The Russian Artist Nina Nikiforova is globe-trotting with her project Turning Civilization’s Waste into Art – Without Frontiers. Her approach to art and to environmentalism takes you to one of the best books ever written and, most probably, the coolest concept in environmental literature: cradle to cradle. Just like Michael Braungart and William McDonough, Nina Nikiforova believes that using fire to fight “waste” is medieval behaviour. “It is a type of paranoia. When people feel insecure, they fall back to such behaviour. the cradle to cradle approach is to see waste as food, as nutrient for what is to come. it is about how to support the biosphere and how to support the technosphere. It is about being beneficial, about not panicking and destroying resources that we can pass onto our grandchildren and their grandchildren.”

Nikiforova embraced aesthetics in a Baudelaire-ish and figurative stance; dump, grunge or waste littered on the Black Sea’s shore became an act of art and an act of learning about the Earth. She works with students of all ages she is globe-trotting tirelessly and passes along her sensibility and skills.

For a preview of her art browse http://ninagallery.ru/gallery/. I encountered Nikiforova at the Peasant’s Museum in Bucharest, Romania during an expo organized by Belaia Loshadi Gallery from Russia and Terra Mileniul III Foundation.

text: Cristina Mircea

Jos Delbeke, deputy director general of DG CLIMA, stressed at the Q&A session of the EJC lead conference on climate change in Brussesls that there is no strong reason for Europe to jump forward with Kyoto without sorting out a number of conditions. The first one is the environmental integrity. The 20% target that Europe has adopted is much more stringent than the case of continuing simply under Kyoto. ” There are a number of major flaws in the Kyoto Protocol that must be sorted out before the EU can subscribe to Kyoto. For instance the “land- use change”, which currently means that you can just do whatever you like.”

     Photo: Jos Delbeke, Director General, DG CLIMA © 2010 Mihai Stoica / 2Celsius Network

Europe is not the biggest carbon emitter compared to China and the United States, but this only from a production and not consumption point of view, because Europe imports around 4 tones of CO2/ person in form of products from China for example, and all these products contain embedded carbon. What is your opinion on that?

It’ s true that through our very consumption we have an indirect CO2 emission problem, but as a regulator you have to ask yourself where is the point of intervention, and in this case we have been strategically selecting the production point as a way of regulating, because if you put the sustainability challenge over the long term there is no other solution than to bring forward a new carbon technology. If we hope that people will drastically accept the reduction of their standard of living just based on climate change reasons we’re not going to get anywhere. We will need low carbon technology, because our economic analysis shows that in the short term this is the biggest emission reduction you can get in industry. I’m not disputing whatsoever the consumption levels issue, but that’s another point of interference and that may come through taxation. We all know that in that matter EU has almost no competence, which is a major impediment many of us regret and that may not change in the future. So carbon taxes to be regulated at the European level is not an option.

Concerning border measures, they are claimed because people say our ETS (European emission trading scheme) is preferred in industry and the easiest way for industry is to go for import and not to produce here. It is true that industry is complaining a lot but we have not been observing any delocalization because of our carbon policy. The reason for that is that we were handing out the allowances and the ETS predominantly for free, and it’s going to stay like that until the carbon prices or the possibilities for industry to make their solutions through technology are going to come to a limit. Companies must buy and sell and the only exception is for electricity production, which is not a subject for international trade. More than 99% of electricity production happens on the European continent. These border measures are quite a dynamite in the international negotiations because the emerging economies such as China and others are against and say that these measures would blow up the international climate negotiations and there would be a trade war triggered through that and we are very vigilant not to create one.

You said regarding the ETS that there is a lot of complaining from the industry. How long do you think you can keep up with that until the EU is forced to move backwards, if the international negotiations don’t work out the way you expect them to?

We have our legislation in place, the CAP is ruled until 2020, that is the ending date and until then it will stay as it is and any review that we’ll see is going to be upward and not downward. What we see in the EU ETS matter worldwide is a step back from the United States, which was very disappointing for many of us, but on the other hand we see an uptake on ETS in Japan, New Zeeland, we are also heading of next week to China, we are talking to Korea and Taiwan, so there is quite a number of countries that are looking at a cap and trade system and they are going to do it slightly similar and slightly different from what we are doing. I wouldn’t be so pessimistic about it though, on the contrary, I would even say let’s take a step away from the negotiations and see what countries have been doing since Copenhagen, and they have done  much more in reality than they negotiated about, particularly China, regarding the energy efficiency, renewables, reforestation, so I think that the message was understood and actions are being taken.

