SPEECH/12/356
Janez Potočnik
European Commissioner for Environment
Addressing soil contamination, land
take and soil sealing: good for the
environment, good for the economy
Conference 'Soil remediation and soil sealing'
Brussels, 10 May 2012
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning and welcome to Brussels! It is a pleasure for me to have the
opportunity to exchange views with you on such an important topic.
In his book 'Plan B 4.0', Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute quotes from a
1938 report of Walter Lowdermilk, a senior official in the Soil Conservation Service
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Lowdermilk travelled abroad to look at lands
that had been cultivated for thousands of years, seeking to learn how these older
civilizations had coped with soil degradation. He found that some had managed
their land well; maintaining its fertility over long stretches of history, and were
thriving. Others had failed to do so and left only remnants of their illustrious pasts.
In particular, Lowdermilk described a site in northern Syria, near Aleppo, where
ancient buildings were still standing in stark isolated relief, but they were on bare
rock.
During the Seventh Century, this thriving region had been invaded, initially by a
Persian army and later by nomads out of the Arabian Desert. In the process, soil
and water conservation practices used for centuries were abandoned. To this
Lowdermilk noted, 'If the soils had remained, even though the cities were destroyed
and the populations dispersed, the area might be re-peopled again and the cities
rebuilt, … but … now that the soils are gone, …. all is gone.'
In about six weeks, Rio de Janeiro will host a major conference on sustainable
development organised by the United Nations, twenty years after the first Rio
Summit. That first Summit, started a process that gave rise to important
international conventions on environmental issues that have a clear impact on a
global scale, such as climate change or biodiversity.
This has allowed us to find global solutions and agree on specific instruments or
targets to encourage and measure progress towards global sustainability. Some
may be very familiar to you, such as the Kyoto Protocol. Less known may be that
Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity two years ago agreed to restore at
least 15% of degraded ecosystems.
Such instruments are extremely important when it comes to the environment,
because the environment is - most of all - a shared global asset that can find longlasting solutions only at global level. However, when it comes to land management
the world doesn't have something similar. And this means that problems linked to
global land and soil degradation do not have global answers.
The European Union is proposing that in June 2012 the world agrees to establish
global objectives and targets to drive the overall process and transformation
towards sustainability. We are calling for focused and clear operational targets on
five specific areas. One of them is sustainable land management, for which we are
proposing to arrive at zero net rate of land and soil degradation within an
internationally agreed timeframe.
In my view this target would fill the existing gap and focus international attention to
these precious, and in practice - non-renewable - resources: namely land and soil.
The time has come to act at global level. The pace at which we are degrading soil
and changing land uses worldwide is quite worrying. According to the United
Nations Environment Programme, up to 50,000 km² are lost annually through land
degradation. This corresponds to the surface area of Slovakia or Costa Rica. It may
not seem much, but if we consider that less than one fifth of the land on the planet
is naturally fertile – it actually is much! The rest is too cold, too hot, too dry, too wet,
too high or too saline. With this in mind, degrading every year the equivalent of
Slovakia or Costa Rica takes on another dimension, doesn't it?
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Coming back to my initial case and findings of Lowdermilk, the situation in Europe is
certainly not comparable to that of Seventh Century Syria. However, the
Commission's Joint Research Centre report on 'The State of Soil in Europe' shows
that 1.3 million km² are affected by soil erosion and almost 20% of this surface
loses more than 10 tonnes of soil per hectare per year. This is has a knock-on
effects on water and biodiversity and is far beyond the sustainability threshold which
is of less than 2 tonnes.
Although we do not have precise data (as there is no European legislation in this
field), it is estimated that there are around three million potentially contaminated
sites in the EU. About 250,000 pose significant risks to human health or the
environment and need to be remediated, but progress is slow. Finally, in the period
1990-2000 a surface area equivalent to Cyprus (some 10,000 km²) was converted
to urban or industrial land, mainly from agriculture.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We face at least three great world problems when it comes to soil:
- erosion, often of already organic matter reduced soil;
- millions of potentially contaminated sites; and
- land take for urbanisation at a scale that is unprecedented in human history.
