Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

    Guest blog from the European Environmal Bureau (ENB) In the EU, environmental NGOs face an unprecedented attack  – and alarm bells are ringing. Disinformation about NGO funding, coupled with attempts to fabricate a false scandal, has forced us to bust a few myths... This is the newsletter that we would never have wanted to write. But at a time when the most basic democratic values are being so openly eroded, this campaign to shrink civic space is far more sinister than it appears.  👀   WHAT'S GOING ON?  Emboldened by a globally surging authoritarian agenda , some EU policymakers are attempting to backtrack on environmental and social safeguards. How? By targeting NGOs.  On Wednesday evening , some MEPs brought a targeted debate to the EU Parliament regarding the...

Guest blog by Nicolas Berghmans who is a Research Fellow at IDDRI on Energy and Climate policies, specializing in the electrical sector. His work focuses on the integration of renewable energies into the electricity system and the governance of energy markets in Europe. The blog originally appeared on the IDDRI web site here.  The adoption in December 2019 of the regulation on the taxonomy of green activities (1) opens an ambitious project to achieve a European benchmark for sustainable finance. As technical discussions begin to determine the technical thresholds and criteria that will make it possible to define "sustainable", "transitioning" and "enabling" activities, it will be necessary to ensure, on the one hand, that these criteria are based on long-term decarbonisation pathways that are systemic, robust, transparent and shared by all stakeholders and, on the other hand, that they are well aligned with the objective of climate neutrality by 2050, ...