If you look from a more optimistic point of view at the ETS and some analyses which show that no carbon cuts will be required until 2016 the CAP on ETS is far too high. How can that be reduced?

Is the EU CAP to high? Well, some say it’s too low. I think it’ s good that the EU CAP is there, it’s at the lower end, still, when I observed the American and Australian debates, the price of 15 euros/ tone of carbon, that’s roughly 20$ / tone of carbon, would be considered in US legislation (if it would have gone through) as way beyond the maximum price that  was feasible in the current circumstances, and also beyond the current price that is being debated in New Zeeland and Australia. So our 15 euros/ tone could be much higher but it’s still a price that according to recent research is making power stations or power companies think twice before they invest. So I would not jump to conclusions that the EU CAP is too high, but it can be improved.

You stated earlier that the EU is prepared to continue the Kyoto Protocol. What are you waiting for, specifically, to continue the Kyoto?

We do no think that there’s a strong reason for Europe to jump forward with Kyoto without sorting out a number of conditions. The first one is the environmental integrity. The 20% target that Europe has adopted is much more stringent than the case of continuing simply under Kyoto. There are a number of major flaws in the Kyoto Protocol that must be sorted out before the EU can subscribe to Kyoto. For instance the “land- use change”, which currently means that you can just do whatever you like. Another issue is that of the AAU’s (assigned amount units) created under Kyoto by the United States, through which they would buy the AAU’s from Russia. Europe was clearly playing innocent at the time. And even if the US dropped the Kyoto, the AAU’s created are still hanging there. We are talking about 10 billion tones of CO2!

There is a second condition: Kyoto parties are now 30% of the emissions, Japan and Russia said that they will leave the protocol, so if Europe were to subscribe to Kyoto it would find itself alone with perhaps just Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco and a few others. What is the meaning of the Kyoto Protocol if only Europe goes ahead? We must sort that out and we also want to have parallel action, a parallel framework for those not continuing with Kyoto, because we have to think about the United States or the group of developing countries, with the four major emerging economies (China, India, Brazil and South Africa) which are increasing very rapidly their emissions. Also we have to have another debate: a lot of countries are finding themselves in the group of developing countries( like the Middle East) and  their income per capita is way beyond the income per capita of several member states in Europe( such as in the case of  Dubai, Singapore, Saudi Arabia which have an income per capita way beyond Romania, Portugal, Greece, etc). We have to qualify that and it’s an open call to developing countries to sort out this kind of debate internally, because what we see is a very capable China is using a developing country rethoric to hide that they are really behaving as an industrial nation, and they should take obligation as an industrial nation.

Regarding the AAU’s issue, you stated that this is a major flaw in the Kyoto Protocol. Does it mean that the EU is not going to approve with that in the next Kyoto commitment period and do you think that is possible for the EU to speak in one voice about it, because there are still some concerns in Eastern European member states that those surplus AAU’s should be used after 2012?

It is true that there are different opinions in Europe concerning the AAU’s, because a lot of our new member states are having parts of them. What we are telling to these countries is that this is an internal issue that should be dissociated from the international negotiations. We do recognize the AAU’s problem at all levels and we have to find a solution to it. But I think that even our colleagues in the new member states would agree with me that if Russia and Ukraine were to bring their AAU’s to the market, the market would sink and the AAU’s would be worthless. But this refers to the debates for the next Kyoto period, and we will bring the AAU’s question to the table for the next period which starts in January 2013. Until that date our new member states like Russia and Ukraine can use their AAU’s on the market as it was agreed.

Transportation measures and regulations are important aspects in reducing CO2 emissions. What exactly do you have in mind and when should we expect to see these measures implemented?

We are going to come with our transport paper presumably at the beginning of the next year. We have a little delay in our work but we are steaming ahead and we will see a multitude of measures related to infrastructure, technology, taxation, even if we can’t take all these measures at the European level.

text: Lubomir Mitev for 2Celsius Network

After the Conference of the Parties (CoP15) in Copenhagen in 2009, the European Union is weary of finding support for the CoP16 in Mexico later this year. At EJC’s Climate Action Conference in Brussels (Oct 25-27), this became apparent when key EU officials stressed the need for action on the global scale. Yet, not all states share EU’s sense of urgency.

