to more sustainable production and consumption patterns in order to reduce Europe's global footprint. The report discusses two analytical approaches.
The production-based method considers direct environmental pressures caused by European industries and service providers - for example, the extraction of material resources by the mining and quarrying sector, air pollutants from power stations, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and so on.
The consumption-based method focuses on the indirect environmental pressures caused by European consumers. In this approach, the direct production-related pressures are attributed to broad groups of products and services, also taking into account pressures that are embodied in goods imported into the EU. Using Environmentally Extended Input Output Analysis (EE-IOA) it is possible to estimate the environmental pressures ultimately generated by individual product groups and also by European consumption as a whole.
Four types of environmental pressures are considered by the report: raw material use, greenhouse gas emissions, acidifying air emissions, and air pollutants leading to harmful ground-level ozone. However, the method has the potential to assess many other types of environmental pressure including land use, water use, waste generation and energy use.
Thanks to the conceptual consistency between the system of national economic accounts and environmental accounts, data on environmental pressures is directly comparable to economic expenditure. Policy makers can thus see which sectors have been most successful in decoupling environmental pressures from growth in their output. They can gain an overview of which product groups are most pressure intensive, including which groups lead to most emissions or material use per euro of purchase. Electricity, basic metal products, and agricultural products cause high amounts of environmental damage for every euro spent, for example, while most services cause low environmental pressures per euro.
The tool also allows the decoupling of pressures from GDP growth to be split up into contributing factors. Through so called 'de-composition analysis', it is possible to investigate reductions in environmental pressures and find out how much are due to improvements in production processes, such as energy savings, substitution of fuels and other inputs, or the use of end-of-pipe technologies. It is also possible to see much of the reduction is due to changes in the structure of the economy, including which types of products are being produced and consumed. In Europe, the report concludes, decoupling of environmental pressures has mainly resulted from improvements in individual industries and production processes rather than changes in patterns of consumption.]]>
• The landscape reflects how we meet our resource demands
• How and where we use land affects ecosystem resilience
• Consumption patterns are key drivers of resource use
• Spatial planning is central to managing landscapes and ecosystem resilience
Chapter 11. Progress towards ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency
• Europe has made considerable progress but many challenges remain
• Time lags between improving resource efficiency and ensuring ecosystem resilience
• Setting targets to support ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency
• Environmental indicators to support the transformation to a green economy
Human health and well-being ultimately depend on well-functioning ecosystems. Human land use is a major factor influencing the distribution and functioning of ecosystems, and thus the delivery of ecosystem services. The impact of human society on ecosystems and natural capital respectively, can be most easily appreciated at the landscape level, as the landscape in many ways embodies how human society meets its resource demands.
The natural resources that society relies on for production and consumption can be roughly classified into four major categories: food, water, energy and (other) materials. All are of direct relevance to human well-being, and their supply is therefore subject to strong policy interventions. Exploiting one resource type often results in impacts on the environment and the other resources. For example, producing food requires land as well as water and energy.
These interdependencies lead to trade-offs and indirect effects on health and human well-being (Figure 10.1). Measures to boost agricultural productivity, for example, may have negative effects. Irrigation adds to water stress, particularly in southern European regions, potentially jeopardising water security (EEA, 2010a). Pesticide residues end up in surface water and groundwater bodies, threatening drinking water safety (EEA, 2010b).
Producing bioenergy involves similar trade-offs. Energy crops compete with food production, renewing concerns about food security and prices. Where energy cropping replaces extensive farming systems, negative impacts on biodiversity and landscape amenity values can also be expected, affecting, for example, recreation opportunities. Efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by shifting from fossil fuel to bioenergy can even be counterproductive if associated with deforestation and reduced carbon storage in vegetation and soil.
Matching natural resource use with human demands is thus a complex spatial puzzle, with many interdependencies and environmental feedbacks. This puzzle is further complicated when the external perspective is considered: analysing how European resource needs and the ways we meet them affect regions outside Europe.
Figure 10.1 Key natural resources supporting human health and well-being
Source: European Environment Agency.
Generally, increasing resource use has profound impacts on the landscape. Food and fibre production require large areas of land for agriculture and forestry. Extracting minerals, metals and fossil fuels turns substantial areas into quarries and mines. Our water use results in changed hydromorphology and river flows. And our settlement, infrastructure and construction patterns translate into further land use changes (Figure 10.2 and Map 10.1).
Population growth and changing lifestyles are apparent in our settlement patterns, transport infrastructure and land use. Europe stands out as one of the regions where human use of ecosystems is highest. Approximately one third of Europe's land is covered by forests, 25 % by arable land and permanent crops, and 17 % by pastures and mixed mosaics. About 4 % is covered by artificial surfaces, such as urban areas and man-made infrastructure (EEA, 2010c) (15).
Figure 10.2 Land take per activity, 2000 to 2006
Source: CSI 014, based on Corine land cover database, 2000–2006 data.
Map 10.1 Fragmentation of the European landscape, as measured in terms of land take, 2000 to 2006
Source: CSI 014, based on Corine land cover database, 2000-2006 data.
Urbanisation is the dominant trend in Europe, with a growing concentration of people living in urban areas and decreasing population densities in rural areas. The total urban area in Europe grows faster than the human population size, indicating an increasingly diffuse urbanisation process and continuing landscape fragmentation (EEA, 2010c).
With many people seeking alternative employment and adopting urban lifestyles, agriculture is becoming less important as an economic driver. Environmentally it is still very important, however, covering nearly half of the European land. The total area of farmland in Europe is slowly decreasing as the result of land abandonment in marginal and low-productive regions. Management in the remaining farmland is typically intensifying, with around 4% of European farmland being under organic production in 2007 (Eurostat, 2009).
As a result of these combined trends, the area of natural and semi-natural habitats has declined and is increasingly fragmented by built-up areas and transport infrastructure. These changes affect the amenity value of the European landscape and are also associated with reduced biodiversity. Loss of habitats as the immediate result of land conversions has led many species populations to decline. The remaining habitat patches become increasingly vulnerable to diffuse external pressures, causing further reduction of critical plant communities and species.
Agriculture plays a major role here through its increasing reliance on drainage and external inputs over the last 50 years (fertiliser, pesticides and water – see previous chapters). It not only exerts environmental pressures at field level but also affects major regulatory services, notably those related to water, carbon and nitrogen. Animal species additionally suffer from the increased fragmentation, as reduced dispersal rates, mortality on roads and exposure to noise increase the risk of (local) extinction (EEA, 2010d).
Ultimately, our resource use, both in Europe and beyond, is driven by our consumption and production patterns. Analyses of consumption patterns in EU Member States indicate that the majority of key environmental pressures related to national consumption can be allocated to eating and drinking, housing and infrastructure, and mobility and transport (EEA, 2010e). Food and housing alone cause around 60 % of all material resource use (Figure 10.3).
Average consumption expenditure per person increased by more than 30 % in the EU-27 between 1990 and 2010, with the 12 countries that have joined the EU since 2004 (EU-12) recording a relatively higher increase amounting to more than 75 % during the same period. Nevertheless, on average private consumption expenditure in the EU-15 is more than twice of that in the EU-12 (EEA, 2010e).
Figure 10.3 Share of Total Material Requirement (TMR) needed by household consumption category (8 EU Member States, 2005 data)
Source: EEA, 2010e.
Total energy use related to housing, for example, has increased by around 10 % since 1990, despite an increase in heating efficiency of approximately 10 % in the same period. A determining factor is the floor space per person, which between 1990 and 2007 has increased by more than 20% in the EU. The average area of a dwelling unit rose from 86 to 92 m2 in EU-15 Member States and from 62 to 71 m2 in EU-12 Member States. At the same time the number of people per household decreased. These trends have largely offset the gains made in the energy efficiency of buildings (EEA, 2010e).
Similarly, in the transport sector increased car fuel efficiency has not compensated for growing demand resulting from increased commuting and recreation. Although cars on average have become more fuel-efficient, overall fuel consumption for private cars does barely go down, mainly because more kilometres are driven (EEA, 2010e).
In the past decade, European expenditure on food and non-alcoholic drinks increased only by around 10 % in absolute terms. While total consumption of food in Europe is relatively decoupled from income, the types of food we eat has changed with increasing wealth, falling household sizes, globalisation of food markets and changing tastes – resulting in mixed trends in food consumption (EEA, 2010e). Mixed trends in food consumption have differing consequences for environmental impacts and their combined effect is difficult to estimate.
The carbon, material and water footprints of different types of food vary considerably (the footprints associated with beef and dairy products, for example, are relatively high), which hints at potential to reduce some environmental impacts by shifting consumption patterns. To improve resource use efficiency, there is also scope to address food wastes, as waste generation in production, distribution and consumption of food accounts for approximately 89 million tonnes of food yearly (roughly 180 kg per citizen) (EEA, 2010e).
Overall, growing resource demand has driven environmental pressures, for example, through greenhouse gas emissions, emissions of acidifying substances or ozone precursors, our material use and waste production (EEA 2010e). Meanwhile, our settlement patterns have affected our personal exposure to the consequences of this resource use — air pollution, food and water quality, access to green spaces, flooding risks and so on.
European landscapes are being shaped at an unprecedented pace, with little thought to these cumulative impacts. Their importance is not yet fully reflected in decision-making on urban development, energy supply, agriculture, forestry, water management and transport. Considerations such as biodiversity and landscape quality are likewise often marginalised in decision-making processes.
With most EU citizens living in urban areas (currently 73% and projected to grow to 80 % by 2030, EEA, 2010f), urban density and the design of the built and natural environments of cities play a crucial role in shaping consumption patterns. Urban design is particularly relevant in two areas: urban transport, which accounts for 40 % of GHG emissions and 70 % of air pollutants, and housing (EC, 2007).
Optimising land use in response to consumer demands has implications for carbon storage (bioenergy production and greenhouse gas emissions), water resources (droughts and floods) and biodiversity conservation (impacts on species and habitats). The main alternative principles of land planning in this regard are 'land sparing' or 'land sharing'.
'Land sparing' focuses on compact urbanisation and intensification of agriculture (increasing yields per hectare), with a view to reduce the area needed for housing and agricultural production. This is in principle beneficial for energy efficiency and carbon storage and leaves space for natural ecosystems and nature development. On the other hand it may increase local pressures on soil, water and air and affect human health in urban areas.
'Land sharing' does the opposite: it tries to accommodate multifunctional land use, supporting extensive agriculture in marginal areas and attempting to achieve biodiversity goals on farmland. In a European context this approach applies to the conservation of high nature value farmland and the adoption of agri-environment measures. The area of non-cultivated ('natural') areas is of less concern than cultural and landscape amenity values.
The choice between the two involves complex trade-offs with regard to ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency that require careful consideration. For example, whereas low-input farming appears essential to tackle pollution, it enhances the need for changes in our consumption and behaviour. Dietary shifts, more effective distribution chains, and food waste prevention could potentially compensate for lower yields.
