October 9, 2006

Ever heard of Cardiff?

The European Union adopts its renewed Sustainable Development Strategy - because "deep ecology" didn't work

On 16 June 2006, the Brussels European Council adopted a new "EU Sustainable Development Strategy". This new strategy challenged the EU to "identify and de-velop actions" that will "enable the EU to achieve continuous improvement of quality of life both for current and for future generations, through the creation of sustainable communities able to manage and use resources efficiently and to tap the ecological and social innovation potential of the economy, ensuring prosperity, environmental protection and social cohesion." While to many observers this may not sound very innovative, a few paragraphs down the document does contain something truly star-tling, namely that the both environmental protection and economic growth are men-tioned as "key objectives".

The big news is the EU is apparently returning to a more market-oriented approach to sustainable development, and this is something certainly to be welcomed. It ap-pears a new realism is leaving noticeable traces in the entire program, including im-portant definitions for other key objectives like "social equity and cohesion" and "meeting our international prosperity." Other more controversial aspects, such as "promotion and protection of fundamental rights" or "solidarity within and between generations", which are more difficult to quantify and which in the past were often subject of ideological manipulation, were appropriately downgraded to "policy guiding principles".

And to the chagrin of many environmentalists, the outgoing Austrian EU-Presidency presented the new strategy without binding objectives or even deadlines, something to which they strongly supported. To be sure, the Presidency's action was heavily criticized by the European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils network (EEAC), which represents unelected national sustainability bu-reaucracies and green lobbyists such as national councils for sustainable develop-ment. But this action is yet another clear sign that the EU is beginning to realize the failure of its previous approach to sustainable development, one which relied heavily on ideologies that prioritized social engineering to prosperity and the advancement of individual liberties.

The history of sustainability policy of the EU started in the early nineties, when key elements of both the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) report of 1987 (a.k.a the "Brundtland report") and the "Agenda21" document of 1992 were integrated in the EU's "5th Environmental Action Program" titled "Towards Sustainability". This integration helped to shift the focus of most EU-policies toward sustainable development.

The EU-Commission traces its sustainability efforts even further back in time, to the WCED, which was established by the UN in 1983. At that time, the UN was well known for its division in "blocs", and its scandals including espionage, corruption, mobbing, inefficiency and crime. Politically, the USSR tried hard to win the arms race with the West.

In addition, various efforts to protect the environment by adopting Soviet policies were also part of the game. Although few in Brussels seem to remember, whether the WCED was a serious political effort or just a carefully crafted propaganda entity - in any case the Soviets clearly agreed to its establishment and gave a thumbs up to its final report.

It might therefore be no coincidence that the report of that committee bears some resemblance to a blueprint for a global planned economy. This can be clearly seen, for example, when the report presents as one of its key objectives "to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs". This definition of sustainable development implies, of course, the existence of world institutions drafting, deciding and implementing policies not only for single national economies but fort the entire globe and for every future generation.

On the other hand, it seemed to have never been on the radar screen of the WCED that true sustainable development can only be achieved by enabling people - not the state - to improve their own well-being and that of others, to pursue their own goals - including the protection of the environment - without state intervention but with the help of functioning democratic institutions and civil liberties, free markets, including the rule of law and strong property rights.

In the early nineties, when the political realities had dramatically changed the public opinion on central economic planning, the cold-war-inspired essence of the Brundtland report was blended with another ideology, "deep ecology", which not only urges protection of the environment, but also for social and economic changes that would prioritize the needs of "nature" - which is understood as "dynamic equilibrium" - to those of humans. Both ideologies met in their deep desire for social engineering and in their belief that "everything is connected to everything else", a phrase that since then serves as the general explanation for the introduction of sustainable poli-cies.

While the early green movement demanded to simply add environmental policies as a follow-up to economic progress, and had demanded the establishment of special government agencies and ministries to accomplish more environmental protection, "deep" ecologists urged for the greening of all policy areas and criticized the concept of environmental stewardship in the Judeo-Christian tradition as an "arrogance" to-wards nature. It was no longer sufficient to act "environmentally friendly." Now, politi-cal decisions had to be first of all "sustainable" to be deemed acceptable.

The result was (among others) the infamous "Agenda 21", another blueprint for global human development which was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 (also known as "Earth Summit"). In full ac-cordance with this approach, the main objectives of the 5th Environmental Action Plan (5EAP) of the EU of 1992 were:

• to "de-couple environmental impacts and degradation from economic growth",
• that business operates "in a more eco-efficient way, in other words producing the same or more products with less input and less waste",
• that "consumption patterns have to become more sustainable"
• "integration of environmental concerns into other policies".

