Ministers’ Deputies

CM Documents

CM/Cong(2010)Rec271-281-final       18 June  2010

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“The global challenge of climate change: local responses” –

Recommendation 271 (2009) and “After Copenhagen, cities and regions take up the challenge” – Recommendation 281 (2010) of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe

(Joint reply adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 16 June 2010 at the 1088th meeting of
the Ministers’ Deputies)

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1.         The Committee of Ministers has examined Recommendations 271 (2009) on “The global challenge of climate change: local responses” and 281 (2010) on “After Copenhagen, cities and regions take up the challenge” of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe.  It has brought both recommendations to the attention of governments of member states for due consideration and to the relevant committees and other bodies.[1]  It has also transmitted Congress Recommendation 271 (2009) to the European Union for information.  Given the clear link between the two recommendations, the Committee of Ministers has chosen to provide a joint reply.

2.         In the general context of sustainable development and the possible effects of climate change, the Committee of Ministers recognises that local and regional authorities have an important role to play in implementing climate and energy policies, finding innovative solutions and raising public awareness.  It acknowledges the strong commitment of the Congress in promoting the role of local authorities in these objectives, most recently demonstrated in the choice of the theme “The impact of sustainable communities in fighting climate change” as the main theme for its European Local Democracy Week event. 

3.         On the more general issue of climate change, the Committee of Ministers would refer to its reply to Parliamentary Assembly Recommendations 1883 (2009) and 1885 (2009) on “The challenges posed by climate change” and “Drafting an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the right to a healthy environment”, the content of which is largely relevant to the present recommendation.

4.         As stated in that reply, the Committee of Ministers would underline that the challenges posed by climate change are global ones. In response to the specific suggestions put forward in the recommendations, the Committee of Ministers would inform the Congress that it followed with interest the proceedings of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, and the conclusion of the Copenhagen Accord. It would encourage the concerned member states of the Council of Europe to work constructively to implement the objectives and responsibilities outlined in the accord and to support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its activities to move forward on this crucial issue, and in its ambitions to bring about a new binding agreement on climate. 

5.         The Committee of Ministers has taken note of the Congress’ repeated requests that member and observer states involve local and regional authorities in the diplomatic process relating to climate.   In this regard, it would recall that the procedures for national negotiations remain the sole responsibility of the governmental authorities in each member state.

6.         The Committee of Ministers would also inform the Congress that it has taken note of the resolutions adopted by the Human Rights Council, and the work carried out by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the relationship between climate change and human rights. Again, the Committee of Ministers would encourage member states to support and actively participate in the work of these United Nations or other international bodies, which are active in this field.  

7.         As concerns intergovernmental activities, the Committee of Ministers would highlight the work of the Steering Committee for Cultural Heritage and Landscape (CDPATEP) and in particular its recent activities on “climate change and the new energy paradigm” (cf Appendix 1).  It would also draw attention to

the activities of the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Regional/Spatial Planning (CEMAT) (cf. Appendix 2), and in particular the possibility that the challenges posed by climate change may be reflected in the draft Moscow Declaration on “Future challenges: sustainable development of the European continent in a changing world”, which will be put forward at the 15th Session of the CEMAT (Moscow, Russian Federation, 8-9 July 2010).

Appendix 1 to the reply

Comments from the Steering Committee for Cultural Heritage and Landscape (CDPATEP)

The Steering Committee for Cultural Heritage and Landscape (CDPATEP):

1.         Thanks the Committee of Ministers for consulting it on Congress Recommendation 271 (2009) on “The global challenge of climate change: local responses”;

2.         Shares the concerns expressed by the Congress and notes the impacts of climate change on the cultural heritage and landscape;

3.         Refers to the conclusions of the 8th Meeting of the Council of Europe Workshops for the Implementation of the European Landscape Convention on “Landscape and driving forces” (Malmö, Sweden, 8-9 October 2009) organised by the Council of Europe, Cultural Heritage, Landscape and Spatial Planning Division, Directorate of Culture and Cultural and Natural Heritage in co-operation with the Swedish National Heritage Board and particularly to the first session on “Climate change and the new energy paradigm” (cf. extracts in appendix);

4.         Proposes, on this basis and taking into consideration the results of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15), to possibly deal with this theme in its 2010-2011 Work Programme and to examine the possibility of preparing a draft recommendation on “Renewable energy, cultural heritage and landscape”.