Given the interactions between agricultural land use and European and global environmental processes, appropriate management and policies in the agricultural sector are crucial for achieving EU environment policy targets. The EU common agricultural policy is currently undergoing a fundamental reform, offering a big opportunity for further integrating environmental concerns into this policy.
Similarly, integrating fragmentation considerations, including monitoring methods, into transport and regional planning policies, can further help to mitigate the environmental impacts of landscape fragmentation.An integrated development perspective is needed to take into account the considerable regional variation, in both environmental and socio-economic terms. The structural funds under the EU cohesion policy aimed at territorial cohesion are instrumental in this respect.
Box 10.1 Ecosystem integrity — an experimental integrated indicator
The Convention on Biological Diversity has identified ecosystem integrity as one of four thematic areas for monitoring policy progress towards significantly reducing biodiversity decline. It is a key determinant of the potential of ecosystems to deliver over time the multiple services needed for societal development and human wellbeing.
A proxy for ecosystem integrity at the macro scale is landscape fragmentation, and particularly the fragmentation of natural habitats. The Natural Landscape Ecological Potential (NLEP) indicator takes protected area designations, land cover characteristics and density of road and rail transport infrastructure into account. Datasets are combined using land and ecosystem accounting methods and spatial analysis techniques, anchored by a 1 km2 grid.
For the period 1990–2006, the NLEP indicator ecosystem integrity has either been stable or in slow decline for most of Europe. Where improvement appears it is largely the effect of farmland abandonment in this period (Map 10.2).
Map 10.2 Changes in ecosystem integrity based on changing landscape characteristics, 1990 to 2006
Source: European Environment Agency.
Europe has made considerable progress but many challenges remain. Some of the environmental indicators analysed in this report reveal encouraging trends, others less so.
In some areas, significant progress has been made. Over the past decade, for example, European greenhouse gas emissions have decreased; some air and water pollution indicators show improvements, although this has not yet necessarily resulted in good air and water quality; and materials use and waste generation, although still increasing, are now growing at a slower rate than the economy. However, developments in different European countries may differ considerably from these broad trends.
In other areas, trends are less positive. Environmental objectives and targets have not been achieved or progress has been insufficient. The target of halting biodiversity loss in Europe has not yet been reached, although large areas across Europe have been designated as protected areas and the rate of loss for some species has decreased. Fish continue to be harvested beyond sustainable yields and many freshwater bodies suffer from over-exploitation and are not expected to achieve good ecological status by 2015.
Based on such environmental indicators, a summary analysis of the main trends and progress over the past ten years shows a mixed picture. If indicators are broadly grouped in two categories either addressing 'ecosystem resilience' (here approximated by 'state' indicators) or 'resource efficiency' (here approximated by 'pressure' indicators), then a pattern emerges: European environmental policies appear to have had a clearer impact on improving resource efficiency than on maintaining ecosystem resilience (Table 11.1).
Table 11.1 Indicative summary table of progress towards meeting environmental targets or objectives, based on indicators presented in this report
Table 11.1 Indicative summary table of progress towards meeting environmental targets or objectives, based on indicators presented in this report (cont.)
It is worth noting that several important environmental issues are either not covered or only partially addressed in this summary analysis. This is either because they have only emerged on the policy agenda in recent years or because they lack explicit targets and indicators. Such issues include, for example, ecosystem health, ecosystem services, noise, chemicals and hazardous substances, and natural and technological hazards. These, and other environmental issues, are instead addressed or under preparation in separate, dedicated EEA assessments.
This summary analysis underlines that while improved resource efficiency is necessary, it is not sufficient to conserve the natural environment and the essential services it provides in support of economic prosperity and social cohesion.
Many factors and complex interactions underlie the contrasting performance in improving resource efficiency and ensuring ecosystem resilience, as presented in this summary analysis. These include:
• the relatively specific cause-effect relationships and policy design involved in reducing environmental pressures and increasing resource efficiency in relevant economic sectors (such as energy, transport, agriculture);
• the often more complex, multicausal factors contributing to reductions in natural environment quality with consequent implications for ecosystem resilience (multiple causes, multiple pathways and multiple effects that are difficult to disentangle);
• the resulting shorter time frames needed to show efficiency gains (often less than two decades) against the longer time it takes for these gains to translate into restored environmental condition and ecosystem resilience (often several decades).
The relatively short time frame for this summary analysis is therefore biased towards showing progress in improving resource efficiency over ensuring ecosystem resilience. This in turn highlights the value of investing in consistent long-term monitoring of sentinel chemical and ecological parameters that allow us to track broader changes in the natural environment: atmosphere and climate, soils and land, freshwaters and oceans.
Over recent decades, EU environmental policies have regulated the release of harmful substances into the atmosphere, soils and waters, typically through targeted policies or restrictions. Such regulatory approaches have intentionally pushed firms to find substitutes through technical innovations and other routes.
It often takes years for these policies to take full effect. Consider, for example, the time span that occurs between a substance being identified as harmful and it being restricted. Causes of delays include lags in national transposition and implementation of EU laws, and the need to allow sufficient time to identify and adopt viable substitutes.
Despite these obstacles considerable efficiency gains have been achieved and environmental pressures have been reduced. Looking forward to reduction targets for 2020 and beyond, however, it is apparent that in areas such as climate change mitigation, energy, material, water and waste Europe will need to continue (and in some cases drastically increase) its resource efficiency improvements just to meet current policy targets. Achieving the even more ambitious targets needed to ensure a resilient environment will require even greater efforts.
This dynamic is further complicated by the often even longer time lags between recognising an environmental pressure and this being addressed, and the ability of natural ecosystems and people to then recover from the impacts these pressures may have caused. In other words, once the environment has changed as result of an environmental pressure, it may take much longer to reverse, especially if and when this has resulted in a change in ecosystem resilience.
A case in point is the depletion of the ozone layer, where the relatively rapid progress to remove harmful chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) from production processes and reduce their emissions (which took about 20 years, globally), contrasts with the rather longer timeframes foreseen for repairing the atmosphere and reducing to zero excess skin cancer rates from ultraviolet radiation (estimated to be 70 to 100 years). Similar time lags are known for other environmental issues, such as climate change or acidification.
It should be stressed that in some cases, negative effects of reduced ecosystem resilience may even be irreversible, for example where biodiversity loss leads to species extinction, or where environmental or climate tipping points are passed.
EU environmental policy includes many more objectives and targets than those discussed in this report. When fully implemented as a coherent package, how far would existing measures ensure ecosystem resilience and improve resource efficiency, given the clear differences in the challenges and the contrasting time lags for achieving success?
This report cannot and does not aim to answer this question. It does, however, highlight that the interplay between improved resource efficiency, decreased environmental pressures and maintaining ecosystem resilience is often ill-defined. And this jeopardises the coherence between different environmental policies and between environmental policy and other policy areas. Existing European environmental policies have proven effective in many cases but less so in some instances.
Air pollution, climate change mitigation, energy, water and waste are arguably the environmental policy areas where objectives and binding targets are most developed. Other policy areas like chemicals, land use, nature and biodiversity, and sustainable production and consumption are characterised by ambitious strategic objectives and few binding targets. While the former are often incorporated into European legislation (such as regulations, directives and decisions), the latter are generally set out in other formats (such as European Commission communications, EU environment action programmes or the European Council conclusions).
At the EU level, arguably the clearest links between objectives to ensure ecosystem resilience and objectives to ensure resource efficiency have been established in the area of climate change. An example is the ambition to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels and the related target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 % by 2020, and the vision to reduce them by more than 80 % by 2050. Clearly, however, meeting the global temperature objective depends not only on actions within Europe but also internationally.
Such links are also apparent for air pollution. The success of much of Europe in meeting efficiency targets by cutting emissions has played a vital role in reducing critical loads and resulting pressures on sensitive ecosystems. At the same time, however, concerns about pressures on biodiversity — including those resulting from nitrogen pollution — have increased. More positively, greater attention is now given to understanding the co-benefits for the atmosphere of achieving climate change and air pollution efficiency targets as a package.
For other policy areas such as freshwater, oceans and biodiversity, recent EU initiatives have sought to strengthen objectives for ecosystem resilience, such as achieving 'good ecological status' in water bodies or maintaining ecosystem services. Alongside these, there are also resource efficiency targets either established or emerging in those sectors related to biodiversity loss. However, the relationship between resilience and efficiency targets in the area of biodiversity is arguably less well defined than, say, for air pollution and climate change.
For all the above examples and for other issues, ensuring coherent environmental policy demands explicit reflection on how objectives related to ensuring ecosystem resilience (or, simpler put, maintaining a good state of environment) can be translated into targets to improve resource efficiency. In addition, it is worth considering how a more combined approach to ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency would influence human well-being, access to environmental benefits and other social policy objectives.
Thus, in striving towards a 'green economy' — that is an economy in which environmental, economic and social policies and innovations enable society to use resources efficiently, thereby enhancing human well-being in an inclusive manner, while maintaining the natural systems that sustain us — there would be value in considering objectives and targets in integrated packages around key environmental topics. In setting objectives, such packages should explicitly recognise the relationships between resource efficiency, ecosystem resilience and human well-being as well as the different time lags for policy actions to succeed.
Such relationships might be considered both within an environmental policy area, such as biodiversity, and between policy areas, such as between biodiversity and climate change, taking account of issues such as differences in geographical scale when considering problems, solutions and trade-offs. Mapping the many interlinkages between areas and related policy targets would be a prelude to the design of policy measures and indicators that make environmental policy implementation stronger and more coherent, and enable existing objectives and targets to be achieved more effectively.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, environmental concerns motivating indicator choices were mostly related to the specific challenges of industrialised countries: air and water pollution, waste generation, environment and health impacts, landscape amenities and nature conservation in terms of protection of endangered species and habitats. Since the 1990s, the recognition of more diffuse challenges has driven demand for indicators to support integration of environmental considerations into the sectoral domains with the greatest environmental impacts, e.g. energy, transport, agriculture, industry (Table 11.2).
Table 11.2 Reflecting on environmental challenges
Source: European Environment Agency.
At the same time, more complex, systemic environmental issues such as climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, resource scarcities and cocktail effects on human health have come to the fore driving demands for more integrated indicators across the entire DPSIR chain (see Chapter 3). The globalisation cycle since the 1990s has been a major reason for this. For example, good performance in Europe in reducing pressures has sometimes resulted from the shift of polluting industries to less industrialised countries.
Related to this, in Europe and elsewhere, the need to account for natural and human resources as capital, in the same way as we account for economic and financial resources, is becoming more apparent. The multiple crises Europe and the world currently face — financial debts, economic recession, demographics, energy security, climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation — have raised the profile of issues such as systems resilience, transparency and accountability, debts, distributional equity, fairness and liability. The transition to a green economy can contribute to resolving many of these issues.
What could we consider as suitable indicators for measuring progress in the transition?
The demand for more integrated environmental indicators measuring overall progress has driven many trials (16). All fall short of the requirements, however, largely due to their partial coverage of and partial correspondence to European policy priorities. Thus, among the 225 indicators currently managed by the EEA (see Annex) there is no indicator that responds to this political demand (i.e. indicator type E — total welfare indicators).