These issues are not just a cause for reflection. They a reason for action!
In addition to the proposal for a Soil Framework Directive, the Commission services
have recently finalised best practice guidelines to limit soil sealing (you will hear
more about this tomorrow). And … in addition … I am also considering putting
forward some ideas on land use in 2014. It's in two years time … but in the
meantime, we can already make some preliminary strategic considerations. And I
haven't given up on Soil Framework Directive. Maybe 7th EAP could be a moment
for a renewed commitment!
The first strategic consideration is on those three million suspected contaminated
sites and an unspecified number of abandoned and degraded former industrial sites
(the so-called "brownfields"), that cover a non-negligible part of Europe.
Unfortunately, we lack sound figures on the extent of the problem.
Remediating and regenerating all these areas is clearly a challenge – and a costly
one. However, it also represents an opportunity. Promoting the re-use of existing
buildings and the redevelopment of brownfield sites alleviates, at least partially, the
need for further land take and soil sealing.
Contaminated sites are often well connected and close to urban centres.
Remediation can bring hidden benefits in terms of less new infrastructures, fewer
new transport networks and less greenhouse gas emissions. Already now transport
accounts for 24% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions, so we should look
for urban and infrastructure models which save resources, including land and soil.
Some are calling for a special EU fund to help solving the problem, but let me
remind you that in the Cohesion funds the money is there for such purposes and
remains to large extent unused. It will also be available in the next MFF.
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Promoting the remediation of contaminated sites also creates green jobs and offers
development opportunities to the remediation industry, which in 2004 was estimated
to be worth some €5 billion in the older EU Member States (EU 15). European
expertise in remediation could be a useful and beneficial export industry especially if
given the underpinning of EU legislation to drive expertise. For example, experts
believe that there are some 36,000 unregulated waste dumps in India and between
300,000 and 600,000 contaminated sites in China. So, as you can see there is a lot
of potential.
The second strategic consideration that I would like to share with you is linked to the
estimated nine billion people that will share the planet by 2050. The task of
providing food for everyone is already exercising minds throughout the world. But as
much as this is already a great challenge per se, it will be even a greater challenge
if we do not address land take.
At the moment, the world is losing arable land at an unsustainable rate – equivalent
each year to the amount of land needed to provide bread for 80 million people.
Without changing this, we will not be able to face the challenge of providing food
security for the world as a whole.
This leads me to the third strategic consideration, which concerns the proposed Soil
Framework Directive. By protecting soils and ensuring their sustainable use, the Soil
Framework Directive would literally protect the ground needed to make planning
decisions on. Without it, we may wake up one day and find that soil degradation has
gone beyond the point of no return. Just as Lowdermilk noted we risk waking up
and noting that the soils are gone…. and that … all is gone.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Our soil, the thin skin of our planet, has always been very precious. It hosts one
quarter of global biodiversity; it keeps in store around twice the amount of carbon to
be found in the atmosphere and three times that in vegetation; it can absorb and
deliver some 3,500 m³ of water per hectare to plants.
Mark Twain is reported to have said "Buy land. They ain't making any more of it".
This is unfortunately a piece of advice that some countries appear to be following –
buying land elsewhere in the world when their own land becomes unsustainable.
Somehow, they seem to find that this is a miracle solution which allows an escape
from responsibility. But there is no miracle: there is simply no other solution than to
prevent land degradation and begin to reverse it.
This is the message that we are taking to Rio de Janeiro in June. Because it's
much more than a European issue – it's a global one! Our own credibility however
depends on us being able to show that we mean what we say by delivering first
here in Europe.
So, let's start making a difference. It is still time, but is running out!
Thank you for your attention.
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