In 2011, the UN’s International Law Commission first included the ‘protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts’ in its programme of work. Earlier this year, the Drafting Committee provisionally endorsed 28 legal principles intended to mitigate environmental degradation before, during and after conflicts. These addressed issues ranging from the pillage of natural resources to corporate environmental conduct and the environmental stress caused by population displacement.
 
Special Rapporteur Dr Marja Lehto and a panel of experts will discuss some of the environmental issues arising from armed conflict and how these can be tackled. What are the International Law Commission’s recommendations and to what extent are stakeholders engaging with the work? In what sense are parties to the conflict, including governments, rebel groups and civil society, accountable for environmental devastation?

And, looking beyond the environmental consequences of war, what is the role of climate change in driving insecurity and triggering conflict in the first place?

The circular economy, that minimizes waste and keeps materials and products in circulation for as long as possible, is increasingly regarded as a promising model for driving sustainable and resilient economic growth in both developed and emerging economies. To successfully scale circular practices and ensure the transition from a linear to a circular model leaves no one behind, an inclusive and collaborative approach is required.

• Inclusive policy approaches for solving the global waste crisis.
• Financing the circular economy and closing the investment gap.

• Trade in the circular economy: closed local economies or global collaborating systems?

During the second day of the conference, more specific circular economy themes are discussed in virtual panels including the following topics:

• Beyond plastic recycling: innovations for sustainable packaging.
• Advancing multilateral action on marine plastic pollution.
• Industry 4.0 and circular economy: identifying opportunities for developing countries.

The Chatham House Circular Economy conference forms part of the programme of events to celebrate the Chatham House Centenary highlighting the main goals for the institute’s second century.

Several disciplines outside the natural sciences, including International Relations (IR), have engaged with the Anthropocene discourse in order to theorize their relevance and translate their practical value in this new phase of the Earth's history. Some IR scholars have called for a post-humanist IR, planet politics, a cosmopolitan view, and ecological security, among other approaches, to recalibrate the theoretical foundations of the discipline, making it more attuned to the realities of the Anthropocene. Existing discussions, however, tend to universalize human experience and gravitate towards western ontologies and epistemologies of living in the Anthropocene. Within this burgeoning scholarship, how is the IR discipline engaging with the Anthropocene discourse? Although the Anthropocene has become a new theoretical landscape for the conceptual broadening of conventional IR subjects, this review reveals the need for sustained discussion that highlights the differentiated human experiences in the Anthropocene. The existing IR publications on the Anthropocene locates the non-spatial narratives of vulnerability and historical injustice, the non-modernist understanding of nature, the agency of the vulnerable, and the amplification of security issues in the Anthropocene. It is in amplifying these narratives that the IR discipline can broaden and diversify the discourse on the Anthropocene and, therefore, affirm its relevance in this new geological age.

The 30th Global Forum on Forest Governance will take place remotely online on 13-14th July 2020. Online registration, with further details, will follow in due course.

Read all our analysis on the Coronavirus Response

The coronavirus outbreak comes at a difficult time for China’s ruling party. A tumultuous 2019 saw the country fighting an economic slowdown coupled with an increasingly hostile international environment. As authorities take assertive steps to contain the virus, the emergency has - at least temporarily - disrupted global trade and supply chains, depressed asset prices and forced multinational businesses to make consequential decisions with limited information. 

Against this backdrop, panellists reflect on the country’s nascent economic transition from 2020 onward. What has been China’s progress towards a sustainable innovation-led economy so far? To what extent is the ruling party addressing growing concerns over job losses, wealth inequality and a lack of social mobility? And how are foreign investors responding to these developments in China?

Until fairly recently, consideration of religion has been marginal or even non-existent in the scholarly discourse about environmental politics. Renewed attention to the intersection of these fields has been encouraged by a recent widening in discussions of ‘environmental values’ to include the role of religious institutions and personal belief in forming spiritual environmental values and renewed attention to the place of ethics and religious institutions in global environmental politics. Following a range of historic declarations by religious leaders, the recent encyclical by Pope Francis signalled a new level of integration between Catholic concerns for social and environmental justice. Yet, much of the continued engagement by large environmental NGOs and governments has continued to ignore the complex interrelation of local, intermediate and transnational religious political ecology. In this article, which is based on data gathered during five years of fieldwork, primarily with British Christian REMOs (religious environmental movement organizations), I probe the complexities of political engagement with religious environmentalism which arise from the many different organizational iterations these groups may take. On the basis of such investigation I suggest that effective high-level engagement with REMO groups will be greatly enhanced by a nuanced understanding of the many different shapes that these groups can take, the various scales at which these groups organize, and the unique inflection that political action and group identity can take in a religious context.

