Wadham Sustainability Forum, March 2007

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Parent page(s): Lecture and Seminar Notes

27 March 2007

From Framework to Implementation: Has Europe Risen to the Sustainable Development Challenge?

Key discussants: Professor Alexander Gillespie (University of Waikato) and Dr Dan Laffoley (IUCN, Natural England)

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Al Gillespie 2.1 Structural 2.2 What is good 2.3 What is bad 3 Dan Laffoley 4 Discussion 5 Summary 6 Speaker biographies

Introduction

Bring together those with diverse interests in sustainability

• Discuss related issues
• Identify areas for further thought and action

Meetings

1. UK focus
2. African focus
3. European focus
4. Global focus

Speakers:

• Alexander Gillespie [check spelling]
• Dan Laffoley

Questions for consideration:

1. What role does Europe play in promoting sustainability globally?
2. What role should it play?
3. To what extent has Europe as a whole risen to the sustainability challenge as opposed to individual European countries?
4. How is Europe learning from its member states, and vice versa? How can this learning process be better institutionalized and improved?
5. Where is Europe providing a shining example? Where is Europe failing?
6. How are the different director generalships connected to this, and to each other

Al Gillespie

Europe and sustainability

Structure, good thing about Europe, bad things

Structural

NGOs have a huge positive influence

• Lead many international debates
• Have a great deal of freedom to act, lots of resources
• "Unprecedented" influence upon states

Science

• European scientists are held in high regard, compared with those in other regions
• Perception that European scientists, especially in coalitions, are impartial and robust

Private sector

• Viewed very well

What is good

Diplomatic perspective on European bloc

• One year rotations
• Level of diplomatic skill can "go from the sublime to the ridiculous"

Best example of good European policy is acid rain and air pollution

• Example of international best practice
• Expansion of the transboundary convention into Eastern Europe

Perception that European protected areas are managed very well

• Networks, regions, and finance
• Willingness to commit resources

Europe seen as "the good guys"

• "Where we want to be"
• Climate change is the best example at the moment
• Commitment to 20-30% cuts
• Seen as incredible in Australia and New Zealand
• Don't believe such cuts will actually be made, but they make good talking points
• Willingness in Europe to adopt fuel efficiency standards
• Europe not seen as ahead of the race, but on target

Level of detail gone into in agreements is notable

• Agreements on bats, for instance
• Willingness to engage in debates that are difficult, and in which Europe has no direct interest

What is bad

Lowest common denominator policies

Individual countries often behave with more concern and integrity

• Flair gets watered down
• For example, the international whaling coalition
• British speak up for animal welfare, on issues like 'humane killing'

CITES

• British will speak up for sharks
• European neighbors often do not

Policy capture

Policy capture

• Fishing is the best example
• European waters depleted
• Policies controlled by restricted interests

Regionalism

Concern about the consequences of regionalism

• Willingness to set up regional regimes rather than persist in global negotiations (for example, on the issue of world heritage)

There can be a certain cultural arrogance about the superiority of the European approach

• For example, dealing with indigenous issues
• Can be overly focused on legalistic, bureaucratic solutions
• Conversely, opposed to community management of resources

Leadership

During 1980s and 90s, Europe led the environmental debate

• On the precautionary principle, etc

Now, a feeling that the Europeans are behind the game

• Not seeing interlinkages between trade, subsidies, and interactions between laws
• Too willing to see things in pockets

In the WTO, Europeans are supporting trade concerns over environmental ones

Dan Laffoley

Marine environmental perspective

Massive process emerging in the UK and the EU

United Kingdom

1998 - Sense that something should be done on the marine environment

• Marine bill just announced a week ago

Theme: issues are identified, but action takes an awfully long time

Framework in place:

• Based around the marine bill
• Working group operated for five years
• Talks about area-based protection
• Talks about spatial planning
• Streamlining development consent
• Modernizing fisheries management
• Establish Marine Management Organization

Progress is being made

In the same period, we have learned a lot more about the marine environment

• We have started to look at familiar things in new ways
• IUCN endangered species approach
• Many species critically endangered: common skate, angel shark

Massive lag is a major challenge

• How do you manage the environmental side of sustainable development?
• New industries have emerged, many of which create new pressures (for example, wind farms)
• Industrial and environmental dimensions should be partners

Rest of Europe

Similar situations exist in other European countries

• Move towards looking harder at marine spatial planning
• Denmark, Germany, Belgium all doing this

Other major developments in Europe:

1. Maritime Green Paper (presently open to consultation), focused on the economic dimension
2. European Marine Strategy, focused on the health of the environment, and how it underpins social and economic activity

What does good environmental status for seas really mean?

