European Parliament moves towards UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The agricultural and environmental Committees are finalising the EU action for sustainability report, following the previous Commission communication.
Part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the SDGs are an overarching umbrella of 17 global goals and 169 targets agreed in 2015 by the 194 UN Members States and the global civil society, through a deliberative process.
Recently, the European Commission has moved towards incorporating these objectives into existing EU policies. For instance, in order to fulfil the agricultural SDG number 2 to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”, the Commission relies on the ongoing revisions of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and the Fertilisers Regulation. Similarly, the objectives identified by SDG 7 “clean energy for all” will be the pursued through the recently released Clean Energy for All Europeans package.
Due to their cross-cutting approach, EBA is following the SDGs implementation, making sure that the multiple benefits of anaerobic digestion are fully considered, in line with what proposed in the context of the revision of the renewable energy Directive. The agricultural Committee mentioned in its opinion on the report “[…] the importance for farms of bioenergy, which helps to secure farmers’ incomes, by offering them an additional product to sell, and creates jobs in rural areas”.
EBA will be monitoring this significant European Parliament report, which tackles in a comprehensive way several other topics such as waste management and resource efficiency.