The task to develop macro level metrics that can complement GDP is not trivial, as reflected most recently in the report of the 'Stiglitz-Fitoussi-Sen Commission' initiated by the Government of France (2007), or the European Commission's related 'GDP and Beyond' process (2008). These initiatives share common features. For example, in the short term, a basket of interlinked, coherent indicators to measure progress across the environmental, social and economic domains is regarded as feasible.
Such a basket of indicators that can address the systemic, interlinked challenges of resource efficiency, ecosystem resilience and human well-being would ideally feature key environmental resource dimensions such as materials, carbon, land and water individually, their uses as well as their respective interactions (see, for example, the schema offered in chapter 10 of this report). As such, it would be diagnostic rather than comprehensive.
This report demonstrates that several relevant indicators are already available to address both ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency by proxy. Additional ones can be constructed using environmental accounting, for example using NAMEA (17), or life-cycle methods, with the aim to produce indicators that can cover national, sectoral, product and trade perspectives.
In addition, a link to human well-being can be ensured in two principal ways. The first is through an explicit link between resource efficiency and how we are meeting our needs for food, water, energy and materials resources. The second is through establishing links between natural capital parameters and where people live, to better understand their access to nature or vulnerability to environmental change.
All the aforementioned baskets of indicators address physical changes. Changes in stocks of natural capital might also be evaluated in monetary terms and incorporated into the System of National Accounts (SNA), to complement GDP. Indeed, the architects of the SNA identified this approach as desirable as far back as the early 1950s. Also the EU Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe includes a milestone whereby public authorities and businesses will properly value and account for natural capital and ecosystem services by 2020.
However, the task of establishing credible links between the different capitals is complex, and fraught with conceptual difficulties and ethical concerns.
As noted above, indicators available to date offer only a sub-set of those ideally needed to address coherently systemic and interlinked environmental challenges. Nevertheless, the assessment presented in this report also highlights that those environmental indicators already available offer some basis for considering strategic objectives and targets with regard to both ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency.
(15) The remaining European land area is classified as semi-natural vegetation (8 %), open spaces and bare soils (6 %), wetland (2 %) and water bodies (3 %). >back
(16) Examples include the index of sustainable economic welfare, the environmental pressure index, the ecological footprint, and the OECD better life index, to name a few. >back
(17) NAMEA — National Accounting Matrix for Environmental Accounting. >back
• Environmental challenges are intrinsically linked with economic activity
• Close connections with global drivers of change pose additional challenges
• Supporting a transformation towards a green economy
Chapter 2. Ecosystem resilience, resource efficiency and the green economy
• Managing natural resources sustainably requires a green economy
• Ensuring ecosystem resilience to support sustained prosperity
• Improving resource efficiency to decrease environmental pressures
• A transformation to a green economy encompasses multiple dimensions
Chapter 3. Environmental indicators for ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency
• Reliable information provides insight into natural resource management
• The EEA maintains a wide range of environmental indicators
• Environmental indicators can illustrate ecosystem resilience and resource efficiency
We depend on our natural environment to supply the natural resources and ecosystem services that sustain our health and well-being, and ensure that our economies prosper. Natural resources include both renewables, such as food and biomass, and non-renewables, such as fossil fuels, metals and other raw materials. Ecosystem services include providing clean air and water, fertile soils and a stable climate, as well as the capacity to absorb waste.
The supply of ecosystem services and natural resources, whether renewable or non-renewable, is limited. Over-exploiting them puts both human well-being and economic output at risk. In some cases, one type of natural resource can be substituted for another. More often, however, this is not the case and once lost a resource may be irreplaceable. This means that natural resources must be managed to ensure that they are utilised carefully and to preserve, or in some cases prolong, their collective potential to deliver ecosystem services.
This backdrop leads to three interconnected questions:
• are we currently using and managing these resources and services — materials, food, energy or water — within the limits that our planet and the European continent can sustain?
• how can we manage them more sustainably, including by using them more efficiently?
• how successful have environmental policies been in supporting the use of natural resources in a way that does not put the sustainability of our economies at risk?
The European environment — state and outlook 2010 (EEA, 2010a) provides a comprehensive report on the European environment's state, trends and prospects – to help answer the above questions. It shows that environmental policy has delivered substantial progress in reducing environmental pressures and improving the state of the environment. Yet it also stresses that major environmental challenges remain, which will have significant consequences for Europe's environment, society and economy if left unaddressed.
The key environmental challenges we face today do not differ substantially from those a decade ago — indeed, many of them, such as air pollution, water stress, nature protection and waste management, have been on the political agenda for several decades. These issues are intrinsically linked to how our economies have evolved over time, and result from how and where we use natural resources. While urgent action is needed in some cases to address imminent crises, solving many of today's environmental concerns will require rigorous, long-term efforts.
While many of the environmental problems that we face are longstanding, our appreciation of their drivers and the links between them has changed. Decades of intensive use of natural capital stocks and ecosystem degradation to fuel economic development have not only created environmental pressures in Europe but have also contributed to global environmental changes. Climate change, loss of biodiversity, waste generation and various negative impacts on human health have impacts beyond European borders and have created potential risks for Europe.
Emerging and developing economies have replicated this trend in recent years but at a much faster rate, driven by increasing populations, growing numbers of middle class consumers, and rapid changes in consumption patterns towards levels in developed countries. Unprecedented global demand has chased scarcer energy and raw materials. And unparalleled shifts in economic power, growth, and trade patterns from advanced to emerging and developing economies have been accompanied by the delocalisation of production driven by competition.
The SOER 2010 – Assessment of global megatrends (EEA, 2010b) focuses on the impact of major global trends on Europe. The assessment provides detailed analysis of social, technological, economic, environmental and political megatrends. Furthermore it summarises the links between megatrends and Europe's priority environmental challenges, and reflects on possible implications for policymaking at the European level.
• increasing divergence in population trends: populations ageing, growing and migrating
• living in an urban world: spreading cities and spiralling consumption
• changing patterns of global disease burdens and the risk of new pandemics
• accelerating technologies: racing into the unknown
• continued economic growth?
• global power shifts: from a unipolar to a multi-polar world
• intensified global competition for resources
• decreasing stocks of natural resources
• increasing severity of the consequences of climate change
• increasingly unsustainable environmental pollution loads
• global regulation and governance: increasing fragmentation, but converging outcomes
Arguably more than ever, a range of long-term trends are set to shape the future European and global contexts. Many are outside Europe's direct influence. Several of these so-called global megatrends cut across social, technological, economic, political and even environmental dimensions. Key developments include changing demographic patterns or accelerating rates of urbanisation, ever faster technological changes, deepening market integration, evolving economic power shifts and climate change.
Population growth, urbanisation patterns and the emerging 'consumer middle class' in many developing countries, for example, are expected to result in continuous growth in demand for food, consumer goods and other resources. This markedly increases pressure on natural resources already under stress (such as fish stocks) or scarce (such as 'critical' raw materials), and it may put new stress on other resources. Already today international competition for resources risks causing geopolitical tensions.
In addition, the current financial and economic situation in Europe has driven urgent, short-term policy actions. In some instances this may make it more difficult to maintain a longer view on policy responses, which is often necessary when addressing environmental concerns. A key policy challenge is thus to reflect on and address potential synergies and trade-offs between the multiple economic, social and environmental goals that play out on different time scales — for example, the interplay between the urgent fiscal consolidation process in many European countries and the need to maintain ecosystem functions in the longer term.
Against this backdrop of unprecedented change, interconnected risks and increased vulnerabilities of current environmental challenges, four key future environmental policy priorities emerge (EEA, 2010a):
1. better implementation and further strengthening of current environmental priorities (2);
2. coherent integration of environmental considerations across sectoral policy domains;
3. dedicated management of natural capital and ecosystem services;
4. transformation to a green economy.
The present environmental indicator report focuses on the latter priority.
Fundamentally, a 'green economy' is one in which environmental, economic and social policies and innovations enable society to use resources efficiently, thereby enhancing human well-being in an inclusive manner, while maintaining the natural systems that sustain us.
This report offers indicators and assessments to address a twin challenge at the heart of green economy: first, the challenge of finding ways to improve the efficiency of natural resource use in production and consumption activities and reducing the related environmental impacts; and, second, the challenge of maintaining a resilient structure and functioning of ecosystems, such that they continue to deliver the ecosystem services that support our economies and well-being.
The notion of a transformation to a green economy corresponds to a growing recognition that decades of creating wealth through a more 'conventional' economic model based on fossil fuels have not substantially addressed resource depletion, environmental degradation and social marginalisation (UNEP, 2011a).
While there is agreement that our economies will need to play an integral role in achieving sustainable development, what exactly a 'green economy' could or would look like is less clear. This chapter thus presents several key concepts — 'green economy', 'ecosystem resilience', 'resource efficiency' — that can help support the notion of what is involved in transforming to a green economy.
As noted previously, 'green economy' is here understood to be one in which policies and innovations enable society to use resources efficiently, enhancing human well-being in an inclusive manner, while maintaining the natural systems that sustain us. It is worth noting that several other definitions exist. These reflect different views on the relationship between a green economy and the broader concept of sustainable development (and the different implicit understandings of what constitutes economic development and human well-being).
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), for example, defines a green economy as 'an economy that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities' (UNEP, 2011a). Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) considers a green economy one 'that generates growth, creates jobs and eradicates poverty by investing in and preserving the natural capital upon which the long-term survival of our planet depends' (EC, 2011a).
The term 'green economy' was coined in the late-1980s based on the reflection that environmental protection cannot be achieved unless an environmental perspective is integrated into economic and sectoral policies. A number of related terms, including 'green growth' and 'greening the economy' are often used interchangeably — although there can be appreciable differences between them.
A 'green economy' has often been viewed as a set of principles, aims and actions, which generally include most or all of the following (EEA, 2011, based on ECLAC, 2010; EEA, 2010; UNEP, 2011a; OECD, 2011a):
• equity and fairness, both within and between generations;
• consistency with the principles of sustainable development;
• a precautionary approach to social and environmental impacts;
• an appreciation of both natural and social capital alongside other forms of capital;
• sustainable and efficient resource use, consumption and production;
• a need to fit with existing macroeconomic goals, through the creation of green jobs, poverty eradication, increased competitiveness and development in key sectors.
Most interpretations of what is a green economy recognise that ecosystems, the economy, human well-being and their related types of capital are intrinsically linked (Figure 2.1). At the core of these links is the dual challenge of:
• ensuring ecosystem resilience of the natural systems that sustain us (and limiting pressure on natural systems so that their ability to function is not lessened);
• improving resource efficiency (and reducing the environmental impacts of our actions).
Source: European Environment Agency
Ecosystem resilience can be defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a (qualitatively) different state — the ability to withstand shocks or adapt when necessary. Human activities that adversely affect ecosystem resilience include those that lead to climate change, biodiversity loss, exploitation of natural resources, and pollution — or, more broadly speaking, the over-use of natural resources to fuel the economy.