• Massive tension in the process: a pulling back from international cooperation
• Makes it hard to turn sensible ideas into reality
• Details of implementation are crucial

Holistic thinking is necessary

• Environmental, social, and economic considerations
• Fish previously seen as a level of biomass, with maximum sustainable yield
• We need to think about the trophic structure of the marine environment -food webs

Common fisheries policy

• Watering down to lowest common denominator
• Lots of information on what we need to do
• Political process challenged to bring this forward

Since the 1880s, we have become progressively better at catching higher level predators.

• After the 1970s, this collapsed. Now, we are fishing at a far lower trophic level
• This is the largest drop ever observed, worldwide

Overcoming time lag issue is very challenging

Why do we need to be ahead of the game?

• Last Powerpoint slide he would show is of the most distant photo ever taken of the Earth
• Voyager I, as it was leaving the solar system
• Shows how most of the world is ocean: regulates and maintains the climate

Upcoming IPCC report will provide new insight about the impact of climate change on the marine environment

We need to get a different result than we have been, and soon

Discussion

See questions listed above

Watering down

Both speakers mentioned 'watering down.' How can that be avoided?

DL: This is the crux of the matter

• We tend to only consider immediate, quantifiable costs
• To be holistic, we need to become better at understanding and expressing other costs
• A challenge to both science and society

AG: Negotiating with Europeans is very frustrating

• Twenty of them will walk out together, have a fight about what to push for, and then come back
• Regional science can be crucial for dealing with this: see example of acid rain

Britain and Europe

British negotiators pressured to 'stick up for Britain.' How different are British and European interests?

• People thinking on a European scale become "completely isolated" from parent organizations

Fragmentation

Climate change treaty v. UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

• Fragmentation about central issues, within central instruments

How can we do better?

AG: Forum shopping

• Countries start with one forum, trying to get what they want
• If they fail, they can move to another
• Ex. Japan going from International Whaling Commission to CITES, trying to get whaling permitted

Also, can be difficult to place an issue in one forum or another

One forum overshadows all others: the WTO

• WTO much more influential than the International Court of Justice

Many countries have not reconciled how trade and environment policy will related

• Issues like genetic modification and hormones

DL: UK, climate change bill, aspirations of Gordon Brown

• Generally, we legislate for human health and safety
• New ideas about things like lightbulbs are for future wellbeing, not immediate health and safety
• Requires science to come together in a compelling way
• Marine environment is inherently linked into this

General public is aware that regulation is moving in this way

• Issues like taxing flights
• We need to hit a narrow window by about 2050 - 'letterbox effect'
• Not going to happen through individual choices, but from the government moving people

Importance of science

Necessary to have the science together

• UK clobbered by WTO on several occasions

Do we have the time and resources to get the science right before we need to act?

• How do we manage that?

Problem of watering down on account of integration

• From a legalistic point of view, this is surprising
• Europe sees qualified majority voting as meant to counter this
• Does this not work in practice?

DL: On science, we need to use what we have much more effectively

• Separate silos are a big problem
• Knowledge needs to be coordinated in new ways

There is a tendency to debate endlessly

• Look at how long the marine bill was under consideration
• Science can move a long way while this is happening

We need to manage what we know much better

• In the longer term, we need to manage for the future
• Industry needs to be thinking about how things will be in 2050
• Conservation sector should be thinking on the same timescale
• Unknowns need to be managed, and we need to act before full certainty exists

We need to be very inventive

• Marine: we are using existing geophysical information to make landscape maps of the seabed
• Produce maps like those of the Ordinance Survey
• Small additional cost, but potentially big effect

Usage of science

Science can serve as a mechanism for raising the lowest common denominator

• Pushed up LCD on acid rain
• Same could happen for climate change debates

Key misunderstandings about science

• Science is inherently uncertain
• Making predictions about 100 years hence not fundamentally different from predicting tomorrow
• Scientists have engaged with policy debates badly (partly on account of language, partly because policy-makers don't know much science)