Appendix

General Conclusions of the Eighth Meeting of the Council of Europe Workshops for the Implementation of the European Landscape Convention

Landscape and Driving Forces

Malmö/Alnarp, Sweden, 8 and 9 October 2009

(Extracts)

Graham FAIRCLOUGH, European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) and Ingrid SARLOV-HERLIN, European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS).

With the co-operation of the session chairs and moderators

Session 1: Climate change and the new energy paradigm

The first session looked at the relationship between climate change and changing energy need and constraints, and their impact of landscape. There were perspectives from Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany, as well as European wide perspectives such as from the European Environment Agency. They touched on climate change and renewable energy, both functionally and in terms of politics; and they looked forward into the realms of futures analysis and adaptive strategies. From these talks, and the debate and questions they provoked, a number of consistent threads emerged.

Perhaps the most important thread in this session was recognition that managing adaptation to climate change in relation to landscape is not straightforwardly an environmental or scientific problem. Rather, it highlights a meeting or even a collision between two equally powerful and important contemporary moralities – on the one side, democratic equity (the idea of common heritage and human or people’s rights, to which not only the ELC but also the Faro Convention has highly relevant application) and environmental ethics (human responsibility to behave sustainably with regard to ecology, environment and other species) on the other. Within landscape research and management, there has generally been rather little attention paid to these interactions or the balance between them. New research, new data and new theories are needed.

Serious challenges were recognised too in relation to how to secure the effective participation of the general public and of stakeholders. This is also in some ways something rather new, although at each meeting of the workshops further examples from more and more ELC countries are offered. Participation – or more accurately and preferably engagement and empowerment – needs to be in the sphere of setting objectives and making decisions that affect landscape. It is also very necessary to integrate social memory into landscape analysis, policy and instruments; this is a deep source of knowledge that can help to defend diversity against banalisation.  

An overall conclusion of the session was that we need to work with adaptation to and mitigation of climate change in the context of issues which are as much social and cultural as environmental.  Change will influence energy use, landscape and therefore people. Social drivers require energy provision, whilst market forces determine what is feasible. Such forces are not external to society but are driven by cultural political desires and ambitions, for example lifestyle aspirations (the “dream of prosperity”) that might constrain the widespread adoption of lower levels of energy use.

Renewable energy is a new and increasingly strong market with powerful actors; there was a strong feeling in the workshops that, being new, it is still in many places and many ways an under-regulated market. Its social and ecological impacts need monitoring and regulation as much as do its economic ones.  Placing decisions at more local level might offer some solutions, but some in the workshops worried that local initiatives carry risks that landscape values might be eroded or there might be lack of consistency from decentralisation (low priority, inadequate knowledge).

Changes in perception and social inequalities are both part of the equation between democratic equity and environmental ethics.  Social attributes – wealth and class or relative strength of interest groups  in both the energy and the ’conservation’ sectors – are often overlooked as factors and as driving forces. Strong lobby groups, often in high income areas, can divert wind farms from their vicinity to the neighbourhoods of groups with less social or political influence. The distribution and location of renewable energy provisions is thus affected or biased, the adoption of lower energy lifestyles (no flights, no cars) can too easily be forced unequally onto disadvantaged sectors of society and territories.  These are issues for both the Florence and Faro Conventions and valid concerns of the Council of Europe.

New landscapes will emerge based on new and different patterns and methods of both energy production and its consumption.  Both adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change will create new landscapes, and will lead to changes in landscape perception and behaviours. On the other hand, new patterns of energy production (e.g. biofuel, wind turbines and river regulations may move towards partly rebuilding the more direct pre-industrial connection between land (and landscape) [growing food to feed motive animals, water and later wind mills] to power and transport supply.