Depletion of natural capital in Europe and elsewhere may jeopardise good ecological status and resilience. This can occur as a result of reduced natural resources or disruption of the relationship between the ecological components required to maintain stable environmental conditions. The impact of climate change and the adaption of ecosystems to these changes create additional uncertainty and risk. At the global scale, this risk has given rise to a discussion about global tipping points, and related environmental thresholds or planetary boundaries to avoid catastrophic environmental change (see, for example, Rockström et al., 2009).
The concept of ecosystem resilience is directly related to the notion of 'coping capacity' or 'adaptive capacity'. In environmental systems, adaptive capacity depends on factors such as genetic diversity, biological diversity and heterogeneity of landscapes. A society's adaptive capacity likewise depends on its readiness to respond to periods of change, relying on, for example, learning capacity, technological change and social fairness.
Simply put, resilience describes the stability of a system. In an ecosystem context, this has primarily been interpreted in two ways, reflecting different aspects of ecosystem stability.
On one hand, resilience describes the time it takes for an ecosystem to recover to a quasi-equilibrium state following disturbance (this can be referred to as 'engineering resilience' or 'elasticity'). On the other hand, resilience denotes the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of ecological processes (this can be referred to as 'ecological resilience').
In practice, ecosystem resilience builds on three characteristics: an ecosystem's capacity to resist change, the amount of change an ecosystem can undergo and still retain the same controls on structure and function, and an ecosystem's ability to reorganise following disturbance.
Resilience thus relates to characteristics that underpin the capacity of socio-ecological systems to provide ecosystem services. There is a growing recognition that diversity plays an important part in the sustainable functioning of ecosystems. However, as resilience in ecological systems is not easily observed there is often no agreed understanding of their exact relationship.
Resilience is used analogously in social sciences and economics. In social systems, resilience is also affected by the capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future. Similarly, in economics, resilience also refers to the inherent and adaptive responses to hazards that enable individuals and communities to avoid potential losses.
Source: Holling, 1973; Levin, 1998; Adger, 2000; Gunderson and Holling, 2002; Folke et al., 2004; Brand and Jax, 2007; Norberg et al., 2008; Campbell et al., 2009; www.resalliance.org.
Resilience is thus also central to social systems, especially during transition processes, as it describes the degree to which societies can build capacity for learning and adaptation. This, in turn, is directly related to the ability for self-organisation in the pursuit of long-term objectives — whether environmental, economic or social goals. Building resilience at all levels, for example through sound social safety nets, disaster risk reduction and adaptation planning, is key in any effort to achieve global sustainability (UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, 2012).
'Resource efficiency' is quite a broad concept. In the European context it is understood to require 'that all resources are sustainably managed, from raw materials to energy, water, air, land and soil'. A resource efficient economy 'is competitive, inclusive and provides a high standard of living with much lower environmental impacts' (EC, 2011b).
The term 'resource efficiency' as currently used widely in the policy debate often reveals a straightforward link to an economic interpretation of efficiency. Resource efficiency involves the relationship of resource inputs to economic outputs — reducing resource use and impacts while generating greater returns.
It is important to note that increasing resource efficiency is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for a green economy. Natural resource use may continue to increase in absolute terms despite increased resource efficiency. A relative decoupling of resource use from economic growth of this sort will not guarantee long-term sustainability. For this reason, the notion of absolute decoupling is central to the discussion of resource efficiency as it is also a precondition for achieving environmental impact decoupling.
Resource efficiency is nevertheless fundamental to a green economy. Any improvement in resource efficiency may also contribute to achieving wider policy objectives such as resource security and poverty eradication.
The term 'decoupling' is extensively used in the context of resource efficiency. An important distinction exists between two forms of decoupling: 'relative decoupling' and 'absolute decoupling' (Figure 2.2).
Relative decoupling is achieved when the growth rate of an environmental pressure (as measured, for example, by resource use or emissions) is lower than the growth rate of the related economic activity (as measured, for example, by a sector's gross value added or an economy's gross domestic product). Absolute decoupling is achieved when the related environmental pressure either remains stable or decreases while economic activity increases. In addition, 'impact decoupling' presents an enhanced form of absolute decoupling, and relates to the decoupling of environmental impacts from both the related resource use and economic activity.
Indicators such as 'resource productivity' (as measured, for example, by gross domestic product per unit of resource use) can be used as a measure of resource efficiency and to indicate decoupling. It is important to stress, however, that increases in resource productivity do not necessarily indicate absolute or impact decoupling, as they may be offset by increased economic activity.
Figure 2.2 Relative and absolute decoupling
Source: Based on EEA, 1999; UNEP, 2011b and OECD, 2011b.
At the core of a transformation to a green economy is the integration of economic and environmental policies in a way that highlights the opportunities for new sources of economic development, while avoiding unsustainable pressure on the quality and quantity of natural capital. At the same time, such a transformation has the potential to enhance social equity and fair burden-sharing in policy design, the sharing of environmental costs and access to environmental benefits. It directly influences three main dimensions of human well-being:
• Social equity in today's Europe: for example, ensuring fair access to the benefits of nature and protection from the impacts of pollution and health risks;
• International burden-sharing: for example, by addressing hidden ecological costs in trade, fair shares in carrying environmental burdens, and environmental footprints of consumption;
• Intergenerational aspects: for example, by addressing the natural and social capital stocks that we pass on to future generations and the discount rates used in the context of long-term economic projects and environmental policies.
It is worth noting that a transformation to a green economy implies a departure from the 'business as usual' economic paradigm, which is socially and economically unsustainable. A green economy can create new opportunities, in particular related to new jobs across many sectors of the economy or through a substitution process by shifting jobs from industries that rely on non-renewable resources (such as fossil fuels) to those that rely on renewable resources (such as recycling industries).
Achieving success in such a transformation will require a mixture of measures including economic instruments (such as taxes, subsidies and trading schemes), regulatory policies (such as standard setting) and non-economic measures (such as voluntary approaches and information provision). In particular, the internalisation of environmental costs, including through more widespread application of the polluter pays principle, and reduced environmentally harmful subsidies, must be part of the policy mix. Alongside these policy instruments and measures, additional public and private action is needed to speed up the transformation. A green economy is likely to depend crucially on innovation (in particular eco-innovation), investments (for example, in green technologies) and information sharing (especially to engage citizens).
Fundamentally, moving towards a green economy in Europe necessarily requires recognition of the region's uniqueness and environmental assets (or lack of such assets). For example, the European Union is one of the world's biggest trading blocs and consumers, driving natural resource opportunities, dependencies and vulnerabilities globally. The Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (EC, 2010), and the related 'Roadmap to a resource efficient Europe' (EC, 2011b) and the 'Roadmap for moving to a competitive low carbon economy in 2050' (EC, 2011c), already reflect some of this broader green economy perspective.
Reliable, relevant, targeted and timely environmental information is an essential element in implementing environmental policy and management processes. Such information can come in different formats. Broadly speaking information can be distinguished according to its level of aggregation: monitoring, data, indicators, assessments and knowledge(3).
In this context, 'monitoring' provides observations or measurements of environmental parameters. 'Data' and 'data sets' refer to the record of measurements, structured in a manner that allows further processing and comparisons. 'Indicators' can then be derived by further selection, aggregation and interpretation of multiple data, with a view to communicating the state and trends clearly and answering specific policy questions. Indicators underpin 'assessments' and result in 'knowledge', which supports policymaking.
Environmental indicators thus play a crucial role in policymaking by providing selected, aggregated and interpreted information at different stages in the policy cycle, with three major purposes (Stanners et al., 2007):
• supplying information on environmental problems, in order to enable policymakers to evaluate their seriousness (this is especially important for new and emerging issues);
• supporting policy development and priority setting by highlighting key factors in the cause-effect chain that produce environmental pressures and that policy can target;
• monitoring the effectiveness of policy responses.
An environmental indicator is a measure, generally quantitative, that can be used to illustrate and communicate complex environmental phenomena simply, including trends and progress over time — and thus helps provide insight into the state of the environment (EEA, 2005).
Environmental indicators may play very different roles depending on which environmental challenge they address and which stage of the policy cycle they aim to inform. It is useful to distinguish indicators that simply describe trends ('what is happening?') from those that assess progress in performance ('are we reaching targets?'), efficiency ('are we improving?'), effectiveness ('are measures and policies working?'), or total welfare ('are we on the whole better off?') (EEA, 2003; Stanners et al., 2007).
Indicators play a particularly important role in assessing the 'distance-to-target' where quantifiable policy targets have been established. Setting environmental targets and identifying appropriate indicators to monitor progress towards these targets over time are closely linked. It is difficult to implement policy and management measures if they cannot be associated with corresponding indicators.
It is worth noting, however, that while indicators can provide an accepted yardstick for benchmarking between different countries, regions, or municipalities, they can also be misleading in their simplicity. The basis for indicator selection, computation and communication must therefore be continuously kept under review to capture current developments and maintain policy relevance.
Over the past two decades, the European Environment Agency (EEA) has published assessments and indicators on most European environmental issues. Today it maintains an extensive set of over 200 environmental indicators across 12 environmental themes (see Annex). Most of these indicators are explicitly designed to support environmental policies, based on data compiled by EEA, as well as statistics from other international organisations (Figure 3.1).
EEA indicators are developed against the driving force, pressure, state, impact, and response (DPSIR) assessment framework. This framework helps to structure thinking about the interplay between the environment and socio-economic activities. It is used to help design assessments, identify indicators, and communicate results and can support improved environmental monitoring and information collection (Stanners et al., 2007).
Simply put, following the DPSIR framework, social and economic developments drive (D) changes that exert pressure (P) on the environment. As a consequence, changes occur in the state (S) of the environment, which lead to impacts (I) on, for example, human health, ecosystem functioning and the economy. Finally societal and political responses (R) affect earlier parts of the system directly or indirectly.
From a policy perspective, there is a clear need for information and indicators on all parts of the DPSIR chain (Stanners et al., 2007):
• Driving force indicators describe the social and economic developments in societies and the corresponding changes in lifestyles and overall levels of consumption and production patterns. Primary driving forces are demographic changes and economic activities.
• Pressure indicators describe developments in the release of substances (e.g. emissions to air or water), physical and biological agents, the use of resources and use of land. The pressures exerted often manifest themselves in changes in environmental conditions.
• State indicators provide a description of the quantity and quality of physical phenomena (e.g. temperature), biological phenomena (e.g. species and habitat diversity) and chemical phenomena (e.g. nutrient critical loads) in a certain area.
• Impact indicators are used to describe the relevance of changes in the state of the environment, as well as the corresponding implications for ecosystems, the economy and human well-being and health.
• Response indicators refer to responses by society and policymakers that attempt to prevent, compensate, ameliorate, or adapt to changes in the state of the environment. Examples include recycling rates of domestic waste or use of renewable energy sources.
Source: European Environment Agency.
The complete set of EEA indicators can be interpreted according to different types of reading or mapping, depending on the purpose to be achieved. For example, for this report the existing indicators have been considered through the lens of the green economy.
