Tag: SDGs

Posted on

Agriculture in the European Green Deal: From Ambition to Action

Today I had the pleasure of contributing to a panel discussion on the European Green Deal at the annual DG AGRI workshop on the medium-term outlook for EU agricultural markets, income and environment. This post consists of a slightly extended version of my remarks.

The European Green Deal is a growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a prosperous, fair, competitive and resource-efficient economy, with no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, zero pollution and a decoupling of economic growth from resource use. It is also a response to urgent challenges.

Despite progress in some areas, many trends in the farm and food sectors are going in the wrong direction. We are not on target to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals relevant to food systems.

  • Agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases are rising and Member State projections to 2030 show little sign of improvement
  • Ammonia emissions are rising, posing a challenge in meeting air pollution limits
  • The gross nitrogen balance improved between 2000 and 2010 but there has been no further improvement up to 2015.
… Read the rest
Posted on

Role of the land sector in meeting EU’s climate targets

The EU has signed up to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. Among these are Goal 13 to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts and Goal 15 to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

The incoming Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen set out in her Political Guidelines for the new Commission her ambition that the EU should raise its commitment to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) in 2030 from 40% to 50% immediately and to 55% in the first half of the next decade compared to 1990. This is intended to put the EU on course to become the first climate-neutral continent with a net-zero emissions commitment by 2050.

The net-zero commitment refers to the aim in the Paris Agreement “to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century” in order to achieve the long-term temperature goal of holding the increase in average global temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.… Read the rest