In 1998, the EU-Summit of Cardiff launched a "Cardiff process", a policy aimed at the gradual integration of environmental considerations into any EU policy and activity. The new attempt was based on claims "that environmental policy alone cannot achieve the improvements needed as part of sustainable development, but must be underpinned by actions to reduce environmental pressures from agriculture, trans-port, energy, international trade, and other sectors." But already in 2001 it became clear that "Cardiff" did not work. To appreciate current quality of life and to refuse higher standards of living by economic growth, as ecologists wanted, and to adhere to economic growth as a base for higher standards of living, as most of the Europe-ans did, was incompatible.

To be sure, the EU-bureaucracies continued doing their business as usual, but made it a point to assure the public, NGOs, and the sustainability councils of the member states that their activities had never been so "sustainable". The EU ministerial meet-ing in Sonderborg, Denmark, in July 2002 described the situation in the following words: "There is a need to take stock of the Cardiff Process and to give it renewed momentum; success in this regard has been uneven from one Council formation to another;" And in March 2003 the Brussels EU Council even discussed the necessity for "reviving" the Cardiff process.

However, until 2005, not much happened. Most of the sustainable development poli-cies of the EU existed only on paper and were developed to comfort the UN-system and environmentalist NGOs. Despite an endless stream of proposals, action plans, strategies and reports, despite a series of taxpayer funded conferences on the topic, the EU sustainability policy remained as dead as it could be. The only substantial concession that was made to global environmentalism was the full support for the Kyoto-agreement -- which turns out to be the most embarrassing policy ever imple-mented, after it came out that the EU could never comply to its own emission reduc-tion goals because of the high costs.

An EU-Commission working document of 1 June 2004 entitled "Integrating environ-mental considerations into other policy areas - a stocktaking of the Cardiff process" revealed that the Cardiff process did not even get sufficient internal support: "the Commission believes environmental integration needs increased visibility, as well as political support at the highest level." On 10 June 2005, Margot Wallstrom, Vice-president of the EU-Commission and former Commissioner for Environment and Sustainable Development, even referred to the "Cardiff Process" as part of "this jar-gon", which "is incomprehensible for people outside the inner circles in Brussels".

This picture changed in 2005, when the British EU Presidency seriously assessed the EU sustainability strategy. It became clear, that the trial-and-error approach (which rather was an error-and-error-again-approach) had to be stopped in order to not to damage a more prestigious project of the EU, the so called "Lisbon Strategy" aimed at no less than the creation of "more and better jobs in a more dynamic, inno-vative and attractive Europe" (EU Commission President Barroso), but without pro-voking the environmentalist lobby groups. After the complete failure of the over-ambitious EU-Constitution, which became even more evident in the months before the EU-Brussels Council last June, nobody was ready to risk another serious crisis.

This history explains why the EU today is saying that its new sustainability strategy "and the Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs complement each other," and that "the role of economic development in facilitating the transition to a more sustainable soci-ety" is now fully recognized. The truth is however, that from now on economic growth will in all likelihood be the priority: "The Lisbon Strategy makes an essential contribu-tion to the overarching objective of sustainable development focusing primarily on actions and measures aimed at increasing competitiveness and economic growth and enhancing job creation."

Quite clearly, the EU said farewell to the deep ecologists "quality of life instead of growth"-policy: "The EU SDS forms the overall framework within which the Lisbon Strategy, with its renewed focus on growth and jobs, provides the motor of a more dynamic economy. These two strategies recognise that economic, social and envi-ronmental objectives can reinforce each other and they should therefore advance together. Both strategies aim at supporting the necessary structural changes which enable the Member States´ economies to cope with the challenges of globalisation by creating a level playing field in which dynamism, innovation and creative entrepre-neurship can flourish whilst ensuring social equity and a healthy environment."

Although the new Sustainable Development Strategy still bears much resemblance to its predecessors ("limit climate change and its costs and negative effects to society and the environment", "promote sustainable consumption and production patterns"), something substantial has changed. Combined with the "Lisbon Strategy", the focus is now clearly on prosperity, development through growth, environment, competitive-ness and progress for the developing world. There is of course no in-built guarantee for success. And of course, some stronger remarks about empowering people to solve their own problems as the heart of any sustainable development would have been desirable. But at least with respect to sustainable development, it is the first thing the EU has done right in the last 14 years.