To support reflections on a green economy in Europe, this report showcases indicators relevant to the twin challenge of ensuring ecosystem resilience and improving resource efficiency (as described in Chapter 2). In view of the many different dimensions a transformation to a green economy aims to address, reliable information about these two aspects is of paramount importance.
With this in mind, the subsequent chapters of this report present an indicator-based assessment building on a selection of EEA environmental indicators for six environmental topics: nitrogen emissions and loss of biodiversity, carbon emissions and climate change, air pollution and air quality, water use and water stress, use of maritime resources and the marine environment, and use of material resources and waste.
These topics are selected to illustrate aspects that are both directly and indirectly relevant to the four priority areas of the EU's Sixth Environment Action Programme: climate change; nature and biodiversity; natural resources and waste; and environment, health and quality of life (EC, 2002; EEA, 2010). The six topics assessed here do not map directly onto these four priority areas but do address key environmental pressures related to each of them.
For each of the six topics, this report focuses on two types of indicators in a green economy context:
• First, indicators that illustrate threats to ecosystem resilience. Usually such indicators will relate to environmental thresholds or political targets. In the absence of dedicated resilience indicators (4) this report uses either state or impact indicators that are related to resilience. This reflects the assumption that an environmental system under stress will have less ability to adapt to additional pressures, thus displaying low resilience.
• Second, indicators that illustrate progress towards improving resource efficiency in the context of the respective environmental topic. Usually such indicators will relate directly to sectoral activities and belong to the group of pressure indicators. Ideally, resource efficiency indicators can be related to their key driving forces, and measure whether the environmental pressure per production unit or per economic activity is increasing or decreasing.
In addition, for each topic, developments in a key associated economic sector are illustrated using response or driving force indicators as available. These indicators illustrate specific trends within a key related economic sector and how these trends link to the overall ambition of transitioning towards a green economy in Europe.
(2) Particularly in, but not limited to, the current policy priority areas climate change, nature and biodiversity, natural resource use and waste, environment, health and quality of life. > back
(3) Also referred to as the MDIAK reporting chain: monitoring-data-indicators-assessments-knowledge (EEA, 2011). > back
(4) Note that a key reason for this absence of dedicated indicators is that 'resilience focuses on variables that underlie the capacity of socio-ecological systems to provide ecosystem services, whereas other indicators tend to concentrate on the current state of the system or service' (Folke et al., 2002). > back]]>
"Water resources are under pressure in many parts of Europe, and it is getting worse," EEA Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade said.
"Agriculture, energy production, industry, public water supply and ecosystems are all important, and all competing for this limited resource. With climate change making water supply less predictable, it is extremely important that Europe uses water more efficiently for the benefit of all its users. Water resources should be managed as effectively as any other natural asset owned by countries."
Water shortages have severe consequences for economies reliant on agriculture and industry. Some shortages have even led to drinking water restrictions in parts of Europe. There are also indirect effects on the economy, as reduced river flows, falling lake and groundwater levels, and disappearing wetlands can have destructive effects on the natural systems underpinning economic productivity.
Increasingly, there is intense competition for water resources in some parts of Europe. Across the European Union, agriculture uses about a quarter of water diverted from the natural environment, though this can be up to 80% in southern Europe. In addition, public water supply accounts for approximately a fifth of water use across Europe – and over a quarter of this is used just to flush the toilet. Hydropower installations also change the natural structure and flow of rivers and lakes, with consequences for ecosystems.
Agriculture is one sector where easy efficiency gains are possible, because a lot of water is used inefficiently to irrigate crops. Some estimates calculate that approximately a quarter of water abstracted for irrigation in Europe could be saved, just by changing the type of pipe or channel used. Public water supply can be made more effective - as much as 50% of drinking water is lost in some EU Member States.
Inefficient use of water also leads to higher energy use, with extra financial and environmental costs, according to the report. While the energy needed to pump and treat freshwater into drinking water is typically around 0.6 kWh/m3, desalination of seawater adds approximately 4 kWh/m3. Several European countries use desalination technology, most notably Spain, which is among the highest users of desalination globally.
Authorities should set clear environmental targets for water use, within the limit of what is sustainable, according to the report. Such targets would differ depending on the available resources, but should be designed so that the natural environment has sufficient water to function. A form of 'decoupling' is needed so that increasing economic productivity does not entail increasing water use and increasing environmental impacts.
Historically, water prices in Europe have rarely reflected the true financial cost of supplying water, nor the economic costs to the environment. This has led to pollution and water scarcity, imposing costs on the environment and society. For example, the general public typically has to pay for the cost of treating drinking water contaminated by agriculture or industry. Putting the right price on water can incentivise more efficient use of water and technological innovation. Effective use of taxes, subsidies, market mechanisms, pricing schemes and other economic instruments can also help balance conflicting demands on water.
Later this year, the 'Blueprint to safeguard Europe's waters' published by the European Commission will map the way forward in this area. Throughout 2012 the EEA will release a series of reports on related water issues, exploring a variety of challenges and opportunities.]]>
The European Commission's recent Resource Efficiency Roadmap states that while "demand for food, feed and fibre may increase by 70 % by 2050, 60 % of the world's major ecosystems that help produce these resources have already been degraded or are used unsustainably." Such unchecked resource use will increase environmental destruction and inequality; and ultimately lead to the disappearance of the natural and mineral resources which support modern societies.
To address this problem, countries across Europe have been working on strategies and policies to become more resource-efficient. When responding to the survey, countries cited several reasons for attempting to become more resource efficient, including concerns about environmental degradation, economic reasons or shortages of a critical resource such as water.
"Transforming Europe into a sustainable economy will require concerted action at all policy levels," Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for the Environment, said. "Member States have an essential role in getting resource efficiency measures across to businesses and citizens. This survey shows that we are not starting from scratch and illustrates how this transition can be done in so many ways to match different national contexts."
Some of the initiatives described by respondents include:
A total of 31 countries from across Europe responded to the survey. There is no single accepted definition of resource efficiency, so answers showed the huge variety of different approaches. However, this diverse approach may be appropriate, as every country has different resources, economic situations and needs.
The EU thematic strategy on the sustainable use of natural resources defines natural resources as "raw materials such as minerals, biomass and biological resources; environmental media such as air, water and soil; flow resources such as wind, geothermal, tidal and solar energy; and space (land area)."
For most countries, resource efficiency was seen as part of other strategies, including strategies related to sustainable development, environment, raw materials, climate change and economic reform. The sectors of energy and waste were the two most common areas for resource efficiency policies.
Nonetheless, the survey showed that Europe still has a long way to go if it is to make comprehensive plans for resource efficiency. According to the results, only a few countries have policies addressing the more fundamental issue of consumption, instead attempting to improve technical efficiency.
Nonetheless, waste volumes continue to rise across the EU. The average EU citizen generated 468 kg of municipal solid waste in 1995, which increased to 524 kg in 2008. This could rise to 558 kg per person by 2020 unless effective policies are put in place to reduce waste generation.
The report takes a 'life-cycle approach' to calculating emissions from waste, considering all direct emissions from waste during processing and transport. In addition, it also accounts for emissions that are avoided in other parts of the economy – for example, accounting for the reduction of emissions when fossil fuels are displaced by energy recovered from waste. In this way, the method can show the potential impacts of various waste management strategies.
Especially recycling leads to avoided emissions. This is because recycling materials from municipal waste avoids emissions that would have been generated in extracting and processing virgin raw materials and these avoided emissions are higher than the emissions caused by the recycling processes. More details on the calculations, assumptions and data are available in this working paper.
Three different scenarios for 2020 illustrate that the potential for GHG savings largely depends on how countries implement EU waste policies, in particular whether they meet the EU Landfill Directive targets to reduce landfill of biodegradable municipal waste.
An analysis by the OECD , following a somewhat different but also life-cycle based approach, broadly confirms the findings of the EEA work, namely, that better management of municipal waste has a significant potential to reduce GHG emissions.
Encouragingly, ever more municipal solid waste is recycled and less is landfilled. The EU recycled 17 % of its municipal solid waste in 1995 and 40 % in 2008. In that period, the amount going to landfill dropped from 68 % to 40 %. These improvements have already cut annual net GHG emissions by 48 million tonnes CO2-e between 1995 and 2008 in the EU-27, Norway and Switzerland.
Kitchen and garden waste is the biggest fraction of municipal solid waste in most EU countries. This represents a sizeable opportunity to cut emissions through recycling and energy recovery – in 2008, 44 million tonnes of organic matter was composted, emitting 1.4 million tonnes CO2-e. If that had been subjected to anaerobic digestion, producing useful biogas, it could have cut 2 million tonnes CO2-e from Europe's emissions.
In addition to climate concerns, increasing recycling and energy recovery also enhances resource efficiency, a main goal of the EU2020 strategy. However, even the most effective waste management strategy generates GHGs and causes the loss of resources. Authors note that the best strategy is avoiding generating waste in the first place.
Once above ground, the minerals are brought to towns such as Ndjingala, Osakari and Mubi. The carriers walk the 90 kilometres in two days, bearing as much as 50 kilos each. Every day 600 carriers come out of the woods with a total of 30 tonnes of minerals.
Cassiterite from Bisie is bought by middlemen linked to exporters and international traders who sell the ore on to smelters on the open market. At the smelters, the tin is refined and sold either directly to solder manufacturers, or through international metal exchanges. Finally, tin solder is sold to manufacturers for use in the production of electronic gadgets.
"The first time I crawled down the hole — I could not stay for very long. I wasn't used to the heat, so I could only stay for two hours down there. Again and again I had to go down, work a lot and then come up again. It was very hot, and I couldn't handle it. I ran away from Bisie mine during a massacre. But I didn't achieve my dream — so now I came back home to finish school."
The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) calls the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) one of the most important centres for biodiversity in the world. WWF says the challenge is to preserve the forests of the Congo, their species and the carbon sequestrated in the swamp forests while improving the livelihoods of the Congolese people.
This is a global challenge. In its Millennium Development Goals Report 2005, the United Nations states that 'despite the many benefits of globalisation, nearly half the world's 2.8 billion workers still live on less than USD 2 a day. More than 500 million of these workers subsist on half that much. It goes on to say that "reducing poverty will require more jobs and more productive employment."
The text in this section of Signals is partly based on the documentary film 'Blood in the Mobile', directed by Frank Piasecki Poulsen. Congo photography copyright Mark Craemer.]]>
The tribal people living in the forest here have a lot to lose and little to gain. The forest tribes are not well protected — their rights have never been set down or properly recognised. In a small tribal village deep in the forests covering the district of Gajapati, married couple Gangi Bhuyan and her husband Sukru Bhuyan live with their young family in and around the forest.
For about five months of the year they feed their family from the less than half acre plot of land they cultivate on the verge of the forest that surrounds Raibada, their village. During this time they also harvest vegetables, seeds, fruit, medicine and building materials (such as grass) from the forest. For a further four months, this is their main supply of food. Without the forest they would starve. For the remaining three months they are forced to migrate to large urban areas such as Bangalore or Mumbai where they work as labourers.
