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And so the much-trumpeted COP26 is over, delegates jetting back home having failed yet again to deliver the wholesale change which humanity and all of the other species on the planet so desperately need. The reported statistic that the largest ‘delegation’ at the event comprised lobbyists for the fossil fuel sector perhaps tells us all we need to know about what didn’t happen. Even the rhetoric from the supposedly progressive nations of the West was undermined by an unholy alliance in which major polluters seek to continue on their current path so as not to economically disadvantage their citizens (or at least the elites) and developed economies (the US and Europe) seek to limit the bill for the impacts of their early industrialisation. Whatever we end up with as the global temperature rise above pre-industrial levels, the rise we’ve seen so far, itself perilously close to 1.5^oC, is a consequence primarily of the activities of a small number of nations and most significantly benefited a very small proportion of the inhabitants of even those. According to a recent report published by the Institute for European Environmental Policy, Oxfam and the Stockholm Environmental Institute, taking into account the then current pledges from the world’s nations, the difference in environmental impact per person based on their individual wealth is stark. The world’s top 10% (which equates to an income from around double the UK median, so hardly the preserve of Tech Billionaire playboys) have emissions at nine times the level consistent with limiting the rise to 1.5^oC, with the poorest 50% well below the target carbon threshold. This most recent failure to deliver real change on emissions echoes the disappointment of past meetings all too faithfully. I would have used the title COP Out for this post, except that I had already used it after COP24 similarly failed to get to grips with the burning elephant in the room.

The tears nearly shed by Alok Sharma, COP26 President, at the close of the conference seem to have been the genuine response of a man frustrated by the limited progress of the event, rather than those of a politician concerned about his reputation. Contrast that with the Prime Minister travelling to and from Glasgow on a private jet to see the contradictions within the world of politics. Of course, emissions from an individual flight between London and Glasgow are not material even in the context of the travel of thousands of delegates and lobbyists to attend the conference, let alone in the broader impact of industrialised nations day-to-day, but it illustrates that the actions taken by politicians are contingent and they usually have an eye on their key stakeholders as much as does any commercial enterprise. The ‘disappointment’ expressed by the Prime Minister that COP26 didn’t deliver what it could have done and needed to do might yet lead to a political re-organisation which puts climate change more explicitly back into the brief of a government department. If so, then perhaps Mr Sharma will get a second chance to make good change for the UK and influence other nations. So, if COP26 wasn’t a success (billed as it was as our “last, best chance” of limiting global heating to 1.5^oC and so avoiding the worst of the unfolding climate catastrophe), was it a complete failure? The answer is no, of course. The can has, once again, been kicked down the road as vested interests, corporate and political, ensure that they mitigate the economic impact on their own activities. Some positive signs of change have emerged, though, but much weaker, slower and later than needed, and the tensions between developed and emerging economies have a long way still to play out.

And what of us as private citizens? It is one-dimensional to blame the impacts of consumerism on businesses which promote consumption and absolve individuals of any responsibility for their actions. At the very least we can choose to boycott organisations with the most egregious environmental and social misconduct and use our own voices to press for change economically and politically. As I type this, I am in an hotel near London about to start a course on principles and requirements for validation and verification (of environmental impacts), which is part of the means by which organisations can be held to account. Having travelled here in my fully electric car, I was forced to re-charge it in the car park of a nearby supermarket (well done Lidl) as the hotel offers no EV charging facilities. The receptionist was unaware of why this is the case, and it seems that I am far from the first person to ask. Whilst eating breakfast, the background (actually at a quite unavoidable decibel level) radio bombarded guests with seemingly endless adverts for Black Friday Deals. Leaving aside the commercial realities of such ‘deals’, they are yet another reminder of the normalised nature of consumption in the lives of the wealthy few across the planet, and a clear aspiration for those in less privileged circumstances. In polls, the overwhelming majority of UK consumers agree with targeting net-zero by 2050 or earlier, but the basis on which this is to be achieved is rarely made clear. Driving less, eating less red meat and some other modest lifestyle changes are accepted, but the reality will be far more demanding in terms of change. On top of that, there will be unintended consequences of changes to the global economic system, and we need to keep focus on a just transition for all. A global win will require local sacrifices, and those who have the most (us in the developed West and wealthy elites around the world) will be the ones who need to make the most sacrifice.

