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10 Year Anniversary of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation

Categories

Water

 

Join us to hear from water justice activists, trade unionists and policy experts who led the campaign for the recognition of this socio-economic right and who are leading the efforts for its realization today. From the global to the local, we will discuss the significance of the human rights to water and sanitation in the midst of a global pandemic.

Webinar 1: The Human Rights to Water and Sanitation in International Law

July 30th at 4 pm (Brussels time)

– Maude Barlow, Chair of the Blue Planet Project and Chair of Food & Water Watch
– Adriana Marquisio – Worker of Obras Sanitarias del Estado, Uruguay. PAPC, Red Vida
– Pablo Solon, Former Ambassador to the UN, Bolivia
– Pablo Sánchez Centellas, European Federation of Public Service Unions
– David Boys – Public Services International, Global Water Operator Partnership Alliance
– Leo Heller – Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation

More information and registration here

Webinar 2: Community self management and the right to water and sanitation in Latin America: where are we 10 years later

August 4th at 9 pm (Brussels time )

This webinar will feature the inspiring initiatives of rural water cooperatives in Chile, Colombia and El Salvador where communities are self-organizing to fulfill their collective rights to water and sanitation. It is an opportunity to hear directly from people involved in these local initiatives and to learn from the insights of colleagues of the Plataforma de Acuerdos Público Comunitarios de Las Américas – PAPC who have been supporting these grassroots alternatives to state-centred solutions for water justice.

The webinar invites us to look beyond the public vs private binary and learn about the innovative ways in which communities are building their own democratic and solidarity-based alternatives. It will also feature the public-community partnerships facilitated by the PAPC enabling public utilities, public sector unions and community water operators  to share knowledge and resources throughout Latin America.

Register here

Follow updates on the facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/988128131620103

Webinar 3: Gender Justice and the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation 

August 7 at 4 pm (Brussels time) 

Hear from women community leaders, policy experts and activists leading important struggles for water justice in the USA, South Africa, Nigeria, Palestine and Indonesia. Zoom registration here.

FB event here

Fossil Gas Industry: Keep Your Hands off of EU Infrastructure Planning!

Thanks to a strong campaign led by Food & Water Action Europe and a number of other European NGOs, the EU Commission will now revise a law which sets the rules for selecting EU priority infrastructure, the “Trans-European Networks for Energy” (TEN-E) regulation.

So far, the gas industry (more precisely, a body called “ENTSO-G) has greatly profited from the selection of priority energy projects in this regulation, and its members received over one billion euros of EU tax money for dirty gas pipelines and import terminals.

Food & Water Action, together with Friends of the Earth Europe, wrote a report that highlights the role of this gas transport industry in the current regulation. It concludes with a strong demand: If the EU does not kick out the gas industry from their privileged position and eliminate this dangerous conflict of interest from the decision-making process, we will never reach the 100% renewable future we need.

Read our joint paper on the role the gas industry body plays in the current regulation and how its members benefitted greatly from deeply biased selection rules here.

Together with Greenpeace, Corporate Europe Observatory and Friends of the Earth Europe, Food & Water Action Europe also submitted a position paper to the EU Commission. We do not accept this pro-fossil gas conflict of interest in the heart of EU climate and energy policy making. A gas industry body like ENTSO-G cannot play a role in any future regulation on priority EU infrastructure.

You can find our joint submission here.

U.S. Frackers Eyeing European Markets — Lawmakers On Both Sides Are Happy To Oblige

Categories

Common Resources

Frackers are building a transatlantic gas network and using Congress to push policies and subsidies that will lock Europe and the U.S. into a huge, unneeded expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. It’s the last thing we need.

U.S. Frackers Eyeing European Markets — Lawmakers On Both Sides Are Happy To Oblige

AUTHORS: Frida Kieninger, Andy Gheorghiu

The gas industry is on shaky ground, and it is not just because of the global pandemic, but due to a broken business model that was already showing signs of collapse before COVID-19. Political leaders in Ireland are taking steps towards banning LNG imports and offshore oil and gas exploration, and numerous LNG projects are being cancelled around the world.  

Despite leadership in places like Ireland, United States policymakers are pushing ahead for a massive expansion of European fossil fuel gas infrastructure. Other than boosting corporate profits, it’s hard to understand why anyone would back plans to expand infrastructure that poses an existential threat to humanity.

