European Union

The car is important for our personal mobility; it gives you freedom and independence. In rural areas and small towns a car is necessary to be able to get around, whereas people living in cities often do not own a car as their mobility is orientated towards walking, biking or public transport within the urban environment. The following blog post explores how our choice of place to live influences our personal mobility, especially the difference between car owners and users of public transport, and our orientation towards the urban or rural.  Many of the observations are based on my personal experience as a non-car owner, which are linked to my research interests in mobility and politics of sustainable mobility.

Currently, new students across Europe are moving away from home and looking for accommodation near their universities. Roskilde University (RUC) is located 24 min by train from Copenhagen central station, although there are halls of residence available next to RUC most students prefer to live in Copenhagen because the capital offers lots of opportunities e.g. cafes, bars and shops. Some students even think the train journey from Copenhagen to RUC is too long or too expensive instead their personal mobility is orientated towards their local neighbourhood instead of their place of education.  (Please note most RUC students do come to university, my comments refer to a small minority). After graduation, some RUC students move to Roskilde[i] to live with their families because the town gives them a better quality of life compared to central Copenhagen. Throughout our lives we have different life style preferences, different use of infrastructure changes together with these stages and the choices we make about which life style we want.

Living in Roskilde; I have always seen myself as having a broad mobility horizon, yet not owning a car does limit my mobility.  I often take the train to Copenhagen to use cultural opportunities available in the capital and to visit friends. Crucially the public infrastructure mainly feed traffic between the capital and surrounding towns instead of connecting urban and rural areas. Consequently, I have neglected exploring the rural area west of Roskilde[ii], partly because it is not well connected by public transport – typical 1 bus per hour or 1 bus every 2 hour. Interestingly, when I was living in Leeds (the UK) I would often take the bus to Ilkley and go hiking in the Ilkley moors[iii], something I have missed whilst living in Roskilde for the past 3 years.  Thus I have certain mobility biases, which are shaped by my interests, social network and lack of car-ownership!

This spring a friend invited me to a fruit wine festival in Falster, which is a 2 hour drive from Roskilde. The farm can only be reached by car. In Australia, the USA or Germany people travel for several hours to watch a football match or visit friends/family. The size of Denmark makes it possible to reach most corners within a 5 hour drive, but in most countries non-car owners are restricted by availability of public transport, which mainly connects the territorial core and urban areas because it is not economic sustainable to run public transport is rural areas. Hence, due to my non-car ownership I had missed out tasting some amazing apple ciders!

It can be challenging to visit a friend if you do not have a car, unless the friend lives in an urban area with good access to public transport. It takes 24 min by car from Roskilde to visit a friend, who lives 26 km away in a small town in the rural area of Zealand (the same distance to Copenhagen city centre) yet by public transport it takes either 45 min or 1h 14 min depending on which route you take, just as there is only one connection an hour and only during the day.  It can take just as long to reach friends living in suburbs near Copenhagen, yet there are more connections, which makes it more accessible. Interestingly, the main climbing wall in Copenhagen is located on Refshaleøen, which is an island in central Copenhagen, yet there is limited public transport after 6pm. By comparison the climbing club in Hvalsø, south west of Roskilde, is accessible by hourly train from Roskilde. Thus, urban areas have pockets which are inaccessible by public transport.

The above three examples tie into the ongoing Danish political debate about rural versus urban (udkantsdanmark), which essentially is about the economic core versus economic periphery. The debate has mainly focused on housing market and investment in transport infrastructure. Our choice of living is structured by our work place, income, social network, children’s day care facilities and accessible infrastructure. Yet we have agency to choose where we live, our preference for a rural, village, town, suburban or city life style influence our choice of place to call home. Importantly, an urban/city dweller can still enjoy nature and a rural dweller still enjoys the cultural attractions of the city. Life is not static, as a student you have different preferences compared to a family, a single person or a pensioner, so it is natural to move between city, suburban and rural living. Indeed I know several people who have made the transition between city and rural lives successfully. Each type of life style and stage in your life require access to infrastructure, and our patterns of mobility will be affected by our choice of place to live. Here the question of car ownership and availability of public transport is important for us as individuals, yet our personal mobility is also influenced by political priorities in relation to investment in road infrastructure versus public transport.