It is probably too far into January to wish readers a Happy new Year, but this week’s change at the top of the American governmental system promises the start of something happier for social equity within the USA and the global environment. Joe Biden’s accession speech referenced the racial inequality in America and the existential risk of the climate crisis and America re-entering the Paris Climate Accord as a result of one of his first executive acts is very welcome news. The presence of a woman as Vice-President would be remarkable enough in itself, but Kamala Harris’s mixed heritage makes her truly exceptional within the nearly 100 Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the past two-and-a-quarter centuries. Biden’s speech also acknowledged the considerable difficulties which his administration will face, first in properly addressing the Covid-19 pandemic and secondly in navigating the deep political differences which will make his social and environmental agendas hard to achieve. Nevertheless, for now at least there is cause for optimism.

Contrast that with the mixed signals on this side of the Atlantic from recent government actions. Despite a manifesto pledge to end plastic waste exports (and the fact that 85% of citizens polled in 2019 were in favour of the UK doing so) there are fears that this may yet happen as EU law has not been transposed. On top of that, the UK Government is also facing accusations of failing to uphold environmental, social and animal welfare standards in its approach to agri-food imports. An amendment proposed in the House of Lords was rejected by a Commons vote and the Government’s position seems to amount to little more than “we won’t do it, so we don’t need to legislate – trust us”, which rather begs the question, if they’re really not going to do it, what’s stopping them from legislating? On top of that there are more mixed signals, this time on carbon. The fact that the previous Busines Secretary, Alok Sharma, left his post to focus full-time on the delayed COP26 looked like a possible sign of a government taking the climate crisis seriously. Since then, despite government funding of £8m (a much smaller number than it sounds, in this context) for a net-zero industrial cluster, it has chosen not to intervene in plans for a new coal mine in Cumbria. Sharma’s replacement, Kwasi Kwarteng, couldn’t avoid the hypocrisy, but played it down to an extraordinary extent by saying “There is a slight tension between the decision to open the mine and our avowed intention to take coal off the gas grid”. Slight tension? On the positive side, the Defra minister has stated that embedded carbon in imports could be included in future emissions targets (notwithstanding that the UK is set to miss the next two carbon budgets). Let’s hope these words prove to be more reliable.

Where the Government has some way to go if it is to match rhetoric with action, at least some businesses are doing a better job of reflecting the urgency of the climate and pollution crises and the public’s desire to see improvements. The issue of plastics has slipped down the priority list during the pandemic, but it will certainly come back. Tennents and Heinz both removing plastic packaging from cans, Beefeater is removing plastics from bottles and Tesco has announced that it has removed 1 billion pieces of plastic packaging. On the carbon front, Leon is introducing carbon-neutral burgers and fries. More broadly, Garnier is introducing digital sustainability labelling and Apple is linking executive pay to performance on ESG targets. Perhaps the Government should take note…

It has been a very long time since my last blog post; the Covid-19 pandemic notwithstanding I’ve been very busy, but mostly with things that are client confidential as getting out and about has been difficult at best and often impossible. Even outside the lockdown periods meetings moved online and non-critical visits to food premises did the same. The new online world has become normal to the extent that pets don’t just wander across the background of Zoom and Teams calls, they are actively introduced. I have ‘met’ a puppy and a kitten in the last couple of weeks although, it must be said, their contributions to the substance of the respective meetings was modest.

Lord Deben, in contrast, made a significant contribution in his opening remarks to the recent strategy session organised by the Biomass Refinery Network, noting that climate change is a symptom, not a cause. Two-way communication between innovators and policy-makers is vital if the bio-economy is to play an effective role in the net-zero transition that the UK and many other countries are seeking to make by 2050, with many businesses setting targets sooner than that. A recent poll of UK consumers found that almost two-thirds were in favour of bringing the UK’s target forward from 2050. It wasn’t evident whether the respondents were prepared to make significant sacrifices in their own lifestyles but other surveys have suggested that a majority are willing to cut back on if not cut out activities linked to high emissions. Behaviour change will be one of many necessary responses by individuals and within organisations, and I have recently contributed to several online panel discussions on the importance of behaviour change to delivering the net-zero transition how the industry generally is adapting to meet evolving sustainability challenges.

Valorisation of waste streams was the most popular area for discussion in a poll of food sector specialists at another (virtual) meeting I attended recently, with a clear link both to the bio-economy and a broader resource-efficiency strategy, and it remains an area of interest to funders of projects in the UK and beyond. As we move towards the endgame of the UK’s departure from the EU, but nowhere near the end of the changes it will bring, the future differences in direction between UK and EU policy will have been on many people’s minds. The future challenges for the agri-food system and society more broadly are global and what drives citizen’s choices rises above political boundaries. In the UK we are used to thinking of the response to plastics as a local issue, but it impacts countries around the world. China, for example, has announced a crackdown on single-use plastics and there is a move to ban plastic sachets or all but food applications. Sometimes the response seems counter-intuitive, with a move towards plastic rather than away. The carbon impact of transporting glass containers is inevitably more significant than lighter-weight plastic. Over 7 years ago, Marks & Spencer moved its pickle range from glass to plastic with a unit weight saving of up to 85% and something similar is happening as I write to a range of tertiary brand fruit juices in France. Laminated (FSC-certified) board-based packs are being replaced by plastic bottles containing 50% recyclate (see the image below).

