Professor Jacqueline McGlade
Executive Director, EEA
Speaking Points
European Parliament
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
Monday, 17 October 2011
Mr Chairman,
Members of the Committee,
Colleagues,
First of all, let me thank the Committee – through the Chairman – for this opportunity to speak to you about the work of the European Environment Agency, in particular our draft Management Plan for 2012.
EEA Mission
· Our mission statement requires the Agency to “support sustainable development and to help achieve significant and measurable improvement in Europe’s environment, through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policy-making agents and the public”.
· That is why we put such an important emphasis on our relationship with the European Parliament. By coming to you to consult you on our work programme for 2012, we are underlining our intention to provide the right kind of information to the right people.
· Our priorities for 2012 reflect the current environmental policy agenda and the priorities we have established in discussions with our stakeholders. Moreover, they take account of the many ongoing interactions we have with this Committee via your Members on our Management Board, our contacts with the Chairman, rapporteurs and individual members and our constant presence in your Committee’s meetings.
The EEA 2009 – 2013 Strategy
· The EEA 2009–2013 Strategy is the fourth Multiannual Work Programme. It builds upon the successful delivery of our previous strategy, which was based on the key priorities of the 6th Environment Action Programme (6th EAP) and established the Agency as a key provider in Europe of environmental data, information and knowledge.
· The core objective of the current strategy is to continue to produce European, pan-European and regional environment–related data and indicator sets, integrated environmental assessments and thematic analyses in order to provide a sound decision basis for the EU and Member countries’ environmental policies. The release of the SOER 2010 here in the Parliament was seen as a contribution to the review of the 6th EAP and as input to the 7th EAP which will be elaborated in 2012.
Overview of current and planned activities for 2012
It is proposed that the major priorities for 2012-2013 will continue to build on the 2011 priorities:
i) Resource efficiency, the green economy and ecosystem accounting in the context of supporting the Roadmap and towards Rio 2012.
ii) Climate change mitigation, including the Effort Sharing Directive and
adaptation
iii) Supporting the modernisation and streamlining of environmental reporting through the implementation of new ICT solutions via the SEIS principles. These have now been adopted by the 53 countries under the UNECE Ministerial in Astana and are proposed as a key outcome for the Rio meeting of the UNCSD.
iv) Providing support through our work with many Commission services to provide the base reference data layers for the pan-European region, including the European neighbourhood east and south, the Mediterranean and Arctic and Russia on land cover, land use, biodiversity and ecosystems, water resources, marine areas and air quality.
· The Agency is responding to a wide variety of policy issues in the context of Resource Efficiency, with continued work on Indicators, environmentally harmful subsidies, fiscal reform and development pathways for member countries.
· In addition the Agency has begun discussions with countries on two pilot studies in the areas of waste and air quality to improve implementation. This will be done in partnership with the EPA network and relevant authorities and stakeholders including cities.
· We are aware of the current financial and budgetary discussions ongoing and would call for the support of this Committee in terms of these discussions, in terms of the Agency’s work on Climate Change, which I will now outline.
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Air and climate change
EEA’s work on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions
· The EEA provides several of the key building blocks in the understanding of the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions. The EEA recently published its latest results, also as a support to the work of the Parliament. Moreover, I would also like to address new tasks to be taken over by the EEA, underpinning the implementation of the EU’s climate and energy legislation.
Results of three greenhouse gas emission reports
· [First,] the new results. At your last meeting you addressed EU climate policies under the Europe 2020 strategy. In this context, I am confident you will be interested in our latest results. The EEA published – only a few days ago – a comprehensive analysis of past and future developments of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe.
· Looking to past developments, one of our reports finds that a range of policies outside the climate and energy field have contributed to lower emissions. For example, our efforts to reduce water pollution from agriculture played a role. This experience shows we can reduce emissions further if we integrate the climate impacts of various policies more systematically.
· The EEA is continuing with its efforts to provide more timely data. In the area of greenhouse gas emissions, we are now able to provide good estimates for emissions in the previous year. Our latest estimates show that greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.4 % in 2010. Three EU Member States – Austria, Italy and Luxembourg – were still lagging behind their Kyoto Protocol targets at the end of 2010. They should make more efforts to ensure compliance.
· However, we expect the emissions decrease to continue in the long run. Overall, EU emissions declined by 15.5 % since 1990. Looking ahead, we find that EU Member States can achieve the Union’s unilateral 20 % reduction commitment by 2020 if measures at currently at planning stage will be implemented. Action in sectors not covered by the EUemissions trading system – for example in the transport, residential or waste sectors – are of particular importance in that respect.
Need for additional resources
· This leads to my [second] point. The sectors not covered by the EU emissions trading system are addressed by the Effort Sharing Decision – ESD for short – of the EU climate and energy package. One of the centre pieces of its implementation is an emissions review. This ‘ESD review’ is important, because it will ultimately allow the definition of annual emissions allocations for Member States and to track their progress.
· The EEA was asked by its main stakeholders to carry out the ESD review, building on similar experience acquired with the compilation of the European Union’s greenhouse gas inventory submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Despite reprioritisations and redeployments of staff, additional resources and highly skilled experts will be needed.
· Already at this stage I would like to thank you for your support of the European Commission’s proposal for the EEA budget that addresses the lack of the required resources. As your focal point for the EEA mentioned at the last meeting of the ENVI Committee, we will need your continuing support during the remaining budgetary procedure to secure the resources for the implementation of the climate and energy package. The EEA remains available to answer any further questions you may have on the ESD review.