Copyright © 2009 Mihai Stoica / 2Celsius Network

Chris Davies, member of the European Parliament’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) Committee, stressed the fact that “the wagon has hit the mud” and at the CoP16 in Cancun, “we [the EU] have to keep the wheels turning”. This attitude was further elaborated upon in his comment that “in order to shift up a gear, we need a plague”, which would make the political pressure unbearable. In this sense, the EU cannot convince the world to adopt anti-climate change measures similar to those in place in Europe because “if you look out the window, you do not see climate change” and therefore “the political will has gone missing”. With a note of pessimism, he elaborated that “in the long-term, we are stuffed”.

Mr. Davies further framed the question for the EU’s role on the world stage as: “What is the point of imposing a price on carbon if it will only have an impact on 13% of global CO2 emissions (the EU’s share of world CO2 emissions)?” This rhetorical comment is the reason why the EU is looking for support. Mr. Davies’ colleague in the European Parliament’s ENVI Committee, Peter Liese, remarked that at the CoP15, “Mr. Obama was not able to commit [to a binding agreement] and China was not willing to commit”.

Yet, in the debate surrounding the EU’s search for a partner on action against climate change, four states were named as potential supporters: Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries). Based on the fact that Brazil is one of the top ten economies in the world, Russia is one of the EU’s biggest trading partners, and that India and China are the fourth and first (respectively) largest CO2 emitters in the world, this is a logical standpoint. Even so, Mr. Liese dampened any rise in hope by stating that the problems faced in these states are very different. While in Brazil the biggest threat stems from de-forestation, in China and India it is linked to pollution from economic activity, and the Russian view of climate change is based on events such as the recent heatwave in the summer of 2010. Coming to an agreement with partners who face such a range of difficulties is the EU’s main challenge at the CoP16 in Cancun, with the hope that, as at Copenhagen, the BRICs can be negotiated with as a group.

With the BRICs being the fastest-growing economies in the world, the EU cannot “ask people not to have welfare… we need people to have cars, it is their right!” In Mr. Liese’s opinion, “the challenge is a technological one”. As one example shows, by producing more efficient – and eventually 100% green – cars, and at the same time producing electricity in a sustainable way, the problem can be tackled without asking people not to drive. All this requires “a change in lifestyle” and the EU can certainly look to China for the potential technological innovation required to bring it about.

In the end, this debate can be summarized in a metaphor used by Mr. Davies: “When you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out immediately. Yet, if you put a frog in cold water and slowly bring it to boil, it will die from the heat”. With the EU sounding the alarm for broad and common participation at Cancun, at least one of the BRICs could prove the key partner to making a meaningful stand.

This year Slow Food’s Terra Madre gathering of the world’s food communities closed its works with Sustainable Food Policy Document. This follows the Manifesto on Climate Change and the Future of Food Security that was brought up by Vandana Shiva two years ago.

Carlo Petrini opening Terra Madre 2010 in Turin

The process of drafting Sustainable Food Policy Document began four months ago at the University of Gastronomic Sciences with the collection of suggestions from online forums and other universities around the world, and further contributions were made during the four days of meetings at Terra Madre 2010, said Roberto Burdese, presidenty of Slow Food Italy. The document will be presented to governments, food policy makers and organizations around the world on Terra Madre Day, December 10, reads a Slow Food press release.

Serge Latouche, one of the founders of the “degrowth” movement, stressed “we must decolonialize our imagery and remove from our minds the myths about modernity and productivism and consumption, based on the religion of growth. We cannot exploit nature endlessly, with no limits. Even a child would understand this is impossible. Technoscience pretends to create an artificial world in place of the real world it is destroying every day.” He described the current depletion of natural resources and fossil fuels as “total nonsense,” saying: “We have to reinvent common goods like water, soil and air, and focus on what is produced locally, in families and villages. We have to find a healthy relationship with nature and food. We must nourish ourselves with nature and let nature nourish itself from us.”