In early March, global oil prices fell sharply, hitting lows of under $30 a barrel. Two factors explain this collapse: firstly the decrease in global demand for oil as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and, secondly, the breakdown in OPEC-Russian relations and the subsequent Saudi-Russian price war which has seen both countries move to flood the market with cheap oil.
 
Against this backdrop, the panellists will reflect on the challenges currently facing OPEC as well as the oil industry as a whole. How are OPEC countries affected by the ever-evolving Covid-19 pandemic? What are the underlying causes behind the Saudi-Russian price war? Is the conflict likely to be resolved soon? And what are the implications of these challenges for the oil industry?

This event is part of a fortnightly series of 'Business in Focus' webinars reflecting on the impact of COVID-19 on areas of particular professional interest for our corporate members and giving circles.

Not a corporate member? Find out more.

As tentative evidence emerges that Italy and Spain may have reached - or are close to - the peak of the curve, this could demonstrate that not only can Asian countries get to grips with COVID-19, but so can western democracies. And, if so, this offers a path for the rest of us.

The last few weeks does demonstrate there is a role for governments to intervene in society, whether it be health, finance or any walk of life, as they have had to implement social distancing. Some have been forced, and the interventions are almost definitely only temporary, but perhaps some others may be less so.

Governments of all kinds now realise there is a connection between our health system quality and our economic capability. On an index of global economic sustainability that I presided over creating when I was at Goldman Sachs, the top ten best performing countries on growth environment scores includes eight of the best performing ten countries - so far- in handling the crisis in terms of deaths relative to their population.

Health system quality

The top three on the index (last calculated in 2014) were Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, all of which are exemplary to the rest of us on how to deal with this mess. This suggests that once we are through this crisis, a number of larger populated countries - and their international advisors such as the IMF - might treat the quality of countries' health systems just as importantly as many of the other more standard indicators in assessing ability to deal with shocks.

Policymakers have also been given a rather stark warning about other looming health disasters, especially antimicrobial resistance, of which antibiotic resistance lies at the heart. An independent review I chaired recommended 29 interventions, requiring $42 bn worth of investment, essentially peanuts compared to the costs of no solution, and the current economic collapse from COVID-19. It would seem highly likely to me that policymakers are going to treat this more seriously now.

As a clear consequence of the - hopefully, temporary - global economic collapse, our environment suddenly seems to be cleaner and fresher and, in this regard, we have bought some time in the battle against climate change. Surely governments are going to be able to have a bigger influence on fossil fuel extractors and intense users as we emerge from this crisis?

For any industries requiring government support, the government can make it clear this is dependent on certain criteria. And surely the days of excessive use of share buy backs and extreme maximisation of profit at the expense of other goals, are over?

It seems to me an era of 'optimisation' of a number of business goals is likely to be the mantra, including profits but other things too such as national equality especially as it relates to income. Here in the UK, the government has offered its strongest fiscal support to the lower end of the income earning range group and, in a single swoop, has presided over its most dramatic step towards narrowing income inequality for a long time.

This comes on top of a period of strong initiatives to support higher levels of minimum earnings, meaning we will emerge later in 2020, into 2021, and beyond, with lower levels of income inequality.

The geographic issue of rural versus urban is also key. COVID-19 has spread more easily in more tightly packed cities such as London, New York and many others. More geographically remote places, by definition, are better protected. Perhaps now there will be some more thought given by policymakers to the quality and purpose of life outside our big metropolitan areas.

Lastly, will China emerge from this crisis by offering a mammoth genuine gesture to the rest of the world, and come up, with, unlike, in 2008, a fiscal stimulus to its own consumers, that is geared towards importing a lot of things from the rest of the world? Now that would be good way of bringing the world back together again.

