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Euronews
22-05-2025
- Business
- Euronews
6 key EU food imports exposed to biodiversity loss and climate change
Six of Europe's key food imports are under increasing threat from biodiversity loss and climate change, a new report warns. Commissioned by philanthropic initiative the European Climate Foundation, UK consultants Foresight Transitions examined the vulnerability of staple crops maize, rice and wheat, as well as cocoa, coffee and soy - key commodities for EU agrifood production and exports. They found that more than half the imports of these six foodstuffs were from climate vulnerable countries with limited resources to adapt. For three - wheat, maize and cocoa - two-thirds of imports come from countries whose biodiversity is deemed not to be intact. 'These aren't just abstract threats,' says lead author of the report, Camilla Hyslop. 'They are already playing out in ways that negatively affect businesses and jobs, as well as the availability and price of food for consumers, and they are only getting worse.' As the world's biggest producer and exporter of chocolate, it is the EU's chocolate industry - worth an estimated €44 billion - that faces the biggest threat from these twin environmental factors. Around 97 per cent of chocolate's primary ingredient, cocoa, comes from countries with a low-medium or below climate score, as per the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. This tool combines a country's vulnerability to climate damages with its access to financial and institutional support. And 77 per cent of cocoa comes from countries with a medium or below biodiversity rating, according to a ranking of biodiversity intactness from the UK's Natural History Museum, which compares the current abundance of wild species to pre-modern levels. The researchers mapped trade data from Eurostat onto these two rankings of environmental security for all six commodities. In the case of cocoa, European imports come from a few main countries in West Africa - Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria - all of which are experiencing overlapping and intensifying climate and biodiversity impacts. 'The European Union has forked out an increasing price for cocoa imports as a result of these environmental pressures, with the total value of imports increasing by 41 per cent over the last year,' says Hyslop. 'The increasing value has also been driven by climate-related increases in the price of sugar, highlighting the environmental 'double whammy' facing not only chocolatiers but other kinds of producers using multiple environmentally-sensitive inputs.' Chocolate prices have gone up 43 per cent in the last three years, according to a recent analysis by green think tank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), with 'chocflation' evident on supermarket shelves. While previous studies have assessed the climate vulnerability of food imports, the new research stands out for its focus on biodiversity loss and how these two environmental factors interact. 'Climate impacts are made worse by declining biodiversity, which leave farms and surrounding ecosystems far less resilient to climate and other shocks,' explains Hyslop. 'Not only are less biodiverse farms less resilient to crop disease - these diseases often emerge due to decreased biodiversity.' On top of this, yields are diminished by the clearing of native vegetation, which can alter local microclimates. While practices such as monocropping - where a crop like wheat is exclusively grown - deplete the soil on which food production depends. One response to this rising insecurity in Europe's supply chains is to produce more food on the continent. But, argues Dr Mark Workman, director of Foresight Transitions and co-author of the report, this 'reshoring' would by itself be a wholly insufficient response. 'Not only would the EU struggle to grow some of these commodities in large quantities, it is facing its own climate and biodiversity threats - not to mention the unpalatable land-use implications of significant reshoring of food production.' Hyslop underscores the global nature of the climate crisis, too. While higher rainfall in 2024 left cocoa rotting in West Africa, she writes, floods in the UK and France decreased wheat production, and high temperatures in Eastern Europe disrupted maize crops - making imports crucial for food security. 'It is therefore entirely in the self-interest of EU policymakers to get serious about investing in the climate resilience of partner producers as well as overseas trading infrastructure such as ports that support this trade and are also subject to environmental stresses,' adds Workman. 'This is an important message to convey at a time when overseas aid budgets are often being pitted against investments in defence and security - but the truth is they are two sides of the same coin.' Policy recommendations the report sets out include measures to support smallholder farmers, who supply the majority of cocoa to the EU. And, 'the most obvious' one, strong climate mitigation policies, which will have positive benefits for all supplier countries.