Our current energy model based on fossil fuels and nuclear power is neither good, clean nor fair, said Angelo Consoli, European director of the Foundation on Economic Trends founded by Jeremy Rifkin, echoing Slow Food’s principles for food quality. “It’s not good because it creates entropy. There is no pleasure in its fumes and nuclear waste. Energy should be integrated with ecosystems. I don’t need to tell you why coal and oil are not clean, just look at what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. And it’s not fair. We have a very unequal society in which half of the world’s population have little or no access to electricity. The 350 richest people in the world make as much as the poorest 3 billion.” He said this inequality was created by the current capital-intensive, profit-focused, monopolistic energy model. “The energy monopolists only see the profit side, but there is also a spiritual side to energy.” Energy is a human right, like water, food and freedom. “Everyone should have their fair share. The sun gives us more than enough energy.” If only the money spent on researching fossil fuels and nuclear power had been invested in solar technology, we would have affordable solar panels, he said. “We have to fight for energy sovereignty and energy biodiversity,” he said, calling for the creation of energy communities. “We must harness the sun and distribute local energy. Food and energy must be decentralized for humans to remain on the earth.”

Carlo Petrini, president of Slow Food International, made the day. Unbalanced, this is how the world is nowadays; there are virtuous initiatives of big businesses that want to switch to alternative energies, however their logic lies in profit and growth. As long as there are hectars of solar panels that block agricultural lands where food for the people was grown, we have a global problem more serious than climate change.

He said that during these days of Terra Madre, he had the impression the financial crisis didn’t exist. “We work every day concentrating not on the crisis, but on the earth, and that gives us enormous strength,” he said. Those who say that more consumption is the way to get out of the crisis, that consumption makes us happy, are “out of this world.” Instead, we need to fight for everyone to “have the right to the good and the beautiful,” he said.

Manifesto on Food Security and Climate Change

“This is the central point, the most important cultural and political point,” he stated. “Virtuous practices already exist in the cultural biodiversity of the farmers of the world. They have extraordinary knowledge and there must be a dialog with official science, an honest, frank and sincere dialog as equals.”

The manifesto is based upon the strong link between climate change and agriculture, drawing attention to the contribution to the problem by the industrial globalized food system and the potential to mitigate it by adapting to ecological and organic farming.

Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva, founder of NGO Navdanya and vice-president of Slow Food International, elaborated on each of the manifesto’s nine points, providing a passionate summary of its principles. Shiva argues that as 35 percent of the climate change crisis comes from agriculture, therefore 35 percent of the solution also lies in farming and food and that we must look seriously at this vital component in analyses of climate change and discussions of possible solutions.

She argues that we must return to sustainable, local, bio-diverse systems that are better adapted to dealing with the cyclones and floods created by climate change, as well as contributing to cleaner air and water and better food.

text: Lubomir Mitev for 2Celsius Network

On October 25th, 2010, the European Journalism Center Climate Action Conference initiated a debate on the up-coming Conference of the Parties (CoP 16) at Cancun, Mexico, later this year. The keynote speakers being Prof. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, and Laurence Graff, Head of Unit in DG CLIMA, European Commission, the  discussion between panelists and journalists focused on the outcomes of the CoP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009 and the expectations for the next step on the road to tackling climate change in Mexico in 2010.

Photo: Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) © 2010 Mihai Stoica / 2Celsius Network

Prof. van Ypersele’s straightforward statement that “Copenhagen was a failure” paints a clear picture of the mood that politicians and experts are to take with them to Cancun. Yet, as Vice-Chairman of the IPCC, he clearly stated that the role of experts in the climate change debate is not to advise politicians on the proper course of action, but rather to assess the science behind climate change and produce a report which allows our political leaders to make an informed decision. One result of this was the adoption of the 2 degrees Centigrade target for limiting global warming, which was proposed by the IPCC in 1996 and consequently adopted by the political elite.

It is with these aims that the IPCC expresses a clear hope that “policy-makers in Cancun will use the expert report in the best way possible”, stated Prof. van Ypersele. Nevertheless, even with the adoption of the 2 degrees Celsius target, the IPCC expresses the opinion that the goal set is high, while the pledges made by political leaders are insufficient. The underlying problem in the political lack of commitment and of motivation was stressed greatly, although the IPCC remains a non-biased transnational organization.

A similar picture was produced by Laurence Graff, the Head of Unit in DG CLIMA, European Commission. In her words, “the negotiations in Copenhagen did not deliver what was expected”. Certainly, the Copenhagen Accord, a political agreement between 29 Heads of Government, recognized the 2 degrees Celsius target and produced several other positive outcomes, but was definitively “below [the EU's] expectations”. Even though the target was set, the missing pieces are what is to be done to achieve that target. Her statement: “at least we know what the final objective is”, is both a sigh of relief of having taken a first step and a disappointment of not having achieved enough.