These United States Bills Meddle With Europe’s Ability To Escape Fossil Fuels

In late December when many people were preparing for the holidays, the US Congress quietly slipped two provisions in the must pass federal budget. They bolster US diplomatic pressure on Europe to accept US LNG imports and support EU infrastructure projects, many with involvement of US firms, under the guise of security and energy diversity. The ‘European Energy Security and Diversification Act’ proposes a billion dollars (over €891mio) of U.S. tax money to boost “diversification of energy.” This bill includes support for power plants using climate-wrecking fossil gas as well as gas pipelines, import terminals, and storage facilities.

The other bill that passed in December, the ‘Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act’ encourages a number of costly mega pipelines and liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals in the region around the Eastern Mediterranean by making it clear that supporting LNG and gas infrastructure projects is the explicit position of the United States, bringing with it significant diplomatic pressure. With all the problems relating to the development of gas infrastructure from beginning to end, the last thing the US should be doing is using its diplomatic power to prop up fossil fuel interests.

Europe Doesn’t Need More Gas Production

Beefing up the already oversized EU gas grid and supporting gas power plants is a dangerous waste of U.S. tax money, and an extremely bad idea for our climate. Existing LNG terminals in Europe are already underused, and we do not need more expensive fossil gas infrastructure. A recent report analyzed EU top priority gas infrastructure plans — including proposed German LNG terminals and the Russian Nord Stream 2 project (worth €29 billion). It finds that these pipes, import terminals, or storage facilities are unnecessary investments that won’t enhance supply security. Instead, they lock in money that must be urgently channeled into renewables and energy efficiency. U.S. support for climate-hostile fossil gas infrastructure would only increase the amount of stranded fossil fuel investments while making it more difficult to achieve even the modest Paris Climate Agreement goals.

Russia Is A Red Herring 

According to the narrative created by these moves in Congress, supporting new EU gas infrastructure supposedly helps Europe reduce its dependency on Russian gas. But most of the projects mentioned in U.S. legislation are located in Eastern Europe, and once constructed, could allow in even more Russian gas. For instance, the Trans-Caspian Mega Pipeline would deliver Azeri gas to Europe, but any excess capacity could be used to pipe Russian gas to Greece and Italy. Russia benefiting from the expansion of gas infrastructure makes this pretense for the U.S. bills even more ridiculous.

Even more importantly, particularly in southeastern Europe (where most of these gas infrastructure projects are planned), measures to reduce demand would greatly reduce dependence on fossil gas. Building renovations alone will decrease energy demand by over 50%, while lowering heating and electricity bills and increasing quality of life.

Are U.S. Bills A Trojan Horse To Dump Their Own Unprofitable Fracked Gas?

What these bills will do is boost the ailing U.S. fracking industry by creating new ways to export climate-wrecking fracked gas to Europe, a necessary move for an industry that is seeing its growth slow down due to competition from clean energy. The industry has already seen a surge in LNG exports to Europe, following a 2018 agreement between President Trump and EU Commission president Juncker, U.S. gas volumes imported into Europe went up nearly 600%.

The expansion of gas infrastructure to support the fracking industry flies in the face of the fact that a majority of EU Member States have declared fracking bans, moratoria, and restrictions. The inherent conflict of prohibiting fracking in EU territory while importing fracked gas through the back door is a hypocritical move that the new EU Commission seems content to ignore, despite a shiny new (but hollow) “European Green Deal.”

Stoking The Supply Chain For More Plastic May Be One End Goal For Frackers

It is increasingly clear that the U.S. plastics industry has reaped massive hidden benefits from the environmentally destructive fracking boom, producing an oversupply of cheap ethane (a main component for plastic production). According to a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) report, the United States is home to around 40% of the global production capacity for ethane-based petrochemicals.

Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption — ahead of trucks, aviation, and shipping. Today, the chemical sector is already the largest industrial consumer of fossil fuels, accounting for 14% of global oil and 8% of gas demand. The IEA expects that cheap ethane consumption will grow by 70% until 2030, in part due to the expansion of U.S. exports to regions like Europe.

In 2016, Ineos, the largest ethylene producer in Europe, began importing fracked U.S. ethane to Europe to manufacture plastics at its facilities in the UK and Norway. The company is planning to invest €3bn to build a new ethane cracker (a plant that chemically alters ethane so it can be turned into plastic) and a propylene-producing propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant in the Port of Antwerp. However, a very shaky financial basis for these planned investments and a broad trans-Atlantic opposition along the supply chain makes it unlikely that these plans will ever become reality — making any financial support super risky. U.S. support for building a Transatlantic fossil fuel trade will lower the risks borne by investors, and undermine our ability to decarbonize our economy. 

