Month: February 2018

Rome, one of Europe’s most traffic-clogged cities and home to thousands of ancient outdoor monuments threatened by pollution, plans to ban diesel cars from the centre by 2024, its mayor has said.

Virginia Raggi announced the decision on her Facebook page on Tuesday, saying: “If we want to intervene seriously, we have to have the courage to adopt strong measures”.

Her comments followed a court ruling in Germany that cities there can ban the most heavily polluting diesel cars from their streets.

About two-thirds of the 1.8m new cars sold in Italy last year were diesel, according to industry figures.

Rome has no major industries, so nearly all of the air pollution in the Italian capital is caused by motor vehicles.

The city often tries to ban older, more polluting vehicles from roads on days pollution reaches critical levels.

It has also tried to reduce pollution by allowing only cars whose number plates end in either odd or even numbers to circulate on alternate days.

But both regulations are widely flouted and lightly enforced by traffic police. To skirt the alternate days regulation, many families buy a used car with a different numberplate.

Apart from health issues, pollution from combustion engines causes severe damage to Rome’s many ancient outdoor monuments.

According to a study last year by a branch of the culture ministry, 3,600 stone monuments and 60 bronze sculptures risk serious deterioration because of air pollution.

Ahead of celebrations marking the start of the new millennium in 2000, the darkened facade of St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican was cleaned as part of a project that lasted several years, but fresh signs of pollution-related stains are visible again.

Before the German court’s ruling on Tuesday, officials in highly industrialised Milan, in northern Italy, had already announced plans to make the city diesel-free by 2030.

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"I would like to thank the jury one by one!" said Nilüfer Municipality Councillor Pelin Sevgi, who accepted the award. "We were competing against some very strong candidates, who put forward very impressive actions, so it’s a great honour to receive this award."

In selecting the Turkish city, the jury displayed their appreciation of context in deciding what actions meet the mantle of “transformative”. With a backdrop of political challenges at a national level, the Turkish city’s work to increase civic engagement was deemed to be the most impressive Transformative Action, as it innovatively addressed the pathways of the Basque Declaration.

The 2018 edition Transformative Action Award was launched on 27 February during the opening day of the Urban Future Conference in Vienna (Austria) by ICLEI Regional Director and Transformative Action Award jury member, Wolfgang Teubner. 

The award, organised by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, the Basque Country and the City of Aalborg (Denmark), rewards ongoing or concluded Transformative Actions that use the pathways outlined in the Basque Declaration to achieve the socio-cultural, socio-economic and technological transformation of societies.

The concept of transforming – moving from one state to another – is at the forefront of the competition. It requires cities to identify challenges and to implement measures, guided by the pathways of the Basque Declaration, that see urban areas improve. It is this spirit of innovation and change that the Transformative Action Award honours.

"The Transformative Action Award celebrates the ambition of cities and municipalities to create sustainable communities,” said Karl Heinz-Lambertz, President of the European Committee of the Regions. “It sends a clear message that local democracy and citizen engagement are the driving force for a sustainable future," he added.

His words were echoed by Cor Lamers, Chair of the ENVE Commission of the European Committee of the Regions and Transformative Action Award jury member, who said: “The Transformative Action Award gives Europe-wide recognition to cities that are leading the way in terms of sustainability. Actions that reduce our environmental impact are urgently needed and this initiative is an invaluable tool to make those actions happen.”

The competition is open to any local or regional authority, or civil society organisation located in an EU Member State, EEA country or EU candidate or accession country that has endorsed the Basque Declaration. The applicant must be behind the implementation of the Transformative Action and the Action must have been in place for at least three months, but no longer than five years, at the time of submission. All applications must be submitted in full, in clear English, by 30 June 2018.

Ms. Arantza Acha, fellow jury member and UNESCO Etxea Director, added: “The 2017 Transformative Action Award entrants provided concrete examples of how local, multi-stakeholder dialogue and action, as guided by the pathways of the Basque Declaration, can enhance urban sustainable development and social inclusion. This year I am looking forward to seeing more of such innovative and inspiring actions.”

Thomas Kastrup Larsen, Mayor of Aalborg (Denmark) and jury member, shared what he hopes to see from the 2018 entrants: “I look forward to inspiring entries from across Europe, showing the creativity of our cities and regions to make their communities more sustainable and better places to live for all.”

