Summary and conclusions

International NGO-indsats for bæredygtig produktion og forbrug

Results

This project comprise a spectrum of activities with the overall aim of strengthening participation and the focus of nature and environment aspects in the international work towards sustainable consumption and production (SCP), the European integrated product policy (IPP) and the Johannesburg framework on SCP from 2003. The project has been carried out by the Danish Society for Nature Conservation – in Danish “Danmarks Naturfredningsforening” (DN) – in cooperation with other national and European NGOs.

The activities have been split into five sub-projects:

Integration patrol (article 6 watch)
A conference about EU’s new chemical regulation (REACH)
WTO and eco-labelling
International NGO think tank
Standardisation

This report is mainly a process report, lining up the activities and the results and documentation behind. Thus, this is to a lesser degree a technical report.

The report follows the initial project description from 2004. For each of the five sub-projects, a common template is used:

Background
Activities
Milestones
Success criteria
Results and
Project participants

Throughout the report changes to the planning is described.

Results

Integration patrol (article 6 watch)

In this sub-project DN has followed the work of the EU Council for Competitiveness on integrating environmental considerations in its policy area.. Through commenting on official papers, giving recommendations, co-operation through EEB (the European Environmental Bureau) and communicating about the process on web sites, DN has pushed the process towards the NGO point of views. The specific results are difficult to measure, but without this action, the article 6 integration would certainly have been lower on the agenda throughout the process.

REACH conference

Pros and cons of the new European chemical law framework were put forward through a conference, taking form of a “trial”. As a result the co-operation within and among environmental and consumer NGOs was strengthened, and focus in the public was also raised through a lot of media activity around the conference. Eventually, the publication “REACH or chemical chaos (in Danish)” was very acknowledged among politicians and professionals in Denmark. Furthermore, the whole focus on REACH put a political pressure especially around the EU Parliament election in 2004.

WTO and eco-labelling

During this sub-project eco-labelling was lifted onto an international level by taking active part in the WTO negotiations. There were no measurable results, but it came clear that the two important organisations, ISO (the International Standardisation Organisation) and WTO are quite different in nature, thus, it was not possible to reach any kind of agreement. Also, it became clear that the interests of NGOs in developing countries differ from the interests of NGOs in highly developed countries. The former do not want too ambitious criteria, because of the risk of trade barriers, while the latter want very ambitious criteria, in order to lower the environmental impact from products.

International NGO think tank

This sub-project was delayed from the beginning. Therefore the number of planned activities was reduced. The results are from the preparation and first meeting with participants from 15 different countries, November 2005 in Brussels. During this meeting a first contact was made between a number of organisations, and a further action divided into self-organising sub-groups was agreed among approximately half of the participants.

Standardisation

DN has been part of the development of standards and principles for the development of standards throughout many years and in different ways. This sub-project has comprised taking part in the development of the ISO 14001 standard for environmental management, evaluation of the New Approach in European environmental legislation and development of the coming standard for company’s social responsibility (also including environmental aspects), the latter still in process. There is no way of measuring the results of DN’s participation in these processes, but there is no doubt that environmental issues have been standing stronger, because without DN’s appearance, the comities would have been completely dominated by industry stakeholders. DN has always based the activities in standardisation on technical arguments and well documented positions, which has strengthened the position in discussions, negotiations and comments to documents throughout the processes.