Europe Needs To Shut Down The Transatlantic Fossil Fuel Trade 

Pressure from both the U.S. and Europe are necessary to chart a path toward a livable future. In 2020, the EU will rewrite priority infrastructure rules. These rules — dating back to 2013 — are written to enhance energy security by reducing dependency from Russian gas through diversification of supply. However, this time Europe must think about alternatives to fossil fuels, by moving full speed ahead into a renewable future, which will enhance our energy security while protecting public health and the climate.

Given everything that is on the line for the fracking industry, it is no wonder researchers are asking if entities like New Fortress are rigging the system in order to expand their reach into Puerto Rican markets. We can probably expect more backroom dealing in the EU to continue expansion of fossil fuels into Europe.  

There are numerous groups all across the EU fighting unneeded and climate hostile fossil gas projects. Groups like Food & Water Action Europe will push for infrastructure rules that support a fair transition to renewables. We need the U.S. as a partner that helps us gain real energy independence by opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure and fracking, while pushing for a real Green New Deal that will build a sustainable clean energy future for all.

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The COVID-19 Crisis Exposes The Hidden Side Of The European Meat Industry

Categories

Food

Meat production in Europe has long been a consolidated, vulnerable system. COVID-19 has exposed the foolishness of this approach.

The COVID-19 Crisis Exposes The Hidden Side Of The European Meat Industry

There has been extensive news coverage of the impacts coronavirus has had on the industrialized food system in the United States, primarily slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. These facilities, notoriously dangerous to begin with, have become incubators of disease due to their crowded working conditions and lack of adequate personal protective equipment and paid time off for workers. But it’s not just the US — slaughterhouses and processing plants around the world are responsible for outbreaks that have placed the lives of countless thousands at risk. As U.S.-style industrialized factory farming spreads across Europe, so do U.S.-style industrial slaughter and processing facilities. And while the European continent struggles to get out of the COVID-19 crisis, slaughterhouses are becoming burning centers of the disease.  

The COVID-19 crisis has hit Europe really hard in the last months. Now that most countries are starting to relax the confinement measures and activate their economies, the meat industry is under the spotlight as a hotspot for virus transmission and as one of the main threats to Europe’s recovery.

Spain’s Pork Export Industry Hurts The People Who Have To Live Near The Operations

Spain became the world’s second largest exporter of pork (after the U.S.) in recent years. Food & Water Action Europe has been campaigning to stop the expansion of pig factory farms in Spain since 2017. With an exponential increase of Spanish exports of cheap pork, mainly to Asia, family farms are closing down and factory farms are popping up all over the country. As a result, thousands of people in rural areas cannot drink water from the tap and illegal manure spills are polluting rivers and aquifers. Food & Water Action Europe is working with rural communities to resist the expansion of the industry, with many new factory farms stopped and local bans being imposed across the country in the last years.

Just as has happened in the U.S., the expansion of factory farms has also resulted in the expansion of huge slaughterhouses and processing facilities.

Slaughterhouses Are A Prime Infection Hub

The meat industry was considered as an essential activity when the Spanish government approved the confinement of the population and the halt of most of the country’s economic activity. Now Spain is removing deconfinement measures and slowly coming back to normal activity levels, but regions around slaughterhouses might need to wait because of the skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases in the plants and neighboring communities. One big outbreak was reported at a slaughterhouse in Binefar, Huesca, one of the biggest in Europe with a capacity for 32.000 pigs per day. 374 people, 30 percent of the staff, tested positive for COVID19. According to the Spanish Government, this is the biggest outbreak seen in recent weeks. The situation in the neighboring region of Catalonia is similar. New cases are emerging in the meat processing industry, which continued operations during the peak of the pandemic. Unions complained about lack of safety measures in facilities which have a track record of  accusations of abusive and exploitative labour practices with – often undocumented – workers from Africa and Eastern Europe.

All around Europe the media is reporting similar situations. Ten outbreaks have been reported in meat-processing plants in Ireland with 566 staff infected. One-third of the staff of a meat plant in Tipperary, Ireland, tested positive for the virus in a plant that belongs to Rosderra, the largest pork-processing company in the country. Similar news in France, where 100 confirmed cases were found recently in two slaughterhouses in the western part of the country.