(I would like to thank fellow kayaking enthusiast E.B. for inspiration and challenging my urban non-car ownership life style)

[i] http://www.visitroskilde.dk/roskilde-lejre/turist and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskilde

[ii] Skjoldungelandet (Sagnlandet, Boserup skov og Bognæs), several local microbreweries

[iii] http://www.ilkleymoor.org/

The post Personal mobility – life without a car appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 13 July 2015, the Council adopted Council Implementing Decision (CFSP) 2015/1142[1] implementing Council Decision 2012/642/CFSP. 

The Decision amends the list of persons and entities subject to restrictive measures as set out in the Annex to Decision 2012/642/CFSP. 

The Candidate Countries the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, Montenegro*, Serbia* and Albania*, the country of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine align themselves with this Decision. 

* The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process. 

They will ensure that their national policies conform to this Council Decision. 

The European Union takes note of this commitment and welcomes it.

 [1] Published on 14.7.2015 in the Official Journal of the European Union no. L 185, p. 20.

* The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.

On 2 July 2015, the Council adopted Council Decision (CFSP) 2015/1066[1] amending Decision 2013/183/CFSP.

The Council Decision expands the list of persons and entities, as set out in Annex II to Decision 2013/183/CFSP.

The Candidate Countries the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, Montenegro*, Serbia* and Albania*, the country of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Armenia align with this Decision.

They will ensure that their national policies conform to this Council Decision.

The European Union takes note of this commitment and welcomes it.

 [1] Published on 3.7.2015 in the Official Journal of the European Union no. L 174, p. 25.

* The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process. 

The failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference marked a shift in international climate governance. As the system of agreeing international emissions reductions targets and then negotiating individual country contribution towards that target proved increasingly unworkable, there has been a drive towards a much more bottom-up form of climate governance. In preparation for the Paris summit later this year, countries are submitting Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the international community, hoping that together, these contributions will add up to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius. These national pledges are—at least in part—backed up by a range of decentralized activities by countries, regions, cities, as well as businesses, civil society and others, who have been taking their own initiatives to address climate change. But what do we know about this bottom-up approach to climate governance and can it work?

In a recent article published in Nature Climate Change[1], we seek to shed some light on the distribution, the origins and the consequences of these bottom-up approaches to addressing climate change. Past research highlights a proliferating number of initiatives at various levels and in various places. For example, studies have documented a great number of international initiatives, transnational approaches[2], as well as a significant growth in national legislation to address climate change with 500 laws and policies addressing climate change in 66 countries in 2013, up from only 40 in 1997. We also know that there is a range of motivations for politicians, business leaders and others to engage in mitigation of climate change – some financial, some non-financial incentives. However, while this body of knowledge has accumulated, we know comparatively little about the consequences, or effects, of these bottom-up approaches. A key question is does bottom-up climate governance add up to something significant? And does it deliver? And by which criteria should it be evaluated?

Evaluating the performance of these bottom-up forms of governance raises a range of technical and political challenges. The international climate regime has struggled to consistently evaluate performance, such that much depends on self-reporting by states and other actors. In these compliance exercises, the focus has often been on whole countries and sometimes whether certain country characteristics, such as institutions or democratic governance drive performance, but often not individual policies. For instance, while we know that the European Union has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, much less is known about the causal factors behind this – was it simply a renewal of old industries (e.g., after German reunification or the switch from coal to gas in the UK), the economic crisis, carbon leakage to countries not bound by emission reductions or policies that created incentives for renewable energy, legislation for energy efficiency, emissions trading, or a combination of all these factors? The ever-increasing number of bottom-up approaches, with some reaching beyond national borders, exacerbates these evaluation challenges.

