Hans Bruyninckx: “Well-functioning ecosystems are the starting point”
The European Union’s Green Deal is the big stick designed to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent. Hans Bruyninckx, executive director at the European Environment Agency, took stock on Europe’s achievements to date and what still needs to happen, describing the Green Deal as a paradigm shift.
“It demands that we reinvent ourselves. We are moving away from traditional perspectives on growth, and making a connection between climate goals and social justice for the first time; all this backed up by a considerable investment plan.”
Big enough ambitions?
Bruyninckx stated that properly functioning ecosystems will serve as Europe’s starting point on the road to a circular society. While there is clearly a great deal of work still to do, the bio-economy already accounts for 9% of the total economy in Europe and its share continues to grow. There are ambitious plans to develop biomaterials as an alternative to fossil-based materials, especially in the North-European countries. But are they ambitious enough? “The current situation in Europe is that the material footprint is on a downward curve,” said Bruyninckx. “Worldwide, however, we are seeing a doubling or even trebling in the demand for materials.”
Simple solutions don’t work
While the transition from fossil to biobased will offer many major benefits to Europe and the world, Bruyninckx warned that we will need to deal with side-effects too: “We are moving towards a system that will lead to enormous competition with regards to land use. Taken as a whole, the claims of the different sectors are too great to attain the goals of the Green Deal. Simple solutions such as ‘we can make everything from plastic’ won’t work.”
The greatest challenge may lie with the chemical sector: “We need different, biobased molecules. But that’s not a threat for the chemical sector: on the contrary, it has to make the new chemicals which we need but using biobased materials instead.”