Energy & Climate

While the environment is often treated as a national issue, international co-operation remains pivotal to producing the results that will adequately tackle climate change. As such the UK needs to re-imagine its environmental relationship with the EU27.

The environment should transcend national policy and contribute to foreign policy, considering the grave threat climate change poses towards the whole world and not just a few states. Such is the interconnectivity of countries and economies today that it should be expected that the UK’s environmental policies will come under strain from external shocks that could stem from a number of different geopolitical factors. Yet the most pressing of these might derive from the EU’s future relationship with the UK.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that global temperatures will rise by 3°C by 2100 and 2°C within the next 12 years, despite some international co-operation on the issue, testament to the gravity of the problem.

One could argue that drawbacks lie with the official charters only including advisory and voluntary aims to reduce global warming, with the Paris climate change agreement proving especially flimsy in its achievements. America’s exit and its own inability to reach targets is also a cases in point. Clearly, there is a lack of tangible incentives for countries to work together in fear of being hurt economically by the increased red tape, and in this way becoming uncompetitive in terms of output compared to those who continue to produce vast volumes of emissions and pollution such as China.

The EU has proven itself to be different. It has developed a clear goal in pushing member states to contribute to a “resource-efficient, green, and competitive low-carbon economy”. Since the region has integrated further, European states have worked well to tackle the environmental issue through collective effort despite significantly less pressure 30 years ago then as there is now due to growing awareness, green parties, and activist movements. In 2017 the EU emitted 4,466m tonnes of greenhouse gases compared with 5,720 in 1990, an impressive decrease in trend when considering the fact that more nation states have joined the union in the time period and the destabilising nature of the 2008 global financial crisis that could have stalled progress. While its own targets have not been met recently, progress still continues.

Such success heightens the importance of the environment in the UK’s future relationship with the EU. With most media outlets focusing on trade and security, it is easy to overlook the benefits enjoyed by the UK in being a member of a group that is constantly pushing for innovation to improve the environmental state of Europe. Environmental charity Friends of the Earth looked into the relationship further, with a paper titled ‘UK Environmental Policy Post-Brexit: A Risk Analysis’. They found that the Government’s strategy not only proved vague regarding the issue, but also held targets that were less ambitious than the EU’s. The notion that interstate cooperation within the EU helps harmonise environmental goals is ultimately reinforced by the study’s conclusion that better environmental outcomes for the UK would be enjoyed with a closer relationship to Europe.

Of course, the type of Brexit deal will affect relations between the UK and EU. A ‘no deal’ Brexit would prove the most disruptive in terms of policy links with the EU, while a ‘hard Bresit’ could see only the most important environmental regulations retained in the UK. On the other side, if Brexit were completely stopped then Britain would return to the European Parliament reputation damaged but still a leading member state on the environment, perhaps being able to compel others to declare a climate emergency as the UK and Republic of Ireland have.

Global warming alone should be an issue important enough to transcend Brexit and bring negotiators on both sides, if not any others, to consensus on the issue. Shaking off European environment laws to reduce regulations would be done to the detriment of the UK’s clear progress on the environmental issue as part of the European project, and the politicians will do well to acknowledge that nuance.

Thomas Bradbury, studies politics at the University of Exeter.

In the everlasting discussion of policy, trade deals, and environmental crises, one giant shadow looms on the horizon: Who will take our waste?

It is the recurring parable about consumer culture, from which the lesson has still not been learned. We shop, we consume, we discard; the linear economy of consumption and disposal is still running its course as the dominant pattern of use. But changes in China may impact our current habits in waste and recycling of these materials.
The average consumer is largely detached from the size and complexity of the ‘supply chain’ of waste and recycling. This is to the detriment of informed debate about the current broken model, which sees the UK trapped in an unsustainable cycle of shipping waste abroad, rather than looking to reassess how it can re-use and repurpose of discarded materials.

In fact, the glass bottle you put in your recycling bin every week can potentially end up as far away as China for it to be fully recycled. That likelihood is changing, however. Last year China – one of the largest importers of waste from other countries – announced a monumental ban on foreign waste imports following the realisation that the import of so-called ‘recycling’ was leading to a significant pollution crisis. Much of the recycling waste was being sent to landfill, incinerators, or for the informal work economy due to lack of sufficient infrastructure to process the scale of waste entering the country.

This follows another strategic ban by the Chinese government in 2017, as well as planned additional measures to be implemented in late 2019, designed to further refine and control the types of waste being imported into the country and reduce the issue of foreign waste and pollution that has remained uncontrolled for years.

The scale of the waste export crisis has implications for both the waste producers and waste importers in the flow of these items. In the western world, it presents a dilemma for local governments and companies. Now that waste management is outsourced to companies like Veolia, the exports and sales of these materials now faces wider scrutiny from their destinations and, in the worst case, are likely to be returned. The waste market has potentially been disrupted, because the costs of recycling and waste disposal rising has been met with a decrease in the potential return through export. So what solutions have been posed?