AG: Critical debate at the moment

• "Not a question of what the science says, but the process behind the science."
• "We need to know that it is robust and that we can trust it."
• Some countries try to stack the room with their scientists, then push consensus by majority
• Integrity of the scientific process is essential

Scientists have been captured as well

• "Not always squeaky clean"

Matters who they work for: government, private sector, NGOs

DL: Places where things have worked well and badly:

On climate change and the marine environment, there has been a push to prepare annual report cards

• Joint science-policy effort
• Short (eight pages)
• Read and understood by senior civil servants
• Scientists resistant to simplifying it to that point

On the ecosystem approach, we are not doing well enough

AG: Scientists face pressure from politicians to "sex things up"

• That can be a big danger

Scale of issues

Past EU directives on things like birds and water

• Take a long time to generate

With issues like climate change and ocean acidification, are these other activities just resource-eating distractions?

• Established to deal with specific areas, habitats, or species

DL: Next week, IPCC Working Group II report

• Ultimately, the targets that have stimulated EU actions were set a very long time ago
• These targets must now be seen as the minimum, because the debate has moved on

We need "an entire new paradigm" to deal with the new world order

AG: Such instruments do have a role to play

• British bird organizations very well funded
• You think "What are you doing? The world is burning?"
• Indirectly, they do provide some good and relevant data

Flexibility and enforcement

Criticisms of European policies

1. Not very accommodating to developing economies in Eastern Europe
2. Mechanisms for enforcement are inadequate

DL: If the habitats directive could be re-written, most states would want to do so

• In the early days, France decided not to implement it
• Forced by Brussels with threat of major fines

Members states are more aware of this now

• Things like European marine strategy not being provided with such strong mechanisms for enforcement
• A lot of pressure to "make it aspirational"

Water framework directive has been the most expensive one implemented in Europe

AG: Carrots and sticks need to be considered

• EU includes a lot of "soft money"
• More of a carrot based approach
• There is much more compliance in Europe than people recognize

On the issue of Eastern Europe, it varies by portfolio

• Other developing countries are not being well dealt-with by Europe
• Fishing is a big example

Parallel between climate change and acid rain

Can we learn anything from the acid rain example?

• Harder to observe changes in the marine environment
• Even though the scientific evidence is "absolutely devastating
• Stern Report: when evidence is doubtful, we need to convert things to money
• Should we be embracing this?

DL: Psychology of making difficult decisions is important here

• Think about South Africa and Apartheid
• Considering the psychology may allow us to get better outcomes

Lomborg gets a voice out of all proportion to the number of people who see things as he does

• People see balance as requiring equal representation for contrasting views

Director-Generalships

Within the EU, sustainability is clearly labeled 'environment.' Other DGs don't think about it

• Comes back to the way in which we frame sustainability
• We underestimate the ability of the environment to put us out of business, and to disrupt our way of life
• Still seen as something that can be dealt with independently

AG: In an ideal world, environmental policy would arise from aesthetics and culture

• At the end of the day, money is what makes countries change
• This is what people understand
• Value of the whale-watching industry is the major reason that countries protect whales

Europe lagging behind?

Reconciling trade and environmental considerations

AG: Feeling that EU uses environmental concerns to justify protectionism

• Especially in agriculture
• Debate at the moment about food-miles

Fishing

Is Europe successful or failing at the conservation of fish stocks? (excluding whaling)

DL: Common fisheries policy is "the definition of madness"

• Purpose is to ensure that the status quo continues
• "We congratulate ourselves on improvements on 34 stocks, when we are already fishing an entire trophic level further down than we used to"

Regulation: Ireland and the Atlantic Dawn

• Largest fishing boat in the world
• 1 1/3 as long as Big Ben is tall
• Purse seine nets twice the size of the Millennium Zone
• EU bought fishing rights for it off Mauritania
• Catches in a month what 6000 artisinal fisherman do in a year

With trophic indicators "it will become more blindingly obvious what we're doing"

• This has a massive social cost in Europe

In summary, Europe is doing very badly

• In the UK, there has been some effort to try to get out of this
• Prime Minister's Strategy Unit worked on something called net benefits to move fisherman to other industries
• Treasury unwilling to pay

AG: Stripping down to the bottom of the Pacific

• Operating in the water near New Zealand as well
• Buying rights from specific countries
• Subsidies are a huge problem

Local v. national

All this is a very high level approach: top-down direction

• Look at the NHS, which is not working very well
• Could this be dealt with at a smaller level?