Given the dry language of policy measures, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that each action taken has a meaningful impact on people’s lives. Moving towards sustainability, at its core, is about creating a better society for people. 

At the next award ceremony, the audience is sure to witness the fruits of the winner’s policy work resulting in a visible moment of joy.

To endorse the Basque Declaration, and enter a Transformative Action to the competition, visit the Sustainable Cities Platform.

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Mathilde Dupré is trade policy officer at the Institut Veblen for economic reform, a think tank based in Paris. Samuel Leré is environnement and globalisation officer at Fondation pour la Nature et l’Homme, a French NGO created by Nicolas Hulot.

The climate is the greatest missing part from the investment and trade deal between the EU and Canada. Such was the conclusion from the official expert report that the French authorities commissioned to evaluate the health and environmental impacts of the Canada-EU free trade agreement, known as CETA, which came into force five months ago.

Since then, French and EU policy makers have made quite a few announcements. The latest came two weeks ago, when the Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström claimed on twitter that “Paris deal reference is needed in all EU trade agreement today”.

This is a step ahead for the Commission, but it is also a very light and symbolic gesture as nothing concrete would happen if a country doesn’t comply with its climate commitments. In the meantime, the EU mandate to negotiate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the US remains valid and discussions might resume at any time.

The French government has shown willingness to go a step further. “No Paris Agreement, no trade agreement. The US knows what to expect” recently said Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, the Foreign affairs Secretary of State in front of the parliament. For its part, Nicolas Hulot, Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, declared again on the 14th of February that in the current context “CETA is not compatible with the fight against climate change”.

In its “CETA action plan”, presented in October, France already committed to including, in all future trade agreements, “compliance with the Paris Agreement among the essential element clauses of the political dialogue and cooperation agreements that are decided along with trade agreements – these trade agreements may be revoked or suspended in the case of confirmed violations of essential elements clauses, consistent with customary international law.”

Unfortunately, studies reveal that these clauses, already used to promote and monitor the respect of human rights, are far from being adequate and sufficient to make a real difference. Furthermore, the compliance criteria remains unclear and might only mean “having ratified” the Paris Agreement, regardless of the compliance with national pledges. In that case, such a provision would only allow to target countries such as Russia – even the US would appear as “compliant”, however paradoxical it would be.

In reality, it is possible to effectively integrate the Paris Agreement into new trade deals, including CETA and the upcoming JEFTA with Japan. But it requires a bit more creativity than the recent political declarations. A two-stage process would make it possible :

• First, new provisions could be inserted in trade deals in order to allow for the agreement (or at least parts of its clauses) to be suspended if a Party fails to meet its GHG emissions and climate finance commitment or to regularly upgrade them. This provision would be the first very concrete step towards subjecting trade law to environmental law.
• Secondly, to make this provision operational and binding, trade agreements could plan for the creation of an ad-hoc committee formed by scientists and NGO representatives in order to assess the extent to which countries have met their commitments (based on the information provided by those countries to the UNFCCC) and propose the appropriate trade sanctions if needed.

This provision alone will obviously not be sufficient to make trade deals fully compatible with the Paris agreement. It will be crucial that countries take further action by removing from bilateral trade agreements all the provisions that have the potential to harm the climate.

The contentious “investor state dispute settlement mechanism”, which allows companies to sue governments that try to protect the climate, should for instance be dropped. And the objectives of the regulatory cooperation process which aims to promote a convergence of standards should prioritize environmental protection over trade and investment promotion and ensure the full respect of the precautionary principle.

Such a reform would offer a concrete response to the White House’s position on climate change and the Paris Agreement. More than 2 years after COP21, it would also strengthen the implementation of the climate deal and prevent any rollback of national climate commitments. Its implementation should of course not give any country a new excuse not to increase, as planned, its national climate contribution, especially in 2018 in the context of the Talanoa Dialogue.

Finally, it would incentivise private actors to operate and invest in states where the energy transition and the climate remain a top priority.

The French President made a speech at the Bonn Climate Conference (COP23) as well as the 2018 WEF suggesting that trade and globalisation should be made compatible with the protection of the Commons. If Emmanuel Macron wants to walk the talk on climate, he should now use his political clout to convince other Heads of State and Government. The run-up to the June G7 summit in Quebec, Canada  will provide him with a great opportunity to tackle this.

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Millions of heavily polluting vehicles could eventually disappear from roads across Germany after its top administrative court ruled that cities have the right to ban diesel motors in an effort to improve deadly air quality levels.

