All posts filed under: debate

70 NGOs call for sustainable and socially just EU bioeconomy strategy

Published by jonas

70 NGOs call for sustainable and socially just EU bioeconomy strategy Bremen, Brussels – 12. March 2024 Download the position paper as a PDF here! With the impending revision of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy on the horizon, 70 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have jointly issued a position paper today, advocating for a bioeconomy that upholds both ecological sustainability and social equity. The undersigned organizations emphasize that the focus of the bioeconomy strategy must fundamentally shift for this purpose. The current waste economy must be stopped. They assert that large-scale biomass imports from the Global South are not a viable solution. Moreover, the NGOs assert that waste and residues alone will not suffice to meet the future economy’s raw material requirements. In addition to these points, the NGOs call for genuine participation of citizens and civil society, urging for tangible resources to support their involvement, not just on paper. The initiative to release this statement was coordinated by the Bioeconomy Action Forum, with active involvement from denkhausbremen, FERN, and ELF, all committed to promoting a responsible bioeconomy. …

Metamorphosis of destructive logging companies

Published by Peter

By Michael Gerhardt The German version of this post can be found here. This article was published as well on The Ecologist , World Rainforest Movement Bulletin , Redd Monitor, World Nutrition and Robin Wood Blog . It sounds like a fairy tale. Multinational companies destroy forests and trample on human rights. Then, international environmental organisations come into play and transform the culprits into responsible companies within just a few months. Multinational palm oil, pulp and paper companies such as Wilmar, Golden Agri, APRIL (Asia Pacific Resources International Limited) or APP (Asia Pulp and Paper) have already completed the magic metamorphosis from destroyers to protectors of the Indonesian rainforest. All of these companies now sport a “zero deforestation policy”. Similar promises have also been made by consumer goods giants like Nestle, Unilever, Mars, L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, who require palm oil as a raw material for their products. Greenpeace, WWF and Co. appear to have success in what Indonesian environmental groups have been struggling to achieve for years, that is persuading notorious rainforest …

Six reasons why eco-labels are not a good idea for the bioeconomy

Published by Peter

By Peter Gerhardt They exist for wood, paper, palm oil or cod: sustainability labels. All too often, these have been launched with great fanfare for a better world, only to realise soberly soon after that overexploitation and environmental destruction simply continue. This could be due to the fact that many of these voluntary certification initiatives have a few fundamental flaws built in. The hope is that politics, business and associations will learn from past mistakes and question eco-labels with scepticism. This is particularly true with regard to the current bioeconomy debate, regarding the transformation of our economy from fossil to biological. Here, too, the call for eco-certificates is getting louder. Already today, the planet is exhausted by the biomass we demand from it: This leads to overfished oceans for Captain Iglo and destroyed rainforests for three-euro chicken. If fossil raw materials are to be completely replaced by biomass in the future, the question consequently arises on which earth this biomass should grow on, or which environmental crimes or human rights violations we might want to …