Earlier this year, Georgina Sell, Principal Consultant, EMEA - Industry & Infrastructure, shared a paper ‘The Green Recovery and Beyond: How exactly are industries working to combat climate change?’, inspired by Project Drawdown’s roadmap.
Recently, Georgina spent time with Manuel Carmona Yebra, (Deputy Head of Global Issues and Innovation & Counsellor for Environment and Oceans at Delegation of the European Union to the United States), to yield a greater understanding of the EU deforestation regulation and unpack the challenges surrounding plastic pollution.
What is the European Deforestation Regulation?
Manuel Carmona Yebra: The regulation is based on the principle that the EU market and EU consumers do not wish to accept commodities sourced from deforestation. Commodities causing deforestation damage the planet and ourselves.
The regulation applies equally to EU domestic production and imports of those commodities. It is therefore WTO compliant. Companies need to know whether the commodities they import or produce in Europe are free of deforestation, and thus put due diligence systems into place.
The EU deforestation regulation helps companies track their global supply chains, which is very important to comply with the regulation.
Why is this new approach to fighting global deforestation so important?
It is a pioneering regulation - a first of its kind in the world - and implements what we hear a lot about systemic, transformative and holistic approaches. It brings trade policies and environmental policies together and regulates what is admissible in the EU market on the premise that if a covered commodity has caused deforestation, it cannot be sold in Europe, in a purely objective and factual way: both legal and illegal deforestation are covered, if it happened as of 31 December 2020.
Evidence shows that countries, particularly with weak governance systems, may allow illegal deforestation to become legal. So only banning illegal deforestation can have a perverse incentive for countries to whitewash deforestation and make it legal and compliant with regulations worldwide.
The due diligence reports submitted by companies in accordance with the regulation will include geolocation data. With this data, Member State authorities can compare the status of any farming area in 2020 and again in 2023 and see whether deforestation has taken place in between.
The EU deforestation regulation is made possible by the fact that we have cheaper technologies like geolocation, even in our phones, that have potential for environmental protection.
In relation to plastics specifically, why do you feel negotiations over a new global plastics agreement are so important?
Consumers are rejecting plastic for so many reasons. It is an important material but we don't want to see it polluting our beaches, killing marine life or coming in the form of microplastics into our bodies.
For the EU, this negotiation process for the global plastics agreement is crucial. Since the 1950s, plastic production has increased faster than production of any other material in the global economy.
We have now produced 8.5 billion tonnes of plastics, and 60 per cent of that plastic has ended in landfills or in the environment.
This is a priority for the EU but also a problem that cannot be tackled by the EU alone. We have banned single use plastics and taken other stringent measures for a number of products, but plastic is a problem that we need to tackle together as a global community.
We also see plastic pollution threatening the achievement of several sustainable development goals (SDGs) - marine life and our health - which is becoming increasingly apparent as we move forward in the negotiations.
The health impacts are not fully understood but microplastics are being found in placentas, in mother's milk and in our brains. I had the chance to review some research by the University of Rhode Island, that had some evidence of neurological problems linked to the accumulation of microplastics in the human brain - it was quite shocking.
How can individuals play a role in tackling the plastics problem?
There are limits to what we can do as individuals, but I always say a big one is voting for those parties that take environmental issues seriously.
The second thing is joining your communities in capacity building, recycling and collecting initiatives. There are some interesting applications, for example in the US, Litterati is an app that allows you to upload photos of trash to a global database where scientists can draw evidence about where the plastic pollution occurs and identify the polluting companies - this is citizen science and it helps deal with the problem at scale.
What are your thoughts surrounding the circular economy and what the EU is doing to make its economy more circular and sustainable long term?
The circular economy is one of the big pillars of the European Green Deal. The Green Deal is well known as a policy framework for ensuring Europe is climate neutral by 2050, but the circularity goal pillar is also one of the mainstays of the initiative.
The circular economy agenda is particularly consensual because it focuses on solutions to many problems at once. We could reduce 50 per cent of our emissions with a circular economy. From the point of view of biodiversity and nature protection, a circular economy could tackle 90 per cent of biodiversity loss.
It brings together economics, saving resources, saving costs for materials and, of course, the environment.
The EU as part of the European Green Deal has put forward the circular economy action plan which has 35 actions, many of which have progressed.
These actions include the way we design a product, which determines 80 per cent of the environmental impact it will have. The capacity to recycle and reuse products must be built in at that stage.
In this vein, the EU has adopted the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation which looks at the way we design products and the principles that make the design sustainable and circular.
Another action is empowering European consumers against greenwashing, where a new regulation seeks that companies verify their sustainability claims.
The methodologies to measure the circular economy are important. They are also complex, because they cover the whole of the economy, all sectors. We are currently looking at how to measure circularity better in each product and organisation.
What are the most exciting ocean-related developments for Europe?
The ocean absorbs a massive amount of emissions and we are working on ocean protection - the blue part of the Green Deal. One exciting development is BBNJ, a treaty already signed by many countries that protects biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. The EU encourages partners to ratify it as soon as possible.
We have a number of ratifications already, and the EU is ready to ratify it, hopefully along with 27 member states, before next June’s UN Ocean Conference.
Another exciting development has to do with recent meetings at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Jamaica, which tries to regulate deep sea mining.
The authority was established to regulate access to the high seas, where the jurisdiction is shared by the whole world. We are hoping that discussions at the ISA take into consideration the precautionary principle, i.e. the need to stop deep sea mining for now, until we know more about its impacts. And we know very little.
Every time there has been an expedition there for testing deep-sea mining mechanisms or processes, we have had hundreds of species newly identified. Recently, there was a huge scientific discovery: oxygen is being produced by some rocks at the bottom of the deep sea without any photosynthesis, without the sun, which is completely new to science. We did not know some months ago that oxygen was produced naturally other than by plants.
We have now 32 countries supporting the precautionary pause for deep sea mining, and Austria, one of the EU member states, joined recently.
The final important development is the increasing EU investment in the ocean. We have committed an extra €3.5 billion to ocean protection recently at the Our Ocean Conference in Greece and have a number of science programmes on resilient coastal economies and sustainable fisheries, which we will continue to do. We are providing increasing amounts to protect nature and the ocean because the returns are massive in terms of human development, community building, public health and sustainability.
Is there a specific call to action regarding these and other key climate and environment solutions?
Many people point at individual action. I think it is unfair to charge individuals with solving the big problems that we have, which for the most part need policy and regulatory solutions at scale. We can contribute and it is healthy and rewarding to do so but, at the same time, I am not in favour of putting pressure on individuals, as it can generate backlash.
Again, it is more useful to vote for leaders that are akin to your principles and can bring solutions to the table.
And I think it is also important to talk to friends and family more. Talk to people about climate and the environment and the benefits it can bring, raise awareness and influence their vote and their collective action too.
Climate change is the most urgent issue we have, but I try to talk about these issues with friends and family in a more overarching way.
Generally, we need to see the connections between nature loss, climate change and pollution and consider those problems in an integrated way if we want to have a cleaner, safer economy, and optimal solutions.