For established closed-loop systems, this is perhaps better than incinerating mixed-material packaging, if that is what actually happens. Waste packaging collections in France are routinely of mixed materials, as is also the case with general waste at recycling centres which is highly heterogeneous. It is not evident when material is deposited what will happen to it, but the bottlers of Jafaden juices (sold by E Leclerc supermarkets) are clearly getting their recyclate from somewhere. Sentiment around plastics has moved during the pandemic, with PPE especially leading to significant new waste streams. The kick that lockdowns have given to home delivery has also meant that the transport emissions profile as well as waste packaging has not benefited as much as might have been expected from such radical societal change. Net zero will entail far more change than we have seen through 2020, and we have a long way to go even to hit existing carbon budgets in the UK, let alone anything more stretching. It is welcome then, that the Prince of Wales’ Corporate Leaders Group has written to the Prime Minister urging an interim target to accompany net zero by 2050. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), Chaired of course by Lord Deben, is due to release the UK’s next carbon budget before the end of the year, and policy currently lags behind the necessary reductions in emissions here and elsewhere in the world despite the attention the topic is apparently receiving in legislatures. As the annual boom in consumption that accompanies seasonal festivities is nearly upon us, we should all think twice about what we put on our Christmas lists.

The recent news that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are continuing to rise is a sobering reminder of the fact that the rhetoric associated with action on the global climate emergency is not being matched with meaningful action. The press release from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) covers not just carbon dioxide, but also methane and nitrous oxide. The cumulative effect, total radiative forcing, has increased by 43% in less than three decades. This year’s conference of the parties COP25, hosted in Madrid, followed on from COP24 in merely kicking the can down the road for yet another year rather than prompting the far more robust responses which are necessary. The Paris COP21 meeting in 2015 gave rise to a range of commitments around the world which are yet, if the WMO statistics are any guide, to translate into sufficient action to have anything like enough positive impact. A small crumb of comfort may be found in other news in the same week that this year looks set to see the largest fall in electricity production from coal on record.

Inevitably, a move away from fossil fuels will impact on the interests of those businesses the profits of which depend on the sector remaining economically viable. The significance of this economic driver is multiplied when fossil fuels are at the heart of a national or regional economy. Texas is perhaps the archetypal example of such places; inspiration for the 80s television programme Dallas, replete with Stetsons, shoulder-pads, wheeler-dealing and casual treachery. It remains a cliché, but one firmly rooted in reality. Travelling across the west of the state is more reminiscent of Mordor than the wide-open spaces of Hollywood Westerns, with enormous vehicles, nodding donkeys, gas flares and trailer parks for the workers as far as the eye can see. But, even here in the home of oil, there are further crumbs of comfort. Large-scale wind farms such as that in Mesquite Creek opened by Mars in 2015, which produces electricity equivalent to the demand of all their 70 US factories (there is a sister installation in the UK), can also be seen across parts of the state and next door in New Mexico is an innovative community of ‘earth ship’ inhabitants. There is also a refreshing degree of honesty about the limitations of the recycling infrastructure which we could learn from. Closer to home, the Netherlands’ highest court has upheld a ruling requiring the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% of 1990 levels by the end of 2020, a target which sadly will be almost impossible to achieve.

Environmental issues seemed to be more prominent in the UK’s recent general election campaign than in recent hustings, and the UK is set to host next year’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow. Hopefully our politicians, whatever the distractions of the UK’s departure from the EU, will take a real lead on the issues to justify the apparent global lead implied by the declaration of a climate emergency earlier in the year and the extension of the national climate ambition to net-zero by 2050. Even motoring journalist and long-standing public climate sceptic Jeremy Clarkson appears also to have conceded that global warming is real, and a cause for genuine concern. But has there been a real shift? Mark Carney, moving on from the Bank of England to a role as United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, has warned that the world will face irreversible heating unless firms shift their priorities soon. Analysis by a leading pension fund, surely the epitome of an organisation which has to think over the long term, has shown that the cumulative effect of the policies of all companies committed to taking action, they are consistent with warming of nearly 4^oC, a level which will be catastrophic for human society and natural ecosystems around the globe. As I type this, Australia is burning.