European Green Deal’s ecological spillovers
The European Green Deal’s (EGD) push to cut carbon emissions and restore ecosystems is NOT green. Not only will it contribute to the global rush on limited metals, but it could also trigger major environmental damage outside the EU. By 2030, the EGD’s agriculture and forestry goals would increase demand for 23.9 million hectares of farmland outside the EU (on top of existing land claims outside the EU). This would lead to a staggering rise in CO2 emissions—about 758.9 million tons—equivalent to 245% of the EGD’s carbon reduction target for land use and forestry sectors (310 MtCO2e). If that wasn’t bad enough, it could cause the loss of 3.86 million species abundance (on top of existing outsourcing of extinction footprints). All of this will undermine the gains from the EGD’s policies on deforestation-free imports and biofuels. Such resource drains and environmental strains that high-income countries outsource to the rest of the world are part of a long (neo-)colonial history of ecological unequal exchange.