Tag: Europe
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THE NARRATIVE CONVERGES WITH NATURE
“Your kind never sees us whole. You miss the half of it, and more. There’s always as much belowground as above”. Richard Powers 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner The Overstory begins from the perspective of a tree, raising all too common human short sightedness. Look beneath the canopy and you’ll discover the complexities of our plant…
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Europe’s plan for carbon border adjustment
One-third of European greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are embedded in the import of goods and services. While the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) sets a price and limit on carbon emissions for domestic firms, no such measure exists for products made abroad. Without better accountability of imported emissions, there will be no real industrial decarbonisation.…
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Towards a measurement of the trade-biodiversity nexus
Biodiversity degradation is an underevaluated knock-on effect of trade liberalisation. That’s because enhanced demand through free trade agreements (FTAs) increases land clearing, whether that be due to agriculture, mining, fishing or hydrocarbon extraction. Costs on climate, linked to energy-intensive industrial production and freight transport, are also enormous. Since 2019, opposition to the EU-Mercosur deal has…
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Green and values-based Connectivity between Europe and Asia
Connectivity is one of the focal points of the new EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. The term is also central to the Connecting Europe and Asia Strategy and the EU-Japan Partnership on Sustainable Connectivity, while talks have begun with India on a connectivity-focused partnership. When calling for the establishment of a Global Connectivity…
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Safeguarding critical infrastructure – a condition of Europe’s strategic autonomy in space
Europe is a major actor in outer space, possessing 12% of the satellite fleet. As the largest Earth observation service worldwide delivering high-level data information, Copernicus contributes to the emergence of a digital and green Europe: monitoring of climate systems, marine and terrestrial analysis for conservation and precision farming, security of trade routes. In an…
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Railway’s Essential Digitalisation
Demand for transport is set to double by 2050. Favouring high-speed rail over short-distance air or road travel is essential to alleviate the transport sector’s energy intensity and curb emissions increase. In France, transportation produces 30% of total emissions, but rail represents only a marginal 0.6%. Rail is already the most electrified mode of transport…
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Neighbourhood instability – a call for majority voting in EU foreign policy
Ever since her nomination, Ursula von der Leyen has highlighted strategic autonomy and enhanced leadership as her top foreign policy aspirations. On a stage where power politics are undermining multilateralism and the rule of law, High Representative Josep Borrell suggests that the EU can only achieve this by learning the ‘language of power’. Two crises…
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Covid-19 as the stimulus for geopolitical divergence
The virus will in more general terms uncover the socio-political deficiencies of our worn-out world order, as it creates leadership opportunity for some and exacerbates the governance challenges of others. […]
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Four FoodTech Champions
Environmental awareness has grown exponentially since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreements. Each year, we become increasingly aware of a particular pressing issue. 2018 was the year of plastics, as images of beaches inundated the web, demonstrating the extent of our societies’ waste disposal inefficacy. In 2019, we watched the Amazon burn. What we fail to…
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Aviation’s carbon footprint – why Europe will push for a kerosene tax
An opportune moment – EU reconfiguration Environmental preoccupation is at the centre stage of European policy like never before. It fragmented the European Parliament on May 26th and has left unclear who will take on the presidency of the Commission. Many agree that Europe must sustain its global leadership on climate, while enhancing its action.…
VALUE IN NATURE 