Orissa, located in peninsular east India on the Bay of Bengal, is richly endowed with a variety of minerals. Indeed the state is regarded as one of the most resource-rich states in the country. In terms of quality, the minerals found in Orissa are considered among the best in the world.
With its abundance of largely unexplored reserves of coal, iron ore, bauxite, chromite, limestone, dolomite, manganese, granite, tin, nickel, vanadium and gemstones, the state is experiencing a huge leap in industrialisation. For a few minerals Orissa also constitutes a significant share of world reserves, not just in terms of quantity but also quality. That is why international companies are queuing up to gain access.
Some of the minerals are used in India but a sizeable amount go elsewhere: China, Japan, South Africa, Russia, Korea, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ukraine, Nepal, USA and of course, the European Union (Ota, A.B., 2006).
Orissa, with its combination of wealth in the ground and poverty above it, illustrates several fault lines of our global world. Here inequality, the relentless drive for natural resources and forced migrations come together. While mining in Orissa does bring economic benefits to the area, these returns are not shared equally. For the forest tribes the cost is high because their homes are in jeopardy as mining companies increasingly seek to gain access to their land.
Sixty per cent of Orissa's tribal populations live on land below which mineral wealth is buried. Traditionally, however, they have no record of rights over this land. Displacement of tribal people to enable economic development projects, including mining activities, has happened for some time. But the scale of the displacement has changed in recent decades, with economic developments since 1991 increasing the number and spread of displacements (Ota, A.B., 2006).
In Europe, we rely heavily on natural resources to fuel our economic development and wealth. Our use of resources now exceeds local availability and we increasingly depend on resources from elsewhere in the world.
In fact more than 20 % of the raw materials we use in Europe are imported. And we use significantly more raw materials indirectly as we also import finished goods made elsewhere.
Our reliance on imports is particularly serious with regard to fuels and mining products. But Europe is also a net importer of fodder and cereals for European meat and dairy production. And more than half of EU fish supplies are imported; having depleted our own fish stocks, we are now doing the same elsewhere.
The environmental pressures related to extracting resources and producing traded goods — such as the waste generated, or water and energy used — affect the countries of origin. The resource impacts can be significant — in the case of computers or mobile phones they may be on a scale several orders of magnitude greater than the product itself. Yet, despite their importance, such pressures are seldom reflected in prices or other signals that guide consumer decision-making.
Another example of the natural resources embedded in traded products is the water required in growing regions for many exported food and fibre products. Such production results in an indirect and often implicit export of water resources. For example, 84 % of the EU's cotton-related water use lies outside the EU, mostly in water-scarce regions with intensive irrigation.
Read more and find a full list of references in the SOER 2010: www.eea.europa.eu/soer/synthesis
Natural resource use links to a range of environmental and socio-economic issues. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB process) — a major analysis of the global economic significance of biodiversity — sheds light on the links between biodiversity loss and poverty.
TEEB researchers sought to identify the immediate beneficiaries of many of the services of ecosystems and biodiversity. 'The answer', writes Pavan Sukhdev, Head of the UNEP Green Economy Initiative, 'is that it is mostly the poor. The livelihoods most affected are subsistence farming, animal husbandry, fishing and informal forestry — most of the world's poor are dependent on them (EC, 2008).
The impact of the loss of biodiversity in India also has serious implications for women as it severely affects their role as forest gatherers. Studies in the tribal regions of Orissa and Chattisgarh, have recorded how deforestation has resulted in loss of livelihoods, in women having to walk four times the distance to collect forest produce and in their inability to access medicinal herbs which have been depleted. This loss reduces income, increases drudgery and affects physical health. There is also evidence to show that the relative status of women within the family is higher in well-forested villages, where their contribution to the household income is greater than in villages that lack natural resources (Sarojini Thakur, 2008).
In Europe, we are often insulated from the direct impacts of environmental degradation — at least in the short term. But for poor people directly reliant on the environment for food and shelter, the effects can be severe. The weakest in society are often bear the greatest burden from the destruction of natural systems, while deriving few, if any, of the benefits.
Annual natural capital losses are typically estimated at an unimpressive few percentage points of GDP. If, however, we re-express these in human terms, based on the principle of equity and our knowledge of where nature's benefits flow — i.e. to the poor — then the argument for reducing such losses gains considerable strength.
This point applies around the globe. It is about the right of the world's poor to livelihood flows from nature which comprise half of their welfare or more, and which they would find it impossible to replace (EC, 2008).
The concepts of 'natural capital' and 'ecosystem services' are at the heart of discussions about humankind's relationship with the environment. To understand them, it's useful to consider what natural systems actually do for us.
Take forests, for example. Forests can provide all sorts of food: fruit, honey, mushrooms, meat and so on. If properly managed, they can also deliver a sustainable flow of resources such as wood to the economy. But forests do a lot more too. For example, trees and vegetation help ensure a healthy climate locally and globally by absorbing pollutants and greenhouse gases. Forest soils decompose wastes and purify water. And people often travel far to enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of forests, or to engage in pastimes such as hunting.
All of these services — providing food and fibre, regulating the climate and so on — are valuable. We would pay a lot for machines that could do the same thing. For that reason, we should think of ecosystems as a form of capital, which provides services to the owner but often also to other people nearby and far off (as in the case of climate regulation). Crucially, we need to maintain our natural capital — not overexploiting the ecosystem and not over-polluting — if it is to continue providing these hugely valuable services.
The primary reason for losing forest biodiversity is that its value is not well understood. For example the decision to convert one hectare of forest rich in biodiversity for agriculture or construction is usually based on the immediate benefits. Little attention is paid to the many non-measurable ecological services provided by these ecosystems.
Medicine in India's forests
In addition to rich flora and fauna, India also has one of the world's richest medicinal plant heritages. As many as 8 000 species of plants are regularly used as medicine by the people of India with 90–95 % coming from forests. Less than 2 000 of these plants are officially documented in the Indian system of medicine. Information on the rest is undocumented and transmitted by word of mouth and as traditional knowledge. Only 49 species are used in modern medicine.
Biodiversity is a form of insurance against human disease — a bank of knowledge holding potential cures for diseases such as cancer or AIDS. For example, the bark of the cinchona tree contains a drug used to fight malaria. Critically, we are often ignorant of society's loss when a species becomes extinct.
This section is based on the report Green accounting for Indian states project: the value of biodiversity in India's forests (Gundimeda et al., 2006)
Globalisation is often characterised by movement — of people, goods, wealth and knowledge, for example. Standing still or staying put is not generally counted among the human rights we prioritise. But the forest people of Orissa and many others often crave just that: to be able to stay where they are, where they have food and shelter and contacts with their family and tribal relations. Where generations have felt safe and secure.
Indeed, as a tide of peoples moves towards cities and urban areas we should be thinking about empowering people to stay where they are.]]>
'The smoke started to blow over the farm late one evening. It wasn't nice. The ash was falling like snow,' says Guðni Þorvaldsson, who runs the family farm in southern Iceland, just 8 km from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. We had to move the sheep, lambs and some of the horses indoors. The sheep had to be checked every three hours because it was the lambing season. Everything was grey. The largest bits of ash were 3 cm. I left footprints in it like snow.'
Guðni Þorvaldsson and the rest of the Icelandic population were remarkably well prepared for the massive eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in March 2010. A sophisticated monitoring system using global satellite positioning technology continually measures active volcanoes on Iceland. The readings suggested that the volcano was increasing in height — a sure sign of volcanic activity inside the mountain. Other monitoring activities confirmed this. Combined with an effective public information system, it shows just how valuable environmental information can be.
The rest of the world was perhaps not as well prepared. The impacts became global within days, mostly as a result of the massive ash cloud that formed and its impacts on air traffic. The ash moved at between 20 000 and 36 000 feet — the same altitude range that airliners use. Air space was shut over Europe, which in turn grounded Europe-bound flights from as far away as Sydney. The International Air Transport Association estimated that airlines were losing USD 200 million a day in revenues.
Almost any industry relying on air transport was affected. In Kenya, plants, flowers and vegetables grown for the European market rotted in the baking sun with losses in the millions of Euros. It is estimated that during the first few days after the eruption, ten million flowers — mostly roses — were thrown away. Vegetables, such as asparagus, broccoli and green beans were fed to cattle instead of ending up on European dinner tables. Supplies of fresh tuna from Vietnam and the Philippines began to run out in Europe.
The eerily quiet skies over Europe in April 2010 served as a reminder of just how much air traffic there normally is. Stories about rotting flowers and vegetables in Kenya remind us where our some of our flowers and vegetables come from. Indeed, the eruption illustrated clearly the connectivity between some of the key systems — manmade and natural — underpinning our globalised society.
The Ecological Footprint is one of a number of measures used to illustrate the demands humanity places on the planet. The footprint has limitations but it is also a relatively easy concept to understand: it estimates the area of land and sea required to provide the resources we use and to absorb our waste.
In 2003 the European Union's Ecological Footprint was 2.26 billion global hectares or 4.7 global hectares per person. In contrast, Europe's total productive area was 1.06 billion global hectares or 2.2 global hectares per person (WWF, 2007).
If all the world's citizens were to live as Europeans do, humanity would need more than two and a half planets to provide the resources we consume, absorb our wastes and leave some capacity for wild species (WWF, 2007).
Earth Overshoot Day marks the day in the calendar when humanity's consumption of ecological resources that year is equal to what nature can produce in 12 months. It's the day our collective pay packet runs out and we start borrowing from the planet.
In 2010, the Global Footprint Network estimated that by August 21 humanity had used up all the ecological services — from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food — that nature could safely provide for all of that year. From August 21 until the end of the year, our ecological demands were met by depleting resource stocks and accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Did you know? An average European citizen uses about four times more resources than one in Africa and three times more than one in Asia, but half of one in USA, Canada or Australia.
Both the 'Global Footprint' and 'Earth Overshoot Day' are rough estimates. But we know for certain that our demand for natural resources worldwide has increased tremendously over recent decades. The main drivers have been growth in population, wealth and consumption. Most of the population growth has taken place in developing countries while the highest levels of wealth and consumption are in developed countries.
In Europe we maintain our ecological deficit — the difference between our footprint and our biocapacity — by importing goods and services from beyond our borders. We also export some of our waste. Essentially, we are becoming increasingly less self-sufficient.
As a result of growing global trade, an increasing share of the environmental pressures and impacts caused by consumption in EU Member States are felt elsewhere. While some of this shift is between EU Member States, a large part is outside the EU and beyond the reach of current EU production-related policies. This means we are exporting the impacts of our consumption to countries where environmental policy is often underdeveloped — effectively putting the local populations and environment under extreme pressure.
Global consumption is causing major, irreversible impacts on global ecosystems: 130 000 km2 of tropical rainforest are being cleared each year. In addition, since 1960 a third of the world's farmland has been abandoned or exhausted as a result of overexploitation and soil degradation.*
We need to become better at balancing the need to preserve natural capital and using it to fuel the economy. Increasing the efficiency of resource use is a key response. Recognising that our demands on natural systems are currently unsustainable, we basically need to do more with less.
