zaterdag 23 maart 2019

Making the circular economy work - Guidance for Regulators launched


On 20 March 2019, together with IMPEL, Make it Work launched ‘Making the Circular Economy Work – Guidance for regulators’. Its key messages:
  • Eco-innovations are one of the ways forward towards sustainable production and a green economy.
  • Though policy-makers, legislators and regulators are doing a good job in regulating businesses to deliver both for the economy and the environment, there is room for improvement;
  • Regulators struggle to enable eco-innovations within the current legislative and policy frameworks, because the legislation was not made with innovation in mind;
  • The project has developed a guidance that gives hands-on help to regulators who face challenges posed by eco-innovations in the transition towards the circular economy.
Solutions that are suggested:
  • a more encouraging and proactive role of regulators balancing the need to protect the environment with encouragement of technologies that can deliver the sustainable/green production
  • by developing dialogues with businesses, welcoming of balanced experiments and pilots, exchange of information between regulators, both within and between Member States, on how they deal with secondary materials
The guidance includes many case descriptions that point out the opportunities within the legislation as well as good practices in some of the Member States.
The guidance is an interactive PDF that is meant not so much for reading from A-Z, but for use! 
It can be downloaded here.

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donderdag 7 februari 2019

Promote Pollinators

Since the beginning of 2018, I am part of the secretariat of the Coalition Promote Pollinators.The Coalition currently comprises 22 countries (early 2019), the EU and BES-Net[1]. It is an informal network aimed at protecting pollinators (including bees). The members support and inspire each other and exchange knowledge and experience to set up and implement effective action programs in their own country. The secretariat facilitates, mediates in knowledge demand and supply and brings the members together in inspiring active sessions. 



In this role, I can make good use of my experience with international cooperation in multilateral organizations for the environment and sustainability, such as the UN, the OECD and the EU.

The secretariat has already achieved substantial visibility in the past year and has drawn attention to the important role that the Coalition can play as a front-runner for the protection of pollinators and the strengthening of pollination, for example for food supply.

An interesting narrative around pollination and pollinators has been built, which highlights the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services for our existence. Because bees are such an appealing animal species ('everybody loves bees'), we have found welcoming hosts and audiences  everywhere. We use this to spread the message of the importance of protecting pollinators, while at the same time strengthening the connections between our members and supporting the mutual exchange of knowledge and experience. This is how we build a lively, learning network committed to action for pollinators! 
Look for news on our website or subscribe to our newsletter, at promotepollinators.org


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[1] BES-Net is a global organisation that connects knowledge and policy and operates capacity building in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem services.