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Pope Francis hailed as ‘unflinching global champion' on climate crisis
He declared destroying the environment a sin, warned that humanity was turning the glorious creation of God into a 'polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth', and located the cause of the climate crisis in people's 'selfish and boundless thirst for power'. The messages Pope Francis delivered on the climate and environmental crises were forceful and direct. He called the leaders of fossil fuel companies into the Vatican to hold them to account; declared a global climate emergency, in 2019; and in his final months, held a conference on 'the economics of the common good'. Simon Stiell, the UN's top official on the climate, paid tribute: 'Pope Francis has been a towering figure of human dignity, and an unflinching global champion of climate action as a vital means to deliver it. Through his tireless advocacy, [he] reminded us there can be no shared prosperity until we make peace with nature and protect the most vulnerable, as pollution and environmental destruction bring our planet close to 'breaking point'.' Laurence Tubiana, chief of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the 2015 Paris agreement, wrote on social media that Pope Francis had been an 'important voice': 'By clearly setting out the causes of the crisis we are experiencing, [he] reminded us who the fight against the climate crisis is aimed at: humanity as a whole.' The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, said Pope Francis was 'beacon of global moral strategic leadership' who had guided and inspired her through the 'dark and desolate days' of the Covid pandemic. Describing him as her hero, she recalled spending time with him late last year, where he reinforced in her 'the importance of always aligning our hearts, our heads, and our hands with our faith – to see, hear, and feel all people, so that we may help them, and to protect our planet. 'His voice comforted and inspired many. His hands led him to places where others dared not go, and his heart knew no boundaries. His humour and his laughter were not only infectious but calming. Let us, each and every day, see, hear, and feel people – to fight the globalisation of indifference.' After his appointment in March 2013, Francis quickly took up the climate and environment as key themes of his papacy. 'If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us,' he warned an audience in Rome in May 2014, the year before the Paris agreement was signed. 'Never forget this.' His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had taken steps to green the Vatican with solar panels, and spoken of the sinfulness of environmental destruction. But Francis went further, with a landmark encyclical in 2015. Laudato Si', translated as Praise Be to You, set out in 180 pages his vision of 'climate change [as] a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political', and warned of the 'grave social debt' owed by the rich to the poor, because of it. 'This is his signature teaching,' said Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer, at the time of the publication. 'Francis has made it not just safe to be Catholic and green; he's made it obligatory.' 'Laudato Si' was a wonderful achievement and vision – an environmentalism of hope and justice that profoundly resonated,' said Edward Davey, head of the UK office of the World Resources Institute. This was followed by a fresh encyclical, Laudate Deum, in October 2023, with even starker warnings, that humanity was taking the Earth 'to breaking point'. Part of what made Francis's words stand out was their clear focus on the social justice aspects of the climate crisis. St Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century Italian friar from whom Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina took his papal name, was known for living among the poor and in close harmony with nature. As Pope, Francis seemed equally determined to bring the two together. 'We have to hear both the cry of the Earth, and the cry of the poor,' he wrote in Laudato Si. Mark Watts, executive director of the C40 Cities group of mayors supporting climate action, said: 'He established for a worldwide audience that the climate crisis is not just an environmental challenge but a profound social and ethical issue, exacerbated by greed and short-term profit seeking, disproportionately affecting the world's most marginalised communities. His leadership highlighted how inequality and the climate crisis are inextricably linked, mobilising community-led climate action.' In Laudate Deum, Francis called for 'a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the western model', and defended protesters, writing: 'The actions of groups negatively portrayed as 'radicalised' … are filling a space left empty by society as a whole, which ought to exercise a healthy 'pressure', since every family ought to realise that the future of their children is at stake.' He was regarded by some as too radical himself – as he noted: '[I have been] obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic church.' This year's UN climate summit, Cop30, will be held in Brazil, in November, and campaigners had been hoping that, despite his increasing frailty, the first ever Latin American pontiff might be able to make it. Few figures of such authority have staked their reputation on the climate crisis, and fewer still have so publicly yoked together social justice with the environment. Stiell said: 'His message will live on: humanity is community. And when any one community is abandoned – to poverty, starvation, climate disasters and injustice – all of humanity is deeply diminished, materially and morally, in equal measure.'
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nation adopts aggressive new pollution policy in wake of court ruling — here are the bold new objectives
Switzerland is stepping up its efforts to cut emissions, approving new climate targets. Reuters reported that the goal is to reduce emissions by 2035 to at least 65% of 1990 levels. Last year's European court ruling that Switzerland was not doing enough to protect the environment prompted this more aggressive approach to combating rising global temperatures. These new objectives coincide with the country's commitment to The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty adopted by 196 parties in 2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. Do you think more places of worship should embrace clean energy? Yes — it sets a positive example Only if it saves money No opinion Absolutely not Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. In contrast, President Trump is withdrawing the United States from The Paris Agreement, as he did during his first term, citing that it poses an unfair economic burden on the U.S. Environmental groups have criticized the decision. As NPR reported, Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris Agreement, was unhappy about losing U.S. support but said that international climate action "has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country's politics and policies." Despite policies and politics, we can still take steps as individuals to combat the warming of the planet. Upgrading your appliances can reduce energy usage in your home, resulting in cost savings. Installing solar panels is another way to combat the warming of the planet, and community solar programs allow you to tap into clean energy without the need to install rooftop panels. By adopting new climate targets, Switzerland is taking a more aggressive approach to the climate crisis. The country had previously committed to cut emissions in half by 2030 from where they were in 1990. The new amendment is part of a long-term climate strategy focused on the important role of renewable and clean energy. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
