Europe and climate change

By Hélène Trividic

Paresh Nath, The Khaleej, UAE

The year of climate

In the past few months, climate change has become one of the main issues in European politics. Indeed, the European seem to have realized the emergency of acting in a higher and wider level about climate change. This has transpired first in May during the European parliament’s elections. Thus, nearly 10% of parliament is composed of the Greens which makes it the fourth most important party. Moreover, even though their politics are not turned toward environmental policy, all parties included actions to preserve the environment in their campaign.

This also took another dimension with the media coverage surrounding Greta Thunberg that brought the fight against climate change to a global level.

Yet, all those promises seem to be campaign promises. It can be hard sometimes to evaluate how deeply and efficiently the European Union is involved in this fight.

Environment and treaties

Even if the environmental conscience seems to be trendy in politics these days, the European Union has struggled with sustainability and climate change for decades now. The starting point must be 1972 in Paris where the first agreement concerning environmental concerns was made between the head of state members the European communities. Then, the Single European Act 1987 really was the first act containing an environmental title. Finally, with the Maastricht treaty, environmental concerns became an official EU policy.

Moreover, those are only the actions taken by the European communities and then the EU in its territory. Yet, those are not the only treaties and agreements signed by the EU for the environment. Those are embodied by the Conference of the Parties (COP). The first COP was held in Berlin in March 1995. Those COPs reunite head of States of the United Nation every year in a different place for a conference on climate change.

Thanks to one of these COPs, the COP21, the Paris agreement of 2015 was ratified to organize a global fight against climate change. This agreement aims to limit the increase in global temperature under 1,5°C.

How does it apply in practice?

The European Union took all sorts of actions to try and fulfil its duties regarding the environment. The first way the EU found was though diverse directives.

The first types of directives we can mention here are the ones on the preservation of biodiversity in Europe. This can be illustrated by the Habitat directive that protects over 1000 animal and plant species while considering the needs and the requirements of each region. Moreover, in order to control the effectiveness of this directive, article 17 imposes on the States to render reports every 5 years.

This may look like a good idea to preserve nature in Europe. Yet, the result given thanks to those reports are not encouraging. In fact, according to the European environment agency, 43,59% of habitats were in bad conservation status between 2013 and 2018. The results are a little better regarding the species yet, still, 33,92% of those species were in a bad conservation status during the same period.

We might then conclude that regarding the conservation of biodiversity, the European Union needs to keep on going on with its efforts.

The second directive we can mention here would be the one that established an environmental liability for the polluter-pays. This directive forces the most polluting firms to make every effort required to stop polluting the environment and make them pay all the related costs. The aim here would be to create an environmental conscience in the industrial field which can be considered as one of the most polluting areas.

Nevertheless, it is complicated to estimate the sufficiency of this directive because its application is left to the discretion of each member of the EU.

Moreover, the EU also acts on a more international level to preserve the planet. A good example of that is the European green deal that allows combining trade and sustainability. This deal aims to reduce the continent’s carbon emissions. It contains around 20 different policy proposals including the creation of a sustainable Europe investment plan.

In accordance with this deal, the EU promised not to trade with countries that are not implementing the Paris agreement. Indeed, trade transports are one of the most important causes of carbon emissions.

Nonetheless, Trump’s announcement of its will to withdraw from the Paris agreement placed the European Union in a bad position as no one could imagine stopping all trade deals with the United States.

Furthermore, although deforestation is a huge environmental concern and is mostly linked with trade, Ignácio Ybáñez, ambassador of the EU in Brazil, assured that the fire in Amazonia won’t affect the EU MERCOSUR trade deals. It is then legitimate to question the real sufficiency of the promise to trade only with sustainable partners.

More efforts to do for the planet

We can then see that the European Union is considering environmental problems and is trying to find a solution. The examples given in this article are far from exhaustive, and the European Union is considering many other solutions for the climate change fight. Nevertheless, sometimes trade and ecology are not compatible, and the UE has till now chosen to maintain the economy. Thus, there is a real need to find more solutions and take more actions to perfect all the good ideas already in place.

Sources

https://resultats-elections.eu

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/71/environment-policy-general-principles-and-basic-framework

Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flor

https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/biodiversity/state-of-nature-in-the-eu/article-17-national-summaries

Directive 2004/35/CE of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 on environmental liability with regard to the prevention and remedying of environmental damage JCEU

https://ieep.eu/news/time-to-get-real-about-sustainability-and-trade-within-the-european-green-deal