The challenge of increasing renewable energy’s share of energy production thus necessarily involves strengthened landscape research, design and creation dimensions.  A better understanding of how 20th century carbon energy landscapes have been formed (both physically and through perception), for example, will help with shaping new energy landscapes in the 21st. This is a new field for landscape research as a complement to its more common emphasis of research and planning on rural landscapes.  There is little debate about how the current over-consumption of energy is reflected in landscape, for example.

Finally, many of the ideas around “energy” are abstract and difficult to grasp. The idea of ‘landscape’ may be able to solidify the debate, to ground it, to help make the energy debate more concrete.

[...]

i.          Sustainable development 

A final thought: there is a well-known concept of sustainability as being supported on the three legs of the tripod of economy, environment and society.  All three are essential to pursuing sustainability but often the environmental leg (the physical basis of life) takes precedence and sometimes the economic (the imperative of growth) is seen as more important.

During the workshop, it was possible to glimpse an alternative model, one in which it is acknowledged that the economy is a social cultural phenomenon that would not exist without people, and that the environment is already significantly artificially and anthropogenically altered so that it too in practice operates as a cultural as well as a natural mechanism. In such a view, the social leg becomes critical, and indeed might be seen as the main driver providing direction and destination, with the economy as the means or sometimes an engine, and the environment as the context. In such a view, unifying, integrative concepts like landscape (par excellence landscape perhaps) come to the fore as the main mechanisms for pursuing sustainability, whether in relation to climate change, energy consumption and provision or the protection of wildlife and scenery.

At the end of the day, however, as one speaker said, “people have to live”. Landscape – its protection, management or planning – is ultimately a social more than an environmental issue. The problem of landscape change and landscape drivers is a social issue. It is a combination of mentality (what people think) and materiality (what their desires are and what they are prepared to “pay”) – and thus their behaviour – that matters, that is the underlying driving force.

Appendix 2 to the reply

Comments from the Committee of Senior Officials of the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Spatial/Regional Planning (CEMAT)

The Committee of Senior Officials of the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Spatial/Regional Planning (CEMAT):

1.         Thanks the Committee of Ministers for consulting it on Congress Recommendation 271 (2009) on “The global challenge of climate change: local responses”;

2.         Refers to its own comments previously given concerning Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 1883 (2009) on “The challenges posed by climate change”;

3.         Stresses that Recommendation Rec(2002)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the CEMAT Guiding principles for sustainable spatial development of the European Continent has a section on “Reducing environmental damage”, according to which “Environmental problems that may result from inadequate co-ordination of sectoral policies or local decisions have to be prevented. To this end, spatial planning policy must give support to […] encouraging more environment-friendly forms of transport and energy systems […]” (Paragraph 37);

4.         Notes that another section on “Developing energy resources while maintaining safety” mentions: “Spatial development policy supports the promotion of renewable energy sources as coherent, environment-friendly systems […]. In view of the high levels of energy consumption in some economies, priority must be given to more efficient use of the energy and facilities already available.  The energy efficiency of conventional power stations should be improved and air pollution reduced. This also contributes to reducing global warming. The security of older nuclear power plants should be increased. In addition, there are on the European continent numerous nuclear power plants whose service life will come to an end in the coming decades.  The sites where they are located will have to be rehabilitated.” (Paragraphs 43-45);

5.         Recalls that the Ljubljana Declaration on “The territorial dimension of sustainable development” adopted by the Ministers responsible for Regional Planning at the 13th Session of the European Conference of the CEMAT (Ljubljana, 17 September 2003), points out that “The Territory is a complex system, comprising not only urbanised, rural and other spaces, e.g. industrial land, but nature as a whole and the environment surrounding mankind. It is the bearing ground and indispensable framework of human dwelling and activity, and therefore the basis of sustainable development”;

6.         Notes that the CEMAT’s work programme for 2006-2010, aimed at preparing the 15th Session of the CEMAT, draws attention to the role of spatial development policies for sustainable environment;

7.         Proposes that the draft Moscow Declaration on “Future challenges: sustainable development of the European continent in a changing world”, which will be put forward at the 15th Session of the CEMAT (Moscow, Russian Federation, 8-9 July 2010), should recognise the need to take into consideration the challenges posed by climate change.