AG: You cannot leave things to the market

• Most people will always go for the cheapest available lightbulbs
• Governments need to push people to make certain decisions

DL: On the marine environment, some power should be returned to local communities

• Coastal communities have no mechanism through which to do anything
• Island in Scotland wanted a no-fishing zone, took a massive battle to achieve

AG: Community involvement is crucial

• Without community support, conservation will never work

Localization

Most people think 30-40% of the marine environment is protected; actually, it is less than 0.01%

What can the European Commission do to empower local communities and individuals?

• Freedom of and access to information?

DL: Legally, it wouldn't be appropriate for the commission to do this

• Principle of subsidiarity
• Europe can produce the overall thrust, and leave implementation to member states

AG: People with the right information tend to make the right decisions

• If you tell people that eating marine mammals is very toxic, they will stop
• Japanese government has tried to prevent the release of this information

NGOs and localization

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth now have very little local influence; it is all concentrated at higher levels

DL: This is a kind of pendulum

• WWF considers 'eco-regions'
• This breadth is good, but you also need a strong local voice

Engaging civil society

Risk: local communities will often make decisions that contradict long-term goals

• For example, resistance to road taxes

What stops sustainable initiatives from being effective? Do we lack the willingness to actually do this? Is it a prisoner's dilemma? Is it simply a failure of governance?

AG: People aren't evil or bad

• People resist good climate policy because "it is just too expensive"

DL: There are a lot of things we can do, but we aren't making it easy to do them

• Get rid of standby mode
• At least, make it really easy to turn these things off

Very hard to offset your carbon footprint

• Not sufficiently easy now

General public

Media is letting us down

• General public not sufficiently well informed

DL: What really makes good television?

• People want to watch things aside from shows with serious perspectives
• Such programs get bad times

AG: Sometimes people just don't care or are selfish

• People buy turtle shell ashtrays
• Coercion sometimes required

Summary

How do you get effective decisions?

• What is the role of scientists in all that?
• How about politicians? The media?

Scientists need to be more clever in working with others

• Change public opinion so considerably that nobody can ignore it
• The last few months have seen a huge change in climate change coverage

Where does action come from?

• European or global scale? From the bottom up?
• Matter arose in the African seminar, as well
• How do you marry the local and the global?

Speaker biographies

Professor Alexander Gillespie Professor of Law, University of Waikato

Professor Alexander Gillespie obtained his LLB and LLM degrees with Honours from The University of Auckland. He did his PhD at Nottingham and post-doctoral studies at Colombia University in New York City. Professor Gillespie has written over thirty articles that have been published in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Al has published five books; the latest book is "The Illusion of Progress; Unsustainable Development in International Law". He has been awarded a Rotary International Scholarship, Fulbright Fellowship, Rockerfeller Fellowship and a number of smaller domestic awards. In 2004 Al was awarded the New Zealand Law Foundation International Research Fellowship. Al is also the New Zealand lawyer/expert on a number of international delegations.

Dr Dan Laffoley

Vice Chair of IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas & Principle Specialist, Marine for Natural England Dr Dan Laffoley currently divides his time between two roles - Vice Chair of IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas, providing an international lead on the marine biome, and as Principle Specialist, Marine for Natural England. Dan was born on the Island of Jersey (Channel Islands, UK) and has always had a passion for the marine environment. He is interested in marine conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity, the underlying science, and how this can be best communicated to the public, policy advisors and decision makers. Over the last 20 years he has worked on most of the pivotal marine conservation initiatives in England, the UK and further a field in Europe. Recently, he has been involved in a diversity of key marine conservation initiatives, including being co-author on the Maritime State of Nature report, being a rapporteur for the European Commission, working on secondment to the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit on fisheries issues, through to advising the American, Israeli and Jordanian Governments on the Red Sea Marine Peace Park, under the Israel/Jordan Peace Accord. He is currently chair of the Reference User Group for the Defra/DTI-funded Plymouth Marine Laboratory study assessing the implications of CO2 emissions on marine ecosystems, and is the external examiner on coastal and ocean policy for the University of Plymouth.