Eurostat has released a new interactive visualisation tool to explore statistics related to the European Green Deal, with an overview of 26 indicators, divided into 3 main topics: reducing our climate impact; protecting our planet & health and enabling a green & just transition.
The Commission has presented a new package of proposals to make sustainable products the norm in the EU, boost circular business models and empower consumers for the green transition. These include a proposed Regulation on Ecodesign for Sustainable Products, an EU Strategy for sustainable and circular textiles and a revision of the construction products Regulation.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has just published the 2022 edition of "The State of the World’s Forests". The report recognises that forests have the potential to contribute to achieving green recovery and tackling multidimensional planetary crises, including climate change and biodiversity loss, through three interrelated pathways: halting deforestation and maintaining forests; restoring degraded lands and expanding agroforestry; and sustainably using forests and building green value chains.
The Commission launched a new public consultation to gather opinions and evidence from relevant stakeholders about food system sustainability. This is taking place in preparation of a planned initiative for a horizontal framework law, to accelerate and facilitate the transition to sustainability and ensure that foods placed on the EU market increasingly become sustainable. The survey is open until 21 July 2022.
The Commission has launched a call for young Europeans, with experience or interest in the bioeconomy, to join the Bioeconomy Youth Ambassadors programme. The selected Ambassadors will have the opportunity to participate in various events and contribute to the sustainable and circular transition of Europe. The call is open until 13 June 2022.
The JRC has published a new release of the EU Biomass Flows tool, contributing to its biomass study. It is a visualisation, in the form of Sankey diagrams, of the flows of biomass for each sector of the bioeconomy, from supply to uses including trade. In addition to the updated data, novel features of this release include a redesign of the flows for woody biomass and integration of food waste flows.
Forests where any environmental, social or economic restrictions do not have a significant impact on the current or potential supply of wood. These restrictions can be established by legal rules, managerial/owner’s decisions or because of other reasons.
The European Commission has adopted a Communication on the European Growth Model, setting out the key investments and reforms that are required to achieve our common objectives with respect to the green and digital transition and to strengthening social and economic resilience. It also underlines the importance of coordinated action by all relevant actors, including the EU, Member States and the private sector.
In this science for policy brief, JRC researchers describe a framework based on the Life Cycle Assessment method, presenting two indicators: the Consumption Footprint and the Domestic Footprint. The first looks at the consumption perspective, and assesses the environmental impacts of consumption at EU and at Member State level, including impacts embodied in trade with non EU countries. The second looks at the territorial perspective, to quantify the overall impacts of domestic production and consumption happening within EU or Member States boundaries. The brief presents the main results from the calculation of these indicators in the EU from 2010 to 2018.
In February 2012, the European Commission adopted its first Bioeconomy Strategy to radically change the EU’s approach in managing its biological resources. The updated Bioeconomy Strategy in 2018 maintained the five original objectives, and expanded the focus areas on the regional deployment of the bioeconomy across Europe and on increasing the understanding of the ecological boundaries. The Commission’s Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy and its Bioeconomy Monitoring System play a crucial role in building up the knowledge base on key issues and in tracking the bioeconomy’s progress towards sustainability in the EU and its Member States.
This study, carried out by researchers in Wageningen University for the European Commission, responds to an action of the 2018 Bioeconomy Strategy and provides guidance on managing healthy and resilient ecosystems in the context of the bioeconomy in Europe. It specifically focuses on agro-ecosystems, forest ecosystems and marine aquaculture ecosystems. The guidelines synthesise principles, good practices, indicators, policy and financial enablers, and stakeholder engagement approaches.
The JRC has published updated Sankey diagrams of woody biomass flows in the European Union for the years 2009-2017. Starting from primary sources of wood, removals or imports, wood can either feed wood processing industries for the manufacturing of wood-based products or be used for energy production. The woody biomass transferred across the different transformation steps and among the different subsectors follows complex flows, illustrated with the Sankey diagrams, where the width of each arrow is proportional to the magnitude of the flow.
Researchers from the EC Joint Research Centre have reviewed the qualitative impacts on biodiversity and carbon emissions of 24 specific bioenergy pathways on forest ecosystems and biodiversity. The analysis focuses on interventions that may be used to supply additional forest-based energy. It highlights win-win and lose-lose options and relates them with the measures proposed by the European Green Deal policy.The study has been carried out under the umbrella of the JRC Biomass mandate, to address one of the actions of the European Biodiversity strategy.
The European Commission, together with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) and a consortium of sustainability consultants and algae organisations have launched a European algae stakeholder platform, called EU4Algae. The aim of the platform, as a unique space for collaboration, is to accelerate the development of a European algae industry and promote algae for nutrition and other uses among consumers and businesses in the EU.
A new JRC report summarises the findings of an inclusive, participatory process that explored possible building blocks for the legislative framework on sustainable food systems, foreseen in the EU Farm to Fork Strategy. The project identified and discussed five building blocks: a sustainability assessment framework, transparency, dealing with consequences of the transition, policy coherence and multi-level governance, and international trade.
Stewardship and use of forest lands in a way and at a rate that maintains their productivity, biodiversity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions at local, national and global levels and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems.
Check the highlights from the new publication of the Working Group 2 of IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Authored by hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists, the publication confirms that climate change is here to stay and some of its effects are now unavoidable. The report finds that climate change induced by humanity impacts nature and people more intensely, more frequently and over a wider geographical area than previously thought.
A international group of researchers has provided an estimation of the total tree species richness at global, continental, and biome levels, highlighting the vulnerability of global tree species diversity to anthropogenic changes.The study found around 73 thousands tree species globally, of which 9 thousands still not discovered. The researchers have indicated that almost one-third of all the tree species to be discovered may be rare.