Encouragingly, this is an area where the interests of the environmental and commercial sectors can be aligned: businesses prosper or falter based on their ability to extract maximum value from inputs, just as preserving the natural world and human wellbeing depends on us doing more with a limited flow of resources.
Resource efficiency is now a flagship initiative in the EU — a crucial element of the strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth by 2020. Resource efficiency combines the principles of good business with good environmental practice by making more while reducing waste. It's like combining a healthier diet with an exercise regime — after a while you learn that you can do more with less.
* For more information see SOER thematic assessments: consumption and the environment
Our consumption patterns of eating, driving or heating our homes, leads directly to environmental pressures. Of greater magnitude, however, are the indirect pressures that are created along the production chains of the goods and services consumed. This could be the impacts from mining or harvesting, the use of water to grow crops, or damage to local biodiversity from intensive farming or pollution.
As consumers, however, we can influence our environmental impacts, for example by purchasing sustainably produced food and fibres.
Globally, organic production and 'conservation farming' are gaining in popularity and success. The Conservation Cotton Initiative is just one example of sustainable approaches to production that lessen impacts on local environments.
The Conservation Cotton Initiative
The Conservation Cotton Initiative Uganda (CCIU) was created by ethical clothing company EDUN, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Invisible Children to build sustainable farming communities in Uganda.
'CCIU is based in one of the poorest area of Uganda, Gulu District, an area recovering from a civil war, which displaced millions. The CCIU Programme assists farmers who are returning to their land by providing funding, tools, and training to grow a sustainable cotton business,' says Bridget Russo, Global Marketing Director, EDUN.
Farmers are trained to extend their fields by growing a combination of rotational food crops to meet their families' basic needs, and cotton, a cash crop for which there is international demand. Currently there are 3 500 farmers benefitting from the CCIU Programme and there are plans to increase this to 8 000 over the next three years.
This collaboration aims to improve the livelihoods of communities in Africa by supporting farmers to sustainably harvest conservation cotton.
Five years ago Bisie was jungle. Located in the Wailikale territory, east Congo, it is now a cramped township as a result of the discovery of cassiterite, a derivative of tin that is a crucial component in the circuitry of many modern gadgets. It's in your mobile phone, laptop, digital cameras and gaming devices.
Cassiterite is widely sought after and very valuable. Indeed our demand for consumer electronics has resulted in a price surge for tin ore. Prices on the London Metal Exchange have increased from around USD 5 000 per tonne in 2003 to more than USD 26 000 per tonne in late 2010, according to the Financial Times.
Today a range of natural resources in the forests and jungles of the Congo are in great demand. Nevertheless, the Congo remains extremely poor. During the past 15 years more than 5 million have died in eastern Congo in a war between several armed groups. And it is estimated that no less than 300 000 women have been raped.
This has happened before in the Congo, which was colonised just over 100 years ago by King Leopold II of Belgium. He became one of the richest men in the world by selling rubber from the Congo. This was the time of industrialisation and the booming car industry depended on rubber.
Our longstanding demand for natural resources to feed, clothe, house, transport and entertain ourselves is accelerating just as stocks of certain resources are reaching critically low levels.
Natural systems are also subject to new demands, such as for plant-based chemicals or for biomass to replace fossil fuels. Taken together, these mounting demands on a shrinking resource base point to serious risks to Europe's development.
'As global citizens we are all tied to the violence taking place in the Congo. The extraction of conflict minerals that sustains this conflict connects us all.'
Margot Wallström, UN Secretary-General's Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.
'The Millennium Declaration in 2000 was a milestone in international cooperation, inspiring development efforts that have improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide a structure for the entire international community to work together towards a common end.
'The goals are achievable but improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises.
'The world possesses the resources and knowledge to ensure that even the poorest countries and others held back by disease, geographic isolation or civil strife can be empowered to achieve the MDGs. Meeting the goals is everyone's business. Falling short would multiply the dangers of our world — from instability to epidemic diseases to environmental degradation. But achieving the goals will put us on a fast track to a world that is more stable, more just, and more secure.
'Billions of people are looking to the international community to realise the great vision embodied in the Millennium Declaration. Let us keep that promise.'
BanKi-moon, Secretary General, United Nations, in 'The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010' (UN, 2010)
As the 21st century progresses we see that more and more key global dynamics are outside Europe's influence and control. This has implications in terms of access to resources.
Globally, we see marked uncertainty regarding supply and access to a range of crucial natural resources: food, water and fuels. Europe's need for resources could in coming decades be matched by those of China, India, Brazil and others, putting even greater pressure on the environment.
Indeed, some developing nations are racing towards levels of economic activity equal to Europe's: their populations, consumption levels and production capacity have the potential to dwarf ours. Their legitimate quest to develop economically and socially will lead to greater use of global stocks of raw materials. China in particular is proving adept at securing access to raw materials from a range of countries and regions.
The human population is growing, technologies are advancing and the power of non-governmental private actors such as multinationals is expanding. In the context of weak international governance mechanisms, these forces threaten a global 'free for all' in securing and accessing natural resources.
The very nature of globalisation also provides opportunities and structures for a different outcome. The seeds exist for effective, fair global governance of matters critical to us all.
The United Nations 'Millennium Development Goals' are just one example of a global policy process devoted to equitable and sustainable human development.
International climate talks have made progress over the past year. The Cancún Agreement, signed in December 2010 acknowledges for the first time in a United Nations document that global warming must be kept below 2 °C compared to the pre industrial temperature.
The agreement confirms that developed countries — whose industrial activities and footprint initiated manmade climate change — will mobilise USD 100 billion in climate funding for developing countries annually by 2020. It also establishes a Green Climate Fund through which much of the funding will be channelled.
Innovations such as the so-called 'REDD+' (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism enable action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. None of these activities would be possible without global governance structures and a spirit of cooperation.
The European Union is seeking to promote collaborative responses to common challenges and goals. The EU's 2020 Vision sets out a strategy for growth designed around a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy.
Global political processes clearly have an important role to play in ensuring that economic growth doesn't destroy the underlying natural systems. But another defining characteristic of globalisation is the growing importance of non-government actors.
Multinational businesses, such as mobile phone and IT companies, can alsoplay a key role in delivering sustainable development. The first company to certify their products as free of 'conflict' minerals will have a positive impact on many lives and massive marketing potential.
We must take the innovative research and development examples of leading companies and apply them to the challenges facing us. We must mobilise the full range of problem-solving capacity available to us towards continued, sustainable development.
As citizens — individually and through non-governmental organisations — we are also mobilising. Some of us take to the streets to protest. Some are investing their time and energy in rediscovering food or community activism. Many are adjusting their consumption choices to minimise environmental impacts and ensure a fair return for producers in developing countries. The point is: globalisation is affecting all of us and we're beginning to wake up to the fact that we are not powerless: we can shape things.
We must continue to develop, to create, to work and educate ourselves, and become smarter about our use of natural resources. For example, the first, critical aim of the Millennium Development Goals is to secure the natural environment on which the poorest of the poor depend for their daily survival.
This means managing natural resources in a way that that allows local communities to survive, then benefit and then advance. This is one of the major challenges facing us globally as we shall read in the next chapter on resources and forest-dwelling people in India.
It's a challenge in which Europeans have a large part to play. Managing global resources sustainably will be key to equitable economic prosperity, greater social cohesion and a healthier environment.
At the Federal Institute of Natural Resources and Geological Science in Hanover, Germany, Dr Frank Melcher heads a team developing a way to certify the minerals used in electronics — in the same way as diamonds are certified. Each of the minerals in question has a distinct 'fingerprint' connected to its place of origin. 'To fingerprint minerals such as coltan and cassiterite we drill a small hole through that sample,' Dr Melcher explains.'Then we scan the sample for about two to three hours. We then analyse the volume for its composition. This is the fingerprint. And this is very typical for Bisie.
'From every grain analysed here, we get the formation age — the geological age — and we can say: this material must come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or from Mozambique, because we know exactly how old these grains should be.
'So it is technically possible to trace the raw minerals but they must be traced before they are smelted into metals,' he says.
Dr Melcher's work is undertaken as part of cooperation agreements between the German and Congolese governments for the project 'Strengthening of transparency and control of the natural resource sector in DRC'. Initiated in 2009, the work supports the DRC Ministry of Mines in implementing a mineral certification system for tin, tungsten, tantalite, and gold.
Some facts on resource use in Europe:
Europe needs to decouple resource use from economic growth, according to the State and Outlook of the Environment Report (SOER) published by the EEA in 2010. Although this may sound like a difficult and complex task, all European citizens can play a part. Reducing consumption and increasing recycling are both important parts of the puzzle – perhaps something to consider on World Environment Day.
To find out how you can reduce your impact on the environment, check our Green Tips.]]>
Today Europe, like much of the industrialised world, is faced with a complex problem. Our economies depend on a continuous flow of raw materials which we no longer can take for granted. In addition, this rapid consumption of resources damages the environment and produces waste. So in an increasingly populated and resource-hungry world, efficient use of limited resources is more important than ever.
Resources under pressure include non-renewable substances, such as metals, fossil fuels, chemicals and other minerals. Although other kinds of resources may be considered 'renewable', including clean water, air, animals and plant life, there are limits to the rate at which natural systems can regenerate these materials. In this way, resource efficiency cuts across traditional boundaries between environmental and economic ideas, exposing constraints and opportunities.
The EEA recently released its State and Outlook Report (SOER) 2010, which showed how accelerating resource use could lead to environmental degradation, conflict and economic disaster.
On average, Europeans use about 16 tonnes of material resources per year. Most predictions foresee continued growth in the use of material resources both in the EU and globally. Europe's demand has long exceeded its ability to generate the resources it uses. Today, 20 - 30 % of resources used are imported, and Europe's open economy relies heavily on imported raw materials, especially metals and fossil fuels. While some progress has been made in reducing the impact of this high resource consumption, such efficiency gains are wiped out by ever-higher demand for goods and services.
Green Week has established itself as the leading conference on EU environmental policy, attracting participants from government, business, non-governmental organisations, academia and the media.
The conference will also provide input to the Roadmap for a Resource Efficient Europe, a policy proposal being prepared by the European Commission.
Many of the planet's species are found in forest ecosystems, which also provide vital services for people across Europe – including cleaning our air, stopping soil erosion, filtering water and providing products like timber and food. But to see forests as purely a service or a source of goods belies their intrinsic value for maintaining biodiversity. To highlight their importance to life on Earth, the United Nations has declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests, while 2011-2020 has been designated the UN Decade on Biodiversity.
Around one-third of the land area of EEA and collaborating countries is covered by forest, with the largest wooded areas located in Finland, France, Spain and Sweden. Of this area, only 5 % is undisturbed by significant human intervention. These old growth natural and semi-natural forests are particularly valuable for biodiversity and carbon storage.
More than half of the forest species of 'European interest' and over 60 % of forest habitat types identified by the Habitats Directive are reported to be in 'unfavourable conservation status'[1]. Indeed, 27% of mammals, 10 % of reptiles and 8 % of amphibians linked to forest ecosystems are threatened with extinction in the EU.