This is a version of an article originally published in The Article

The pressure of the coronavirus pandemic is adding to a widely held misconception that trade in food products is bad for the environment due to the associated ‘food miles’ – the carbon footprint of agricultural products transported over long distances.

This concept, developed by large retailers a decade ago, is often invoked as a rationale for restricting trade and choosing locally-produced food over imports. Consuming local food may seem sensible at first glance as it reduces the carbon footprint of goods and generates local employment. 

However, this assumption ignores the emissions produced during the production, processing or storage stages which often dwarf transport emissions. Other avenues to address the climate change impact of trade are more promising.

Demystifying food emissions

In the US, for example, food items travel more than 8,000 km on average before reaching the consumer. Yet transport only accounts for 11 per cent of total emissions with 83 per cent – mostly nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) emissions – occurring at the production stage.

US Department of Agriculture data on energy use in the American food system echoes this finding, showing that processing, packaging, and selling of food represent ten times the energy used to transport food.

In practice, it may be preferable from an environmental perspective to consume lamb, onion or dairy products transported by sea because the lower emissions generated at the production stage offset those resulting from transport. Similarly, growing tomatoes under heated greenhouses in Sweden is often more emissions-intensive than importing open-grown ones from Southern Europe.

Seasonality also matters. British apples placed in storage for ten months leads to twice the level of emissions as that of South American apples sea-freighted to the UK. And the type of transport is also important as, overall, maritime transport generates 25 to 250 times less emissions than trucks, and air freight generates on average five times more emissions than road transport.

Therefore, air-freighted Kenyan beans have a much larger carbon footprint than those produced in the UK, but crossing Europe by truck to import Italian wine might generate more emissions than transatlantic shipments.

Finally, one should take into account the last leg of transport. A consumer driving more than 10 km to purchase 1 kg of fresh produce will generate proportionately more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than air-freighting 1 kg of produce from Kenya.

Shifting consumption towards local foods may reduce GHG emissions in sectors with relatively low emissions intensities but, when non-carbon dioxide emissions are taken into account, this is more often the exception than the rule.

Under these circumstances, preventing trade is an inefficient and expensive way of reducing GHG emissions. Bureau et al. for example, calculate that a global tariff maintaining the volume of trade at current levels until 2030 may reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 3.5 per cent. However, this would be roughly seven times less than the full implementation of the Paris Agreement and cost equivalent to the current GDP of Brazil or 1.8 per cent of world GDP.

By preventing an efficient use of resources, such restrictions would also undermine the role of trade in offsetting possible climate-induced production shortfalls in some parts of the world and allowing people to access food when they can’t produce it themselves.

Reducing the climate footprint of trade

This is not to say that nothing should be done to tackle transport emissions. The OECD estimates that international trade-related freight accounted for over 5 per cent of total global fuel emissions with shipping representing roughly half of it, trucks 40 per cent, air 6 per cent and rail 2 per cent. With the projected tripling of freight transport by 2050, emissions from shipping are expected to rise between 50 and 250 per cent.

Furthermore, because of their international nature, these emissions are not covered by the Paris Agreement. Instead the two UN agencies regulating these sectors – the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization – are responsible for reducing these emissions and, so far, significant progress has proven elusive.

Regional or bilateral free trade agreements to further stimulate trade could address this problem by exploiting comparative advantages. Impact assessments of those agreements often point towards increases in GHG emissions due to a boost in trade flows. In the future, such agreements could incorporate – or develop in parallel – initiatives to ensure carbon neutrality by connecting carbon markets among contracting parties or by taxing international maritime and air transport emissions.

Such initiatives could be combined with providing additional preferences in the form of enhanced market access to low-carbon food and healthier food. The EU, as one of the chief proponents of bilateral and regional trade agreements and a leader in promoting a transition to a low-carbon economy could champion such an approach.

This article is part of a series from the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum, designed to promote research and policy recommendations on the future of global trade. It is adapted from the research paper, Delivering Sustainable Food and Land Use Systems: The Role of International Trade, authored by Christophe Bellmann, Bernice Lee and Jonathan Hepburn.