State of Green Denmark’s Post

🌱 Why Soil Matters in 2024 🌍 Healthy soil is the foundation for a sustainable future. This year, the global focus is on sharing and standardising soil properties data—essential for improving agricultural productivity, land management, and environmental policies. At Evenor-Tech, we’re proud to contribute through projects like: ✅ SteamBioAfrica: Clean energy from invasive plants while monitoring soil impacts. ✅ NOVASOIL: Innovative business models for soil health investments. ✅ TERRENVIRON: AI-powered soil property tracking. Collaboration and innovation are key to tackling climate change and restoring our soils! 🌟 Read more about our contributions to soil research:https://lnkd.in/emyFskXv

The annual assembly of the European Coordination of Via Campesine (ECVC) was held in Brussels for the past 3 days. Via Campesina is the world's largest organization of small farmers and peasants with over 200 million members from all continents. This was an opportunity to exchange opinions and experiences in one place with colleagues from most European countries on topics and challenges that concern small farmers, peasants and workers in rural areas. In order to point out the problems related to sustainable food production, we need even stronger joint mobilization and visibility at all levels - local, national and European. Today's food production faces numerous challenges. Climate change, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, global turmoil, loss of farmers, increasingly difficult access for young farmers to land, low income of farmers due to unfair trade practices pose a serious threat to sustainable production and security of food supply. Therefore, the fight for food sovereignty and agro-ecological transition is more important than ever.

Interesting combination of speakers at this European Commission event on how business and policy can better work together to incentivize a more sustainable and competitive European food value chain - including my colleague Cosima Dekker-Hufler 💡 The outgoing EU Parliament and Commission have made important steps forward in this area including through implementing the #FarmtoFork strategy, however many initiatives announced were delayed or put in the fridge (for good and bad reasons). Earlier this year the EU's European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change warned that a sense of urgency is needed in putting in place better incentive structures, which should first and foremost come through markets, which however has shown is often not evident without government support. It is to be hoped that the incoming EU Parliament and Commission will waste no time in reviving the urgent policy priority of transitioning to more sustainable food systems, not only be critical to help mitigate and adapt to climate change, but also a range of other urgent common EU-challenges such as maintaining a livable countryside, improving public health, and conserving biodiversity.

Is Belgium Living Within Its Safe Operating Space? What Are the Social Impacts of Crossing These Limits? Yesterday, 100 online participants attended the final presentation of a unique research project addressing this issue. At the request of the new Cerac - Climate Risk Assessment Center, our CEESE-ULB team, led primarily by Sandrine Meyer, contributed to analyzing the social impacts. This was done in collaboration with Ramboll (Francesca Finello) and building upon the work of CLIMACT. Here are three key findings from the analysis: 1.    Immediate Health Effects: The societal repercussions of overshooting these limits will most immediately manifest as detrimental health effects. 2.    Economic and Social Impact: The negative effects of physical hazards on specific economic sectors and infrastructure will likely trickle down, impacting households, labor and working conditions, access to goods and services, and labor standards. 3.    Vulnerable Industries: Industries that rely on natural resources, such as forestry, fishing, agriculture, and related food production, are particularly vulnerable. Overshooting planetary bounds can have different societal effects depending on how a measure's costs and benefits are allocated among different population groups. Measures may have regressive consequences and further disadvantage vulnerable groups when they are distributed unequally. A special thank you to Aurore Brunson for giving me the opportunity to discuss these findings in the context of the work done by the Belgian High Committee for a Just Transition. Congratulations also to Simon De Muynck for his very informative presentation on climate and environmental inequalities in Brussels. The link to the report is in the comment section and the recording of the session will be soon available! All comments or suggestions are welcome ! #justtransition #planetaryboundaries Luc Bas Karim Sheikh Hassan Pascal Vermeulen Jerome Meessen Emmanuel MOSSAY Sarah Arras Tristan Carion Nils Bourland Simon Lalieu (il/lui)  Aurore De Boom Aurore Fransolet Mélanie Joseph Henk Van Hootegem Peter Wittoeck Soumaya Majdoub Jeanne Dumoulin Tom Bauler Josefine Vanhille Bas van Heur    