German slaughterhouses became one of the sources of COVID-19 infections in the country, with a plant in North Rhine-Westphalia reporting that 200 out of their 1,200 employees tested positive. The German meat industry has been accused of employing low-wage workers from Eastern Europe. As in Spain, their working conditions have been reported as “modern slavery”. The situation has forced the German government to announce a ban on the use of temporary workers at slaughterhouses effective January 2021.

These Outbreaks Prove That The Way We Produce Meat Has To Change

This situation is exposing the worst part of years of vertical integration, industry consolidation and public policies that supported a livestock farming model based on factory farms. Food & Water Action Europe is asking national and European authorities to fundamentally change the way we produce food in Europe. We urgently need to relocalize food production and distribution and return to the sustainable small-scale model of livestock farming that is still at the heart of the European identity.

The coronavirus has exposed our industrialized food system at its worst — in the US, and also throughout Europe. This system does not value workers or the communities they live in — these corporate interests only value their own bottom line, and this crisis has made that appallingly clear. In Europe and in the U.S., it’s never been more clear: we need to overhaul the fundamental structure of our food system. People’s lives depend on it. 

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Opposition to Fossil Gas Imports Works!

 

Thanks to Irish groups’ perseverance, support for LNG terminals plummets

It has been a busy few weeks in the fight against LNG in Ireland. And the news is good.

Recent announcements by national political parties and the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice dealt blows to the ambitions of fossil fuel companies to build LNG import terminals in Ireland. Here’s a breakdown of recent developments, and what they mean for the activists who have been opposing LNG for years.

12 Years of Stalled LNG Projects

While Ireland has some indigenous fossil gas resources, it imports between 50-60% of its gas supply from the UK via an interconnector with Scotland. However, in recent years US companies have proposed building LNG terminals to enable the import of fossil gas in liquid form. It is likely that the main supply flow will come in the form of climate-hostile and environmentally destructive fracked gas.

US company New Fortress Energy is seeking to build the Shannon LNG terminal in the south-western county of Kerry, while US LNG developer Next Decade has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Port of Cork to install a floating regasification terminal in the city’s harbour.

The Cork project would import fracked LNG from Texas, where communities and indigenous tribes in the Port of Brownsville are fighting to stop the construction of an LNG export terminal there. Though the Cork project is still in its early stages, local Irish activists are determined that it will not become a reality.

However, the Shannon LNG terminal has had Irish government support since it was first granted planning permission in 2008. Since 2013, the terminal has been included by the European Union on its ‘Projects of Common Interest Lists’, which identify priority energy projects which can avail of special treatment (such as a fast-tracked Environmental Impact Assessment) and public funding. Despite this high-level political support, construction of the terminal has never started, as the project faced legal disputes over the cost of connection to the national gas grid.

The project passed between several owners before ending up in the hands of New Fortress Energy. In 2018, the original planning permission expired; for the project to continue, an extension to the planning permission was required.

Organised Opposition to LNG Grows

At the same time that the Shannon LNG planning permission expired, the campaign against LNG in Ireland started to come together, at a national and often international level. A broad coalition of grassroots groups and NGOs, including Food & Water Action Europe, joined forces to write a submission to the planning authority, outlining the reasons why extending the planning permission for Shannon LNG would be contrary to principles of climate action, biodiversity protection, and human rights. The submission included testimonies from communities impacted by fracking in the US, to illustrate the international implications of importing fracked LNG to Ireland.

Regardless, the planning authority granted Shannon LNG an extension of its planning permission. However, the submission gave non-profit Friends of the Irish Environment legal standing to take a judicial review case, challenging the decision of the planning authority. The responsible judge agreed that there were real questions over whether the extended planning permission complied with EU laws for the protection of wildlife, and he referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Further Barriers to LNG in Ireland

While waiting for the EU court to reach a decision, activists continued to build public opposition on the ground. ‘No to fracked gas import terminals’ became one of the key demands of the growing Irish climate movement. Politicians began to listen to and share activists’ concerns, and by the time of the general election in February 2020, all but two of Ireland’s mainstream political parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) had pledged their opposition to Shannon LNG. The Green Party is now in talks with these same two parties to form a coalition government, and one of their demands for government formation is a national policy against LNG infrastructure.

In response to a range of questions posed by the Green Party, the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties finally issued a joint policy statement on 28 April which said that building large-scale fossil fuel infrastructure such as LNG terminals does not make sense. While there are caveats to this declaration, and not all party members are in agreement, this announcement is an important milestone: for the first time ever, all mainstream Irish political parties are on the record as saying they do not support Shannon LNG.

