Ecology

The development and diffusion of precision agriculture might speed up since fresh money could become available through eco-schemes under the new CAP Strategic Plans. How does the EU support precision agriculture and what does it mean from a global south perspective? This article looks at the case of Rwanda and suggests technological developers and policy makers to proceed with caution to avoid widening inequality between smallholders and commercial farms, privacy breaches or undesired data dependency on tech giants like Google.

The fossil fuel industry tries to present carbon dioxide removal technologies as a safe and effective technical solution to climate problems. However, they have not been proven to be safe and effective. Although the technologies have been extensively subsidized and promoted for several decades – with both public and private funding – there has been no significant progress in their development. Many projects have been abandoned due to high costs or technical problems.

This online event was organised to discuss about how the EU Member States are advancing their preparations of the CAP Strategic Plans before their final submission to the European Commission. The main focus is on the fairness elements of the draft plans. Fairness is not limited to the monetary and distributional aspects of direct payments but encompasses a broader set of considerations, such as labour, market organisation, and targeting towards environmental needs.

COPs are a time of a plethora of announcements, pledges and initiatives by countries, businesses and financial institutes. It is hard to keep up and even harder to distinguish between newsworthy reason for hope and old wine in new bottles. Lisa Tostado reports on the climate “communication nightmare” of welcoming progress while emphasizing the persistent astronomical gap to what would be Paris Agreement-compatible.

Lisa Tostado interviewed Green MEP Jutta Paulus her about her expectations and initial assessment concerning this year’s COP26, as well as the on role of the EU and particularly Germany in international climate negotiations.

COP26 was supposed to be the “most inclusive COP ever”. Lisa Tostado reports on why the promised cannot be considered fulfilled and where inclusion and representation remain an issue to be addressed urgently.

To avoid further environmental damages due to the use of EU money, the European Commission should suspend funding to the Hungarian government.

Inequalities are striking in the climate crisis. Lisa Tostado unpacks them and reports on the action on payment of climate debt at the COP26 in Glasgow.

Methane is the second biggest contributor to the climate crisis, responsible for about 0.5°C of human-caused global heating so far. One of the main emitters of the powerful greenhouse gas is the oil and gas sector, where methane can leak across the whole supply chain – during extraction, transport, storage and use. The extent to which such leakages occur is only vaguely known, with companies often reporting emissions only on the basis of calculations as opposed to actual measurements. Where measurements are being done, they often show higher emission rates than previously anticipated.

Recent carbon-neutrality pledges may seem ambitious, but merely serve to promote a new set of false climate solutions under a different guise. Such pledges may persuade many people, but the climate isn’t buying it.