Resource Efficiency
I would like to seek support from the European Parliament for the EEA’s work on ecosystem accounting under the revision of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA) which we are undertaking in collaboration with the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the World Bank. This will be especially important in linking ecosystem assets to the system of national accounts and should play a strong role in the brining quantification of Europe’s environmental resources into the Annual Growth Survey.
Biodiversity and Water
· This point is also reflected in terms of our Biodiversity work in 2012 where will Continued support of the implementation of the new Biodiversity Strategy, namely supporting the design of a common reporting and assessment framework using existing tools (BISE, SEBI) and identifying data and information needs.
· Support to the new Natura 2000 work towards improving the conservation status of species and habitats (Art 17 Habitat Directive) of the reviewed Reporting formats, data flows and continued support to the Commission and MS on further work on the Community lists. Continued support to Natura 2000 work including contribution to connectivity (Art 10) and green infrastructure.
· We have the challenges ahead of us to revise the currently available indicators in support of reporting methodologies for post-Nagoya CBD biodiversity targets as well as the 6 Biodiversity sub-targets.
• Contribute to the integration and reinforcement of the biodiversity component into other reporting requirements within the agriculture, climate change, regional and forest policies as well as the follow of the water, marine strategy and Inspire framework directives as well as links to fisheries as part of the Resource Efficiency road map.
• Biodiversity Clearing House Mechanism (CHM) climate change adaptation: EEA will assume charge as and from 2012. The Agency will also produce a new report on impacts and adaptation measures in support to EU ‘instrument’ in discussion.
• Support to Europe’s Environmental Assessment of Assessments on water resources and management, UNEP Resource panel water group report 1, and the UN world water assessment program.
SEIS
• The Shared Environmental Information System is a cornerstone of our efforts to modernise, streamline and develop the collection and utilisation of environmental information across the EU and beyond. The SEIS principles are fast becoming a key element in the worldwide discussions on improving international environmental governance, and through the launch of Eye on Earth, the EEA and its partners will be able to provide a global public good to support the implementation of SEIS worldwide.
The European Parliament has expressed concerns about our work beyond member countries, but just to assure members here, this work is being carried out with DG DEVCO to support the European Neighbourhood Programme with separate funding.
GMES
We see a risk associated with GMES being proposed by the Commission outside Multi Financial Framework 2014-2020.
· On 29th June 2011, the European Commission (EC) published its Communication “A budget for Europe 2020” to initiate discussions on the future multiannual financial framework (MFF) from 2014 until 2020. Unfortunately, the EC did not include Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) in the MFF and instead proposes to finance it outside the main EU budget.
· GMES responds to the increasing globalisation of environmental issues and demand for data-driven applications, both to assess the state and trends in the environment, and to support greening the global economy. The delivery of GMES covering marine, air quality, land, and climate change services is part of the EU 2020 strategy. GMES is based on the use of well-understood technologies and is already able to deliver operational services, including to the EEA, where elements of GMES are already present in the EEA 2010 State and outlook report.
· The first three sentinel satellites, (2.3 billion Euro) have already been commissioned and are foreseen to be launched in the coming two years. As it stands, the current proposal is likely to undermine the continuity of the GMES programme, and may well create confusion amongst stakeholders, any potential user community and compromise the investments to-date.
· EEA has been supporting the GMES programme through a number of pilot services, in its coordination role of in-situ data and recently, the technical implementation of the GMES Land service. A range of users and downstream key services are now in place that will rely on the continuity of GMES and its systematic monitoring of the state of Earth. Outside the MFF, there is a real prospect that GMES will disappear, thereby losing the European contribution within GEO/GEOSS and undermine established plans for reciprocity with complementary infrastructures.
· It is our opinion that the investment in GMES so far needs to be carried forwards within the MFF, to cover all three GMES components (space, service and in-situ), including a strong user-driven governance structure.
· We have been working with Parliament (ENVI and ITRE and interested MEPs) to encourage you to work towards GMES being financed in a sustainable way within the MFF.
7th EAP
• In the context of the 7th EAP, EEA will support the European Parliament on framing it based on SOER2010 and other findings including the need to support better implementation beyond simple compliance issues.
• Further EEA support to EP on Resource Efficiency indicators and policies will be provided, following up initial visit of 4 October by EEA staff (Lars and Pawel) to Mr Gerbandy
Communications
· We acknowledge the need to closer cooperate with organizations and networks able to properly utilize and enhance transformation of EEA products for educational purposes and public awareness raising.
· The following initiatives are on-going in this direction:
o Our flagship outreach publication Signals is already widely used by secondary schools in Europe. For the 2012 edition, we will develop online educational material around it and engage in partnerships to bring it into use.
o We are currently setting up a network of universities, aiming to bring EEA outputs in to the curricula of environment related courses in Europe.
o Social media channels are used mainly by younger audiences and we intensify our presence in social media channels aiming to enhance two-way and dialog communication.
o We intensify our networking activities across Europe. The main objective is a close and concrete collaboration with our NRCs for communication network beyond purely exchanging best practises. In 2011/2012 we work with them on social media and water related projects. We also work with Europe Direct, a network of 500 information centres around Europe for citizens and the EU bookshop (part of the EU publication office) who will present Signals and the SOER 2010 at a special Environmental publications session Frankfurt Book Fair.
So I look forward to responding to any questions or comments that you may have on the Agency’s current work programme.
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