PDF file: Annual Report 2002/2003 - Scottish Crop Research Institute

Director’s Report
Ireland. Also involved are individuals, local authorities,
voluntary and charitable bodies including NGOs,
companies, scientific societies and pressure groups. In
the context of the EU, the EC’s Sixth Environmental
Action Programme, Environment 2010: Our Future,
Our Choice, adopted in 2001, sets the action programme
to 2010, focusing on (a) implementation of
existing legislation, (b) integrating environmental
issues into other relevant policies, especially land-use
planning and management decisions, (c) involving the
private sector, and (d) engaging with private citizens.
Four topics are prioritised: climate change, biodiversity,
environment and health, and natural resources and
waste.
Sustainable development, sustainability (however
defined), and the so-called ‘environment agenda’
inculcate governmental and business policies. A Better
Quality of Life, published in May 1999, is the latest
UK strategy on sustainable development, and contains
15 headline indicators plus 150 other indicators to
measure sustainability. By March 2002, the
Government released the second annual progress
report on sustainable development, noting that 10 of
the 15 headline indicators showed movement in the
‘right’ direction. In April 2002, the Scottish
Executive issued a statement on sustainable development,
followed at the end of the year by quantitative
estimates of 24 indicators. Driven by Local Agenda
21 which arose from the 1992 UN Conference on
Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro,
local authorities are obliged to draw up sustainable
development strategies.
Without the application of new technologies, sustainable
waste management is an oxymoronic term, but at
least four appropriate principles underpin government
policy, driven in large measure by EU Directives: (a)
the waste hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle, dispose;
(b) the proximity principle of disposing of waste close
to its site of generation; (c) national self-sufficiency;
and (d) ‘the polluter pays’ concept. Manufacturing
industry in the EU is likely to be reconfigured if it
survives global competition by the proposed EU integrated
products policy which is designed to internalise
the environmental costs of products throughout their
life-cycle, using market forces driven by legislation.
This will mean (a) enhanced emphasis on eco-design
and life-cycle assessments, (b) incentives to purchase
‘greener’ products and (c) renewed focus on the producer
responsibility directives for packaging wastes
that came into force in the UK in 1997, giving greater
responsibility for end-of-life products, perhaps best
exemplified by the end-of-life vehicle directive which
came into force in December 2001, and the proposed
batch of directives on waste electronic and electrical
equipment, and restricting or eliminating the use of
certain hazardous substances in this equipment.
Ratification of the Framework Convention on
Climate Change by the UK took place in December
1993, and came into force in March 1994. It led to a
series of commitments by all the signatories to reduce
the risks of global warming arising from the emissions
of a range of ‘greenhouse’ gases. A protocol to the
Convention was adopted in 1997 in Kyoto to cover
the six main greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide,
methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons,
and sulphur hexafluoride), with MDC signatories
agreeing to cut their emissions of greenhouse
gases by 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012, but
EU members voluntarily agreed to a tougher 8%
reduction, with the exception of the UK which volunteered
a 12.5% cut at a time when there was a phasing
out of coal-burning power stations. From the
Protocol arose three approaches – the Kyoto mechanisms
– to provide flexibility and reducing the costs of
meeting the targets viz. (a) the clean development
mechanism, (b) emissions trading, and (c) joint implementation.
The international rules and operational
details of the Kyoto Protocol were agreed at the seventh
Conference of the Parties held in Marrakech,
Morocco, in November 2001. The UK’s climate
change programme launched in November 2000
incorporated the essence of the Kyoto Protocol agreements
and issued policies and targets in meeting its
aspiration specifically of a 20% reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions by 2010. Thus, (a) a climate
change levy was introduced in 2002, applying to the
sales of electricity, natural gas, liquefied petroleum
gas, and coal, to both the business and public sectors;
(b) energy efficiency standards applied to electricity
and gas suppliers to encourage improved energy efficiencies
by domestic consumers; (c) agreements
(enforcements) with energy-intensive sectors of industry
to reduce consumption; (d) integrated pollution
prevention and control; (e) improved energy management
of public buildings – sadly ignored hitherto in
my experience in the design and construction of
buildings in the UK public sector; (f) cuts in the use
of fertilisers; and (g) emissions trading. With regard
to the latter, a voluntary greenhouse-gas emissions
trading scheme started in April 2002 whereby participating
companies and organisations make emissions
reductions in exchange for incentive payments. From
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