Two days later, the plans for LNG development met yet another obstacle. Ruling on the judicial review that had been referred to the Court of Justice of the EU, Advocate General Juliane Kokott found that under EU law, the planning permission for Shannon LNG should not have been extended without an environmental impact assessment. This opinion is not binding, but it will help the Irish judge to reach a decision on the case in the coming months. Whatever the final decision of the courts, it will likely mean further delays and administrative burdens for the Shannon LNG terminal.

For now, activists in Ireland – supported by Food & Water Action Europe and US grassroots groups – are remaining vigilant, continuing to fight for an end to the build-out of new gas infrastructure like the Cork and Shannon LNG terminals. A public consultation on rules for priority EU energy infrastructure (the outdated TEN-E Regulation) has been opened in May 2020 and groups can input to call for an end to EU support for LNG and other fossil gas infrastructure until 8 June 2020.

Step by step, we are working together towards a fossil-gas free future. These events show just how much can be achieved by groups working together to oppose the fossil fuel system.

Hydrogen and the Energy Transition: 40 Shades of Green or 50 Shades of Grey

Categories

Food

In Europe and around the world, hydrogen is increasingly seen as an important part of the energy transition. Industry and political actors believe it can help decarbonise transport, heating and industry. But is hydrogen really the zero-carbon miracle solution that will play a pivotal role in Europe’s decarbonisation?

A zero-carbon energy carrier?

The first claim made about hydrogen is that it is zero- or low-carbon. And while it’s true that hydrogen does not produce CO2 when its burned, 96% of the hydrogen produced in the world today is made using fossil fuels, in processes that emit both carbon dioxide and methane.

Hydrogen that is made with coal or fossil gas is known as ‘grey” hydrogen, as it emits large amounts of CO2. There are efforts to make this hydrogen low-carbon by using carbon capture and storage/utilisation (CCS/U) technologies to produce so-called ‘blue’ hydrogen. CCS takes the carbon dioxide that is a by-product of hydrogen production from fossil fuels and stores it in underground reservoirs, whereas CCU takes the CO2 and uses it again – primarily in oil extraction and fertilisers.

The problem is that these technologies are unproven, and many pilot projects have struggled or failed. The flagship projects that do exist have very low capture rates (sometimes as low as 33%), and even a perfectly operating CCS/U installation would not be able to capture the full amount of CO2 emitted during hydrogen production. And CCS/U does nothing to limit the emissions of methane from the fossil gas used to produce hydrogen in the first place. Methane is so damaging to the climate that even a small amount of emissions can turn fossil gas into a fuel entirely incompatible with the Paris Agreement.

The only truly sustainable source of hydrogen is ‘green’ hydrogen, which is produced from renewable energy through a process called electrolysis.

Banking on green hydrogen?

With some actors recognising that grey and blue hydrogen are incompatible with the EU’s climate targets, they are increasingly putting their faith in green hydrogen. Supporters say that it can be used in heating, transport, industry and even electricity generation. This is technically true, but there will not be enough green hydrogen available to service all these sectors simultaneously.

Green hydrogen is expensive to produce, and could pose other issues. If there is no dedicated energy generation to feed electrolysers directly, these systems would rely on excess renewable energy during particularly windy or sunny periods, which are times when the electricity that is produced often exceeds demand for homes, businesses and transport. In using excess renewable electricity, green hydrogen production can play a role in compensating for the variability of renewables.

However, it also means that only limited amounts of green hydrogen can be produced. This will have to be allocated to the areas where it is needed most. For heating homes and powering cars, electricity is much more efficient than hydrogen. However, for industrial processes or long-distance shipping that cannot be easily electrified, green hydrogen can play a crucial role in decarbonisation. This would require careful planning to ensure that green hydrogen goes to the sectors that need it most and is not wasted in sectors that can be easily electrified, or where energy efficiency measures can dramatically reduce energy demand.

Importance of planning for the hydrogen future

Green hydrogen will be produced in very different places, and used in very different sectors, compared to where fossil gas is used today. That means that pipelines and LNG infrastructure cannot be used for both gases. While there might be some overlap between current gas and future hydrogen transport routes, the notion that fossil gas infrastructure built today is “multi-purpose” and can be used for green hydrogen in the future is misguided. But this deceptive argument is already being used by politicians and energy system operators to justify continued support for fossil gas.

Green hydrogen can play an important role in the energy transition, but not if it is used as camouflage for the continued use of fossil fuels.