Following the autumn hearing process, the new EU Commission is in place. Ursula von der Leyen retains her firm grip on the presidential gavel and, at first glance, it might not seem that things are much different – but there are major changes. How does this impact the forest industry? The newly appointed Director and Head of SFIF’s Brussels office explains: "We need to invest in what Europe needs in order to manage the new challenges. We need to improve our global competitiveness, and we need to ensure that we establish our own security," explains Kaisa-Maria Soro-Pesonen. 🌲 What does this mean for the Swedish forest industry? "In this situation, the EU can no longer focus on piling up detailed new regulation on climate or environmental policy in the same way as might have been done during the previous term. The goals remain in place – we will continue working with climate goals and biodiversity – but the tools are different." 🌲 What are the challenges facing the forest industry? "Many people still don’t realise the role forests can play in climate action. They view a forest as a carbon sink, and often stress the importance of protection and conservation. I rarely hear conversations in Brussels about the importance of managing and using forests in a way that benefits both the climate and biodiversity." After more than 20 years in Brussels, and with extensive knowledge of the convoluted processes of EU institutions, Soro-Pesonen has a keen insight into the political chatter: "Sweden and Finland have become interesting, key member states in a way that we ourselves may have not yet realised," she says. "While this is mainly due to NATO membership, the UK’s exit has created a vacuum and large member states have become weaker for domestic political reasons. Up in the north, we’re used to sitting on the fringes and thinking no one is listening to us." Read the interview here: https://lnkd.in/dt5Xd_Dj #SwedishForestry #EU #EUCommission

We patented the solution in 2021: a means of generating currency from measures of ecosystem health, like biodiversity. This will teach humanity to value nature by deriving (harvesting) value from its health, instead of extracting value from it in degenerative ways. We would love to partner with the EU to implement this. https://lnkd.in/g3fAqRb6

The High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel) is a unique global initiative that serves world leaders working to build momentum towards a sustainable ocean economy in which effective protection, sustainable production, and equitable prosperity go hand-in-hand. Since its launch in 2018, 18 world leaders have joined together to realise the mission of sustainably managing 100% of the ocean area under national jurisdiction. The recently produced Blue Paper provides practical steps for policymakers working towards collaborative, sustainable ocean planning. What I really appreciated about this document was its recognition of Indigenous communities' knowledge about caring for waterways and oceans. The document includes four core recommendations: 1) Recognize and value a plurality of knowledge systems 2) Prioritize equitable and accessible ocean data and knowledge systems 3) Fund Indigenous and traditional-led ocean research and planning 4) Address gender biases in marine science and management https://lnkd.in/gr756p9K

New WRI Insights: ‘Indigenous Knowledge Is Key to Better Ocean Management’ I'm excited to share a powerful new article written by four authors of the latest High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy Blue Paper, "Co-producing Sustainable Ocean Plans with Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge Holders." Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/e9H3Rn7M

Following the success of the first #BlueMissionBANOS Arena in Gothenburg, Sweden last November, we are pleased to announce that the next Blue Mission Arena 2 will be taking place in Riga, Latvia on 25-26 April 2024, back-to-back with the 2024 Ministerial Meeting on the Baltic Sea Marine Environment. This Mission Arena will focus on regional actors in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and East Sweden. The key stakeholders in this Arena will be Mission Ocean-relevant actors who will have the opportunity to engage with current and future actions in this region. Over the course of two days, we will showcase progress, discuss open needs, and plan the next steps to transform this region’s blue economy to be more carbon-neutral, environmentally friendly, and circular. All participants will then have the chance to vote on the Roadmap towards Mission Ocean and Water’s success for this region at the final Mission Assembly. This Arena will not only focus on the Baltic Sea as such but also cover ‘#BlueOnLand’, i.e., lakes, rivers and wastewater. Topics include #fishery & #aquaculture, #shipping and #ports, #nutrients and #pollution leakage to the ocean and waters, #waterborne #transport, nature #protection and #restoration, #sustainable products, and all actions required to transform these sectors. Discussions will be framed across 15 specific workshop themes. When you register, please indicate whether you want to make an active contribution to one of them. Suggestions accepted until 15th March. Please note that places will be limited and priority will be given to local actors. Register here! https://lnkd.in/gg-bSQMm #MissionArenaBANOS2 #CoolBlueBaltic

Love any way that we can make the case for nature and stop and reverse destruction BUT…..it’s becoming a pet peeve of mine when people start the case for nature by telling us how much money it’s worth in the economy as Ursula von der Leyen does here We save / love / need nature because it IS life, it is us, we are nature. There is no US without it. No food, no air, no shelter, no joy. It’s worth to humans is infinite. Once we have been allowed to acknowledge this profound truth and to show up as humans first and workers in the economy second then we can go about our jobs of saving nature in whatever way we can holding the urgency and love in our hearts rather than holding the idea that nature is just another asset in the balance sheet which can be traded off vs financial capital / depreciated etc etc. Some day business will be put on human society and nature’s balance sheet - we will have made things in right relationship by nesting our economy and our finance sector into our living systems rather than the other way around - they will be in service of us and society will see destructive business assets as the things to dispose of rather than nature. (See my #CarbonInsolvency work as an example of how this might look…https://lnkd.in/eTv3BNRv) This work is essential and so exciting to see gaining traction 👇👇👇 but let’s remember that money is our current ‘how’ not our fundamental ‘why’ 🌎🌍🌏