Human Rights and Precautionary Principle: Limits to Geoengineering, SRM, and IPCC Scenarios

Digital twins in sustainable transition: exploring the role of EU data governance

Introduction

Digital twins can accelerate sustainable development by leveraging big data and artificial intelligence to simulate state, reactions and potential developments of physical systems. In doing so, they can create a comprehensive basis for data-driven policy decisions. One of the purposes of digital twins is to facilitate the implementation of the EU's Green Deal-in line with internationally binding climate and environmental targets. One prerequisite for the success of digital twins is a comprehensive, high-quality database. This requires a suitable legal framework that ensures access to such data.

Methods

Applying a qualitative governance analysis, the following article examines if the EU's strategies and legal acts on data governance are paving the way for digital twin projects which promote sustainability.

Results

Results show important starting points for open and fair data use within the growing field of EU digital law. However, there is still a lot of progress to be made to legally link the use of digital twins with binding sustainability objectives.

Invisible (bio)economies: a framework to assess the 'blind spots' of dominant bioeconomy models

Bioeconomy as a new promissory discourse neither challenges the paradigm of economic growth, nor questions its embeddedness in capitalist (neo-)colonial patriarchal power relations. However, the calls for a 'genuine' socio-ecological transformation and for alternative bioeconomy visions imply exactly a destabilization of these power relations. Drawing on the Bielefeld subsistence approach and on its colonialism-capitalism-patriarchy nexus, I argue that the latest bioeconomy strategy and policy papers of both the EU and Estonia each disregard certain spheres of the bioeconomy due to the three-dimensional power relations. As a seemingly neutral political discourse, the bioeconomy is shaped by cultural assumptions and narratives that determine and perpetuate what is deemed worthy of protection and what is pushed aside as merely 'natural'. As such, the current bioeconomy papers promote a 'biomass-based model of capital accumulation' that is essentially built on the prerequisite of the subordination, devaluation, appropriation and/or exploitation of (1) different geographical regions, (2) ecological foundations, and (3) prevalent bioeconomy practices. As a widespread agricultural practice in Eastern Europe, Food Self-Provisioning (FSP) serves as a good example of how predominant bioeconomy models (1) simply operate as new forms of postcolonial development discourse, instead of embracing the plurality of decolonial 'alternatives to development'; (2) deepen the human-nature dichotomy by regarding nature as a mere resource to be extracted more efficiently instead of cultivating mutually nourishing partnership-like relation(ship)s with nature; and (3) maintain the separation between monetized and maintenance economies, rather than fostering ethics of care to overcome the structural separation between the latter.

European Forest Governance: Status Quo and Optimising Options with Regard to the Paris Climate Target

This article assesses and develops policy instruments for forest governance in the EU. Methodologically, it examines opportunities and limits for negative emissions by means of a literature review. On this basis, it conducts a qualitative governance analysis of the most important instruments of EU forest policy and presents optimizing policy options, measured against the binding climate and biodiversity targets under international law. Our analysis shows that the potential benefits of afforestation and reforestation for climate mitigation are overestimated, and are often presented as the new saviours to assist in reaching climate neutrality, inter alia, since only biodiverse and thus resilient forests can function as a carbon sink in the long term. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the existing EU law fails to comply with climate and biodiversity targets. Quantity governance systems for livestock farming, fossil fuels and similar drivers of deforestation represent a more promising approach to forest governance than the dominant regulatory and subsidy-based governance. They are most effective when not directly addressing forests due to their heterogeneity but central damaging factors such as fossil fuels and livestock farming. Selected aspects of regulatory and subsidy law can supplement these quantity governance systems when focusing on certain easily attainable and thus controllable subjects. These include, e.g., the regulatory protection of old-growth forests with almost no exceptions and a complete conversion of all agricultural and forest subsidies to “public money for public services” to promote nature conservation and afforestation.

Digitalization and AI in European Agriculture: A Strategy for Achieving Climate and Biodiversity Targets?

This article analyzes the environmental opportunities and limitations of digitalization in the agricultural sector by applying qualitative governance analysis. Agriculture is recognized as a key application area for digital technologies, including artificial intelligence. This is not least because it faces major sustainability challenges, especially with regard to meeting the climate and biodiversity targets set out in the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as the water-related objectives of EU environmental legislation. Based on an overview of the possible applications of digital technologies in agriculture, the article offers a status quo analysis of legal acts with relevance to digitalization in the EU agricultural sector. It is found that a reliable legal framework with regard to product liability and product safety, as well as data privacy, data access, and data security is important in this context. In addition, the European Common Agricultural Policy, as the most important funding instrument for digital innovations in the agricultural sector, should be designed in such a way that it links digitalization-related objectives more closely with sustainability targets. So far, the existing EU governance does not fully exploit the potentials of digitalization for environmental protection, and sight is lost of possible negative side effects such as rebound and shifting effects. Therefore, the article also offers proposals for the optimization of EU governance.

Free Trade, Environment, Agriculture, and Plurilateral Treaties: The Ambivalent Example of Mercosur, CETA, and the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement

Transnational trade holds opportunities for prosperity and development if accompanied by a robust political and legal framework. Yet, where such a framework is missing, transnational trade is frequently associated with, among others, negative impacts on the environment. Applying a legal comparison, this article assesses if recent free trade agreements, i.e., the Mercosur Agreement, CETA and the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, negotiated by the European Union, have been underpinned with effective environmental standards so that they are in line with global environmental goals and avoid detrimental effects on climate and biodiversity. Besides that, we evaluate the extent to which these agreements at least enable and incentivise environmental pioneering policies in the trading Parties. In particular, we discuss the likely impacts of the agreements on the agricultural sector. The analysis finds that, while a few mandatory standards concerning, e.g., deforestation have been established, overall, the agreements lack a comprehensive legal framework to uphold/enhance environmental protection. Moreover, weak dispute settlement mechanisms to ensure compliance with sustainability measures limits their effectiveness. In addition, the provisions on regulatory cooperation and investor-state dispute settlement are likely to negatively affect the decision-making processes and (thus) discourage ecological pioneering policies in the trading Parties. Hence, there is a long way to go so that transnational trade is compatible with global environmental goals.