Tuesday’s historic decision potentially affects an estimated 12m vehicles and has delivered a heavy blow to Europe’s largest car market, while being celebrated by environmental campaigners.

Germany’s highest administrative court in Leipzig ruled in favour of upholding bans that were introduced by lower courts in the cities of Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, two of the most polluted German cities, after appeals were lodged by the states of Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The Leipzig court ruling in the case, which was originally brought by the environmental groups Deutsche Umwelthilfe (German environmental aid or DUH) and ClientEarth, paves the way for cities across Germany to follow suit.

“It’s a great day for clean air in Germany,” Jürgen Resch, of the DUH, said.

The court said it would be up to city and municipal authorities to apply the bans, but advised them to “exercise proportionality” in enforcing them, and to impose them gradually, granting exemptions for certain vehicles, such as ambulances, rubbish collection lorries and police cars.

Ugo Taddei, a lawyer for ClientEarth called the decision “an incredible result for people’s health”, and suggested it could have an impact in foreign courts. “This ruling gives us legal clarity which we’ve long waited for, that diesel restrictions are legally permissible and will necessarily trigger a domino effect across the country, impacting as well on other legal cases,” he told German media.

ClientEarth believed that imposing traffic restrictions on the most polluting vehicles was the most effective way of improving protection from air pollution, he said.

Experts estimate that excessive amounts of nitrogen oxides or NOx in the air kill between 6,000 and 13,000 people in Germany every year, causing a range of health conditions, from strokes to asthma.

Most NOx comes from transport, especially diesel motors. The EU threshold of 40 micrograms of NOx per cubic metre is frequently exceeded in many German cities, with 70 on the list, most notably Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Munich.

The decision will pitch millions of drivers into a state of uncertainty over how they can travel to work and school in case of a ban, and how they should deal with owning vehicles likely to plunge in value.

It will also provide Germany’s new government – which is most likely to be a grand coalition between Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats– with a large headache as it faces calls to consider a compensation scheme.

Eager to reassure anxious car owners, the government insisted nothing would change immediately and stressed that bans were not inevitable.

“The court has not issued any driving bans but created clarity about the law,” the environment minister, Barbara Hendricks, said. “Driving bans can be avoided, and my goal is and will remain that they do not come into force.”

Angela Merkel said the ruling concerned only individual cities. “It’s really not about the entire country and all car owners,” the chancellor said.

The president of the Association of the German Automobile Industry, Matthias Wissmann, criticised the decision, insisting that the “ambitious air quality standards in German cities are also achievable without driving bans”.

He added that the air quality problems could be solved in the medium term “if and when more vehicles with new exhaust standards entered the car pool”.

Shares in German car manufacturers suffered a moderate decline after the ruling.

Debate on NOx has prevailed for years but the political dimensions of the issue were stirred by the revelations in 2015 that carmakers, most notably Volkswagen, had cheated on diesel emission tests.

At a diesel summit in Berlin last November between car industry representatives and the German government to discuss what to do with older vehiclesm, governments on the local, state and national level pledged €1bn to alleviate the environmental impact of diesel.

Merkel, however, was accused of being too ready to let the powerful car lobby off the hook for its own failings and deception. Few believed the financial injection would effectively translate into improved air conditions.

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Whether grappling with rising sea levels, drought or floods, mayors of cities worldwide are increasingly on the frontline of efforts to help communities prepare better for the impacts of climate change as it hikes the risk of disasters.

With cities home to over half the world’s population and producing more than 80 per cent of global economic output, mayors are also driving climate action by adopting renewable energy and cleaner methods of transport.

Jenny Durkan, mayor of the US city of Seattle, said US President Donald Trump’s decision to walk away from the Paris Agreement, a global pact to curb climate change, and his support for fossil fuels have prompted city leaders to step up.

“Mayors have been galvanised in America, and now will be taking more unified steps than perhaps they would have been when they had to rely on federal partners,” Durkan, a former US attorney, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.

“Our federal government unfortunately has completely backed away from all their commitments (on climate change) … so the leadership on this front has to come from state and local government,” she added.

Seattle, a port city with low-lying areas, already faces worsening flood risk due to higher seas and more frequent torrential rains, exacerbated by global warming, Durkan said.

“Climate change is huge for us. We’ve had extreme weather conditions shifting,” she said. “Cities are not going to wait.”

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