“The US… we just need a miracle”

What the negotiations in Cancun hold in store for the EU is uncertain. The Commission expects to integrate the Copenhagen Accord into the UNFCCC and have more members of the Convention on board. Yet, even though the EU is ready for a legally-binding agreement, “not many others are”. Ms. Graff further elaborated that “we [the EU] need other major players to come on-board”. How the Union hopes to persuade other political leaders to do this was not a focus of discussion, although the main player that the Commission would like to see taking up a larger role is the United States. Ms. Graff stated: “without the US, it is hard to get others to move”. And with the ambitious, yet realistic mindset of the Commission, she added: “we really expected more [in Copenhagen], and we really hope that the Cap and Trade Bill would go through Congress”, but when it comes to Cancun, “there is no hope for the US in the short-term future”.

Photo: Laurence Graff, Head of Unit – International and Inter-institutional Relations, DG CLIMA © 2010 Mihai Stoica / 2Celsius Network

On the whole, the EU’s expectations for Cancun are that the US will upkeep its pledge made in Copenhagen a year ago. “It is not enough, but it’s a start” stated Ms. Graff. Yet, the overall outcome of the CoP 16 will also lie with the level of ambition of the political leaders and will have to deliver a “balanced set of decisions”. The stress on balance is key to the EU’s position in the negotiations and also to its strategy of “building bridges between actors”. Nevertheless, a specific figure for the curbing of CO2 emissions is not expected to come out of Mexico.

Derek Osborn stressed for 2C at the Environmental NGO Forum in Brasov, Romania the inconsistency of economic indicators such as GDP when assessing sustainable development. The ex-director of the European Economic and Social Committee pledged for a a larger palette of indicators that would be inclusive of other rather ‘weak’ concepts as “happiness” or “ecosystem services”.

Osborn also discussed a pretty disregarded theme, the relation between sustainable development and democracy in new EU social contexts determined by immigration and economic downturn.

The interview ended with a couple of comparative considerations on EU / USA approaches to SD, as well as Osborn’s moderate optimism related to this year’s COP in Cancun, Mexico.

Romanian Environmental NGO Forum was organized by Terra Mileniul III, Alma-Ro, Salvati Dunarea si Delta, Environmental Partnership Foundation and the Civil Society Development Foundation in Brasov, Romania between October 14 and 17.

Human impact on world’s rivers threatens the water security of almost 5 billion people, and the survival of thousands of aquatic species.

Studies conducted by specialized institutions across the globe show that human interventions  on freshwater cause a dangerous decline on world’s rivers, especially in Europe and The United States. While the developing countries from Africa and Central Asia suffer the most due to water scarceness and security, rich countries produce the worst damages to it.

“What made our jaws drop is that some of the highest threat levels in the world are in the United States and Europe,” asserted Prof Peter McIntyre, one of the lead authors, who began the project as a Smith Fellow at the University of Michigan.

More than 30 of the 47 largest rivers in the world, amongst which we can mention the Nile, Yangtze and the Ganges, showed at least moderate threats to water security, due to excesive human impact. Between 10 000 and 20 000 aquatic wildlife species are at risk or face extinction and world’s rivers are suffering serious biodiversity and water security stress. The least affected rivers are those furthest from populated areas, such as remote parts of the tropics, Siberia and elsewhere in the polar regions.

A report published in the journal Nature produced a map of over twenty different types  of human influences and the way they affect water security and biodiversity. The most important and often encountered of them are the heavy engineering on water systems (dams and reservoirs), excesive irrigation, pollution or the introduction of alien non-native fish.

“With all the protection the EU has in place, it was surprising to see it was a hotspot for biodiversity loss. But for a long time Europeans have altered their landscapes, including the removal of 90% of wetlands and floodplains, which are crucial parts of river ecosystems [...]. We’re spending trillions of US dollars to fix a problem we’ve created in the first place. It’s much cheaper to treat the causes rather than the symptoms, which is what we do in the developed world today”, said Charles Vörösmarty, Professor of the City University of New York, lead author and an expert on global water, reads “The Guardian” newspaper.

Text by Cristina Mircea