4 Big Environmental Issues — and what GROW is doing about them.
By Deborah Long (Programme Director, GROW)
We face huge environmental challenges in Europe and beyond. Challenges identified in Europe include waste, biodiversity loss, poor air quality, poor water quality and water management. The impact of these challenges reaches us all as we lose common and rare species, native habitats shrink, too much waste reaches landfill, poor air quality in urban areas increases the incidence of breathing problems and water treatment and water management becomes more costly.
These challenges have now been defined and measured in a snapshot of the state of environmental policy legislation implementation across Europe through a new series of country reports from the European Commission, published in February 2017.
These reports were the result of a two-year cycle of analysis and dialogue to improve the implementation of existing EU environmental policy, launched in May 2016: the Environmental Implementation Review (EIR): http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eir/index_en.htm.
Later in the same year, in October 2016, the GROW Observatory was launched. Our aims are to engage with 20,000 citizens across Europe, working with them to build understanding and data on soil and land use practices in the 8 countries we work in. Such practices directly inform these key environmental challenges and GROW’s work can help focus on the issues even more clearly.
The knowledge we produce as an Observatory will be used by citizens themselves to learn about and improve their stewardship of their soil and land, by scientists to validate climate models generated by satellite data, and by policy makers to improve legislation relating to soil management and land use and disaster management.
The EIRs provide GROW and national governments with a baseline from which to measure progress in implementing environmental policies relating to land use and soil management. In addition, GROW provides a way for citizens to contribute knowledge and data that can usefully inform policy implementation in these key areas.
Issue 1 — Waste Management
“Waste prevention remains an important challenge in all Member States, including those with high recycling rates.”
Approximately 40% of the average dustbin contents in the UK are suitable for home composting (https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/compost). Encouraging and enabling those who can compost is a simple yet effective mechanism to reduce waste and increase soil fertility for food growing. This is especially effective at household level, where both waste prevention and growing space soil management has a disproportionately positive effect.
What’s GROW doing about it?
GROW is all about sustainable agronomic practices which involve the integration of available resources into food production. As an example, in summer 2017, GROW trialled a mulching experiment designed to test and demonstrate the impact of mulching on soil.This incorporated the use of compost, ideally home made, as a mulch on the soil surface. Using compost this way not only helps recycle food and garden waste but can also improve soil structure and increase nutrient levels to grow more food.
Issue 2 — Biodiversity
For land ecosystems, the most frequently reported pressures and threats to biodiversity are non-sustainable agricultural practices, the modification of natural conditions, and pollution:
“At the current rate of efforts, biodiversity loss would continue in the EU with potentially serious consequences for the capacity of natural ecosystems to provide for human needs in the future. Furthermore, a lack of knowledge on species, habitats and sites is one of the major obstacles to effective implementation in most of the Member States, including with regards to marine ecosystems. Further issues are a lack of adequate funding, a lack of human resources and poor involvement and engagement of local communities and stakeholders such as landowners and land users.”
The current decline in biodiversity in terms of species diversity and habitat connectivity is unsustainable. There are huge issues to solve in terms of wider land management and the protection of large scale habitats and fully functioning ecosystems. However at a local scale, gardeners and growers can have a massive impact. Using sustainable practices to manage even small areas of land in urban and rural areas, provides space for biodiversity. Jennifer Owen’s 30 year study of her garden in Leicester shows that gardens in urban areas are as biodiversity rich, sometimes more so, than surrounding rural areas. (J. Owens 2010 Wildlife of a garden: a thirty year study. RHS, London.)
What’s GROW doing about it?
GROW is about empowering thousands of people to use sustainable practices to grow food and improve their soil. Participants learn about regenerative soil practices such as no dig techniques, polycropping and mulching. These have been shown to be good for the soil and belowground biodiversity, which feeds into the food web of life. So growers are introduced to biodiversity-friendly agronomic practices via our on line courses and by the experiments we share with them.
Issue 3 — Water quality and management
The most common pressures on water quality are pollution from agricultural activities and industry, followed by poor flow regulation and morphological alterations, weak river management and illegal or excessive water abstraction.
“Root causes include ineffective control measures, a lack of coordination between water management authorities at different regional or local levels, a lack of cooperation between water and nature governance bodies, but also with authorities competent for other sectors, and lack of access to data.
Although implementation of the Nitrates Directive has led to some improvements, nitrates concentrations and eutrophication levels remain a serious issue in nearly all Member States. Eutrophication of the Baltic Sea, mainly due to intensive agriculture practices, is particularly problematic.”
What’s GROW doing about it?
Soil moisture is a key variable in effective water management. Knowledge of soil moisture levels enables more efficient and targeted irrigation and is a key variable in predicting flooding and droughts. However, data at a local level is currently unavailable. GROW is working with growers who will be able to supply soil moisture data. These data can then be used to inform irrigation strategies, and validate flood and drought models generated by satellite data.
Issue 4 — Effective governance and capacity to implement
EU environmental legislation confers a range of substantive and procedural rights to citizens which need to be upheld by national courts on the basis of environmental access to justice. The good functioning of national justice systems is crucial for achieving the objectives of EU law, including in the field of environment. However, citizens are not always able or willing to engage in environmental policy. GROW provides a mechanism for citizens to inform policy making through the provision of data, which is then available to validate models. Raising awareness of key environmental issues through data and growing also provides a mechanism for citizens to be involved in policy making.
Another issue for environmental policy implementation highlighted in the country reports is the impact of ineffective coordination between local, regional and national authorities.
What’s GROW doing about it?
Water — Nature — Food
The way our food is produced and consumed influences water quality and management, the related environmental, economic and social costs, as well as nature and biodiversity. A sustainable food system is therefore needed. At the same time, agriculture needs water of good quality and of sufficient quantity to fulfil its purposes. GROW contributes here — on a large scale — with soil moisture data; GROW also contributes via biodiversity-friendly practices to help people sustainably grow their own food more generally.
Lack of knowledge and data
Access to data and a lack of data is at the base of policy implementation issues in many Member States. For example, the EIRs demonstrate that the lack of knowledge and data on species and habitats is hindering their effective protection.
GROW helps address this issue by being a citizens’ observatory. GROW engages local growers to help them understand and use their own data. Growers collect meaningful, locally relevant data, specifically on soil moisture, key nutrients and soil structure. These data can then be used to improve soil conservation and land use practices locally as well as being used to validate national models of flooding, drought and fire risk for example. This innovation is a new methodological approach, beyond consultation or other mechanisms for knowledge generation.
Get Involved!
If you would like to join with us, to work on these big environmental policy issues, there are lots of ways to do so.
Find out more about GROW and sign up to GROW’s missions here: www.growobservatory.org You can get involved at whatever level suits you best; from actions in your garden, in your local community or as part of a wider online community. You can also sign up for our next MOOC — Massive Open Online Course. It starts February 19th — and it’s free! Click here for more! Sign up for our GROW Observatory newsletter (http://eepurl.com/cIxt75) and follow us on facebook, twitter and instagram to keep up to date.