For some forests, climate change is the biggest threat to biodiversity. Rising temperatures are expected to affect the range of tree species. This is predicted to affect forests at latitudinal and altitudinal extremes, while forest fires are increasing at lower latitudes, for example around the Mediterranean. Increased periods of drought and warmer winters are likely to further weaken forests against invasive species.
Better forest management is needed in some areas – some European forests are intensive monocultures with very little biodiversity. In addition, reducing fragmentation of forests is also hugely important. When a forest is broken up into smaller patches, these sections are often unable to support the same broad biodiversity as a single forest of the same area.
Europe has pledged to halt biodiversity loss completely on its territory. As the magnitude of this task and the challenges become increasingly apparent, EU biodiversity policy has developed accordingly. To this end, the European Environment Agency (EEA) will increasingly focus on assisting policy-makers and others by delivering relevant and reliable data.
However, European citizens can also play a role in protecting the plants and animals living in the forest. Why not take a walk in the woods on International Biodiversity Day, and experience the value of local biodiversity yourself?
[1] This applies to 25 EU Member States
"Humanity is altering the remarkable conditions for life on Earth. Ecosystems are reaching a state where they may collapse or change into very different forms with huge impacts on our societies and economies. It is time to choose a transformative path that will ensure global sustainability for future generations," said Professor Jacqueline McGlade, EEA Executive Director.
The outcome of the Symposium, the Stockholm Memorandum, will be signed by Nobel laureates on May 18th and handed over in person to the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability. It will feed into the preparations for the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio +20) and for the on-going climate change negotiations.
The 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium is organised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Stockholm Environment Institute, the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
In 1992, the landmark Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro proposed a new form of environmental governance, building breakthrough environmental agreements on climate change and biodiversity.
This week the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) meets at UN Headquarters in New York, and EEA Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade will be there to help set the agenda for next year's 'Rio+20 summit', which aims to assess progress and look to the future with new themes of the green economy and environmental governance.
The Sustainable Development Commission aims to "inspire governments, economies and society to embrace sustainable development as the central principal." It was established in 1992 and is charged with implementing recommendations agreed at the 1992 Summit.
The EEA and its Topic Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production co-hosted an expert seminar on sustainable consumption in a green economy with the Nordic Council of Ministers, which gathered a large number of policy makers and other stakeholders attending the CSD. EEA executive director, Jacqueline McGlade made a keynote speech on pathways to sustainable consumption and chaired a panel debate with high-level policy makers.
The seminar focused on the consumption perspective in a green economy, with a view at experiences from Europe and other regions of the world and panel discussions of how to promote sustainable consumption patterns and sustainable lifestyles globally that stimulate a greening of the economy.
'In order to reach the sustainable development goals and solve environmental problems, we must address environmental impact from both the production and consumption side, and further strengthen environmental considerations in economic and sectoral policy,' Prof. McGlade said at the event.
Prof. McGlade will also participate in a key side event, 'Sustainable Consumption and Production – the building blocks for a Greener Economy'.
The objective of the side-event is to look forward to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012 and discuss the linkages between sustainable consumption and production and policy instruments and practices for building a green economy within the framework of sustainable development and poverty eradication.
The EEA is also using new communication tools. Prof. McGlade will present the newly launched EEA Facebook page at the Marymount Middle and Upper Schools in New York, and will speak with students about the environment and sustainable development. The event will include interviews and discussions with the school's newspaper and environment club.]]>
The alarming rate of deforestation in the Amazon poses a very concrete threat to such remote tribes. It does not only threaten their livelihood but also their way of life. Loggers and cattle ranchers continue clearing the forest cover and moving further into the heart of forest, inflicting often irreparable damage to the environment as well as exposing remote tribes to diseases for which they have no immunity.
Unfortunately, the Amazon and its tribes are not the only ones bearing the consequences of the growing global demand for natural resources. Five years ago Bisie was jungle. Located in the Wailikale territory, east Congo, it is now a cramped township as a result of the discovery of cassiterite, a derivative of tin that is a crucial component in the circuitry of many modern gadgets. It's in mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras and gaming devices. Today despite the boom in mining activities in its forests, the large majority of the Congolese remains extremely poor.
Thousands of kilometres from Bisie, in the state of Orissa nestled up against the Bay of Bengal, live Gangi Bhuyan and her husband Sukru Bhuyan with their young family. This is east India, the legendary spring of India's mineral wealth and a major source of materials for global industrial growth in the past.
For about five months of the year Gangi and Sukru feed their family from the less than half acre plot of land they cultivate on the verge of the forest that surrounds Raibada, their village. During this time they also harvest vegetables, seeds, fruit, medicine and building materials (such as grass) from the forest. For a further four months, this is their main supply of food. Without the forest they would starve. For the remaining three months they are forced to migrate to large urban areas such as Bangalore or Mumbai where they work as labourers.
For many indigenous people the forest is their lifeline, while the timber or the minerals buried beneath are sometimes a curse. Across the world, because of their relatively higher dependence on the environment, the poorest of the poor are often the most affected by environmental degradation. This damage is driven by global demand for raw materials, which in turn is driven by human consumption.
Unfortunately, such communities' historic claim to forest resources and land has rarely been transcribed in modern society's legal systems. Government bodies like Funai or non-governmental movements like Survival International are faced with a daunting task. To have the rights of such indigenous tribes protected fully, in the case of the Amazon and Peru, they might first have to prove the existence of these tribes.
In other cases, like in India, there has been some progress. The Forest Rights Act is now facilitating the transfer of land rights to tribal communities. Gangi and Sukru Bhuyan have not received a title to the plot of land but some of their neighbours have. These one-sided, carefully laminated pieces of paper are clutched with a mixture of pride and surprise. The success of their neighbours means that the Bhuyan family has hope.
Most of the losses in forest cover take place in developing countries and are largely caused by weak governance structures for forest conservation and management. But the pressures forests and forest communities face are not limited to developing countries.
Despite growth in forest cover and stronger forest governance structures, Europe's forests and forest communities also feel the bite of growing demand for natural resources and environmental degradation.
We are using our planet's resources faster than they can replenish themselves but we want to continue consuming and producing ever more. We not only risk running out of vital resources, we are actually making our home less and less habitable.
Perhaps the solution lies in recognising the fact that we are only one species among many and our wellbeing depends on harmonious interaction with all others. All living things, including us, have a rightful claim on the forests of the world, even if we live in an urban area on the other side of the planet, because the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink, and the climate we live in depend on them.
Forests can provide all sorts of food: fruit, honey, mushrooms, meat and so on. If properly managed, they can also deliver a sustainable flow of resources such as wood to the economy.
Forests are also crucial in terms of the medicines they store. In India, As many as 8 000 species of plants are regularly used as medicine by the people of India with 90–95 % coming from forests. Less than 2 000 of these plants are officially documented.
But forests do a lot more. For example, trees and vegetation help ensure a healthy climate locally and globally by absorbing pollutants and greenhouse gases. Forest soils decompose wastes and purify water. And people often travel far to enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of forests, or to engage in pastimes such as hunting.
All of these services — providing food and fibre, regulating the climate and so on — are valuable. We would pay a lot for machines that could do the same thing. For that reason, we should think of ecosystems as a form of capital, which provides services to the owner but often also to other people nearby and far off (as in the case of climate regulation). Crucially, we need to maintain our natural capital — not overexploiting the ecosystem and not over-polluting — if it is to continue providing these hugely valuable services.]]>
Worryingly, poor water quality, water scarcity and physical modifications might prevent a substantial proportion of European water bodies from achieving 'good status' by 2015.
Pollution from agriculture remains a major cause of poor water quality in many parts of Europe. Nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) from fertilisers, pesticides, pathogenic micro-organisms excreted by livestock, and organic pollutants from manure are washed to waterways, primarily via diffuse pathways.
The urban environment is another key contributor to the freshwater pollution observed across Europe. A range of pollutants are generated in the wider urban environment, including industrial and household chemicals, metals, pharmaceutical products, nutrients, pesticides and pathogenic micro-organisms.
Excessive nutrient levels in water bodies cause proliferation of algal blooms and result in widespread loss of aquatic life. Moreover, chemicals with endocrine‑disrupting properties have been shown to trigger feminising effects in male fish, potentially affecting their fertility. Pesticides and metals can be toxic to aquatic life, while concern is growing about the effects of chemical mixtures found in Europe's more polluted waters. Much of the pollutant load in freshwaters is ultimately discharged to coastal waters with the potential to impact the marine environment. Poor water quality is also a potential threat to public health through various exposure routes.
Water scarcity occurs in many areas of Europe, particularly in the south where limited water resources combine with high demand. Over-abstraction and dry periods frequently result in reduced river flows, lower lake and groundwater levels and the drying-up of wetlands, with detrimental impacts on freshwater ecosystems. Excessive abstraction from any one of these types of water body can impact one or more of the others. For example, rivers, lakes and wetlands may all be strongly dependent on groundwater, especially in the summer when it typically provides critical base-flow.
Over-abstraction can also worsen water quality because there is less water to dilute pollutant discharges, while over-abstraction of aquifers in coastal areas often results in salt-water intrusion, diminishing the quality of groundwater.
Over the past 150 years, Europe's freshwaters have been affected by a variety of major modifications. Dams, weirs and sluices have reduced connectivity, rivers have been straightened and canalised, and infrastructure development has disconnected watercourses from floodplains. Such structures and activities have altered many European water bodies, sometimes leaving little space for natural habitats, obstructing species migration, disconnecting rivers from wetlands and changing the water flow.
Cost-effective measures exist to tackle agricultural pollution. Countries must implement them through the WFD, as well as complying fully with the Nitrates Directive. The forthcoming reform of the Common Agricultural Policy provides an opportunity to further strengthen water protection.
The EU Urban Wastewater Directive (UWWTD) is a vital and successful piece of legislation and Member States need to comply with it fully. It should be complemented by increased control of pollutants at source, reducing treatment needs and thereby cutting energy use. Full-cost pricing for wastewater services will help incentivise controls at source.
In many European cities there is a need to tackle storm overflows, which can discharge a range of pollutants causing rapid depletion of oxygen levels in receiving water. There are already some examples of good practice in Europe, such as the retention of overflows in storage ponds during heavy rainfall, which are subsequently pumped back to the system for treatment.
Europe's water use cannot increase endlessly. Demand must be reduced and policies are needed to achieve this. Measures could include economic instruments; water loss controls; water-reuse and recycling; increased efficiency in domestic, agricultural and industrial water use; and water-saving campaigns supported by public education programmes.
Flood management should shift from its current focus on hard-engineered defence systems to natural measures based more on slowing and storing water in floodplains and groundwater aquifers, and providing adequate space for rivers. The environmental impacts of water engineering projects such as dams and navigation infrastuctures should also be minimised.
Europe has strong water legislation in place. The challenge is now to attain full implementation across Europe. River basin plans for Europe's 110 river basin districts will be a key tool for achieving the objective of 'good status' for European waters by 2015.]]>