The primary solution so far has been to target other developing economies that already import waste. Countries such as Malaysia and Thailand, who previously accepted waste from the West, began accepting extra foreign waste following the first stages of the Chinese import ban. However it is unlikely to be a permanent solution, as China has proven to the world, they do not necessarily need to be the receptacles of the waste of Western livelihoods forever. In fact, India has recently announced plans to potentially ban all imports of plastic waste from other countries.

The remaining solutions leave a lot to be desired. The UK itself already runs a semi-intensive EfW (Energy from Waste) programme designed to reclaim energy from municipal waste through incineration. Currently, the waste that is not exported or sent to EfW, is sent to landfill, which comes with its own consequences of land-use and additional pollutants. This offers a glimpse into the extent of our waste and shows how our own systems are not reaching their fullest and most sustainable potential in the UK.

There is a clear and pressing need for a radical change in the way we consume and dispose of waste, and one of the strongest arguments being presented is that of a ‘circular economy’. Unlike a linear economic model, the circular economy aims for the repurposing and minimising of waste and achieving the most potential from resources. If looking at the case of a simple glass bottle, instead of it being sent to landfill or traded off to other countries, the glass is repurposed or reused for the same product after being sanitised. The resource thus continuously re-enters the supply chain instead of being discarded after one use.

With costs of waste disposal steadily rising, and the environmental implications of human livelihoods potentially reaching breaking point, there is more the need to consider and change these aspects of waste than ever before. The UK could pave the way in not just shipping its waste abroad but looking for sustainable methods of re-addressing our whole waste system to adopt a circular method of resource consumption even for the most harmful of materials, like plastic, and could be a vital part of the Government’s new strategy released last year. After all, if it is our waste, we should be the ones to deal with it.

Micheil Page is Head of Agora’s Energy and Climate Programme.

What is the role of developed economies such as the UK in assisting smaller developing states in mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change.

When projections become daily realities

Unbeknownst to many, we are teetering on what could be referred to as a climate armageddon. The intrinsic threat of climate change to so many different facets of life on this planet makes it particularly unique. Yet, what is especially alarming for certain countries is the simple reality that they are not ready – or, in many instances, not able – to tackle climate change head on. Varied capabilities and acute vulnerabilities will bear unimaginable social and economic stress on countries that did not have a sizable role in contributing to the underlying causes of global climate change.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) believe their determined efforts to unite nations in addressing climate change have not gained the traction nor the reward that they were intended to. A combination of self-interest, concentration of political and economic power as well as different levels of development have all contributed to SIDS and other states experiencing repeated diplomatic and political disappointments. Perhaps best exemplified by the failure of Copenhagen Agreement (where a combination of political and organisational drawbacks failed to produce a legally binding agreement), financial considerations and technical expertise continue to impede the potential progress made at climate change conferences. This then raises the question: what is the role of countries that have so far remained relatively unscathed from the impacts of global climate change?

What role can the UK play?

To quote British Prime Minister Theresa May “there is a clear moral imperative for developed countries such as the UK to help those around the world who stand to lose the most from the consequences of manmade climate change.” At the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, her government announced a raft of bold and commendable measures to assist countries that are affected by climate change. £160 million will be directed to countries to transition to cleaner/greener energy systems and provide the necessary support to communities already affected by climate change. This commitment is additional to the already sizeable £5.8 billion of funding between 2016-2020. It also follows the Climate Change Act, which was passed in 2008 and serves as the legislative basis for the UK’s approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions and responding to climate change.

In directing this noteworthy amount of funding, the UK should provide technical assistance to SIDS on three key elements: first, combining the current social/environmental momentum to spur and enact developments and processes of climate legislation in SIDS; second, through the UK’s expertise in the fields of energy markets and clean growth, government led socio-economic initiatives could be implemented to assist economies struggling to adapt to the effects of climate change; and third, the UK should lead on efforts to adopt stricter and more progressive provisions and policies of climate resilience at international climate conferences and other supranational settings. Thus, climate change offers an opportunity for the UK to revitalise its role as a climate leader and improve its reputation and standing in the global arena.

Looking ahead

It would be a mistake to believe that developed nations hold sole responsibility for the problems facing SIDS. Instead, what must be demonstrated is leadership. Leadership that rises above the complexities of climate change and encompasses its different facets including obligation, capabilities, fairness and universal participation. This requires that SIDS look also to their own role and capabilities in developing ecological sustainable development, which reflects their needs and the global requirement.

By utilising financial, technological and diplomatic efforts, the UK must address the needs of SIDS through a pragmatic lens. Addressing these needs should not be viewed as a form of charity or aid. Instead it is an explicit obligation owed to these countries by the UK and the wider international community. Previous multilateral environmental agreements recognise the enormity of the challenge faced. Yet, a concerted global effort needs to focus on an equitable and distributive approach that speaks to the most vulnerable and cements what is a common problem with many shared responsibilities.

Andrew Williamson is currently working in international development and has a keen interest in environmental diplomacy and governance.