Let’s transform the European Green Deal into a Global Green Deal!

That was one of the key messages shared by Eric Ponthieu, Strategy Director at the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) and Professor at Bologna and Firenze universities, during his visit to LIPOR on 9-11 April. In conversations with LIPOR staff, Eric insisted on the importance to pursue the implementation of the EU flagship initiative to reach climate neutrality by 2050 which is known as the European Green Deal. Industry, and in particular the waste industry, is essential to meet the challenging and necessary objective of the European Green Deal. Eric informed that the EU Circular Economy Action Plan is one of the many initiatives through which industry endeavours to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and LIPOR has been firmly engaged on applying the principles and measures of the EU Plan since its outset in 2015. Eric’s opinion is that the EU must now set a much more cooperative effort with its partner countries to kick-off a true and fair partnership on climate change mitigation and adaption at the global level. With a group of like-minded organisations, FTAO has proposed to transform the European Green Deal into a Global Green Deal. The proposal received positive echoes from LIPOR staff who expressed concerns regarding the feasibility of achieving such a heavy transformation of our production and consumption model at world level.

 

At the LIPOR Academy, Eric shared his views on "Why governments fail to take up the climate crisis at full?” to regret the inaction of EU national governments which themselves decided upon a large number of policy initiatives in support of the European Green Deal during the past four years in Brussels! Eric pointed to a manifesto of 10 concrete actions to embed climate protection into governments’ and peoples’ decisions. He called upon LIPOR staff to support progressive ideas in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda at the next EU election. He motivated his call by referring to the need to keep listening to the youth’s demand for acting boldly in favour of the planet, saying that the absence of visible Fridays for Future manifestations does not mean that youths’ concerns have disappeared. In an event hosted by the University of Porto, Eric explained why and how youth must be integrated in the EU decision-making processes, in accord with the intergenerational solidarity principle. His presentation did focus on evolving practices at EU decision-making level, notably at the level of the European Economic and Social Committee.

This was a message strongly supported in the "call for action” that Professor Eric Ponthieu left on this visit to LIPOR.