There is very little comparative data on individual climate policies and initiatives, particularly on a range of intended or unintended (and often important) side effects beyond greenhouse gas emission reductions. In particular, while the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) focuses on ex-ante predictions of actual policy effects, there is currently a dearth of information on ex-post (i.e., retrospective) evaluations of policy effects. Technical difficulties and low resources may partly explain this lack of knowledge. But policy-makers may lack incentives to provide such information, because it could potentially highlight the ineffectiveness of ‘their’ policies.[3]

We know even less about the effects of transnational approaches, where an energetic debate is underway regarding the criteria to use for evaluation. Evaluation research has taught us that complex activities need to be evaluated using multiple criteria.[4] ‘Hard outcomes’ such as greenhouse gas emission reductions are the ultimate proof, but they may not materialize immediately, and ‘soft’ outcomes such as building trust and learning may be necessary to create conditions for significant reductions of emissions. But to learn more we need to investigate effects from multiple perspectives and with multiple tools, including an examination of some very simple features, for example whether new initiatives incorporate monitoring and evaluation that support learning from all the new efforts. Another important question to ask is whether these approaches last long enough to have enduring effects.

Taken together, we conclude that much remains to be learned on the effectiveness of bottom-up climate governance. The jury is still out on whether it can fill the gaps left by the Kyoto-based international climate regime. To make robust conclusions possible we need a concerted research effort on the merits of these new approaches to climate governance. Policy-makers would be well advised to support new approaches, but not to abandon the more traditional international negotiation processes before we know more about what actually can be achieved through bottom-up climate governance.

[1] Jordan, A.J.; Huitema, D.; Hildén, M.; van Asselt,H.; Rayner, T.J.; Schoenefeld, J.J.; Tosun, J.; Forster, J.;  Boasson, E.L. Emergence of polycentric climate governance and its future prospects Nature Climate Change. Available at http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2725.html

[2] Bulkeley, H. (2014). Transnational climate change governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Hildén, M., Jordan, A., & Rayner, T. (2014). Climate policy innovation: developing an evaluation perspective. Environmental Politics, 23(5), 884-905.

[4] Mickwitz, P. (2013). Policy evaluation. In A. Jordan, & C. Adelle (Eds.), Environmental policy in the EU: Actors, institutions and processes (pp. 267-286). London; New York: Routledge.

The post How Well Does Bottom-Up Climate Governance Work? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

• Inaccurate and misleading: The Daily Mail’s reporting of Calais asylum seekers

Setting the tone for the week, the ‘Mail on Sunday’ in their front-page report expressed outrage that hundreds of ‘illegal’ migrants arriving in Britain from Calais are being put up in hotels at tax payers’ expense. The problem?  There were not ‘hundreds’ but at most one-hundred being temporarily accommodated in hotels, and these people were not ‘illegal migrants’ but asylum seekers fleeing war and terror.

The next day the Mail continued its onslaught against the Calais refugees with another front page claiming that, ’70% of the thousands of migrants massing at Calais are making it to Britain.’  The problem?  The Mail had misquoted the Chief Constable of Kent’s evidence to Parliament.  He said that 70% of the migrants in Calais leave within four months but it wasn’t known how many of them go elsewhere in France or reach Britain.

As the independent fact checking organisation, Full Fact, pointed out:

‘There’s no evidence that 7 in 10 Calais migrants are entering the UK’.

This the Mail did report in their story, but much lower down on the inside pages, when they accurately quoted Kent’s Chief Constable, Alan Pughsley, as telling Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee that it could not be ascertained, ‘whether these migrants leave to go elsewhere in France, or whether they enter the UK.’

But this little half-hidden full-truth in the story didn’t stop the Mail calculating all their statistics on the false premise that Mr Pughsley had instead said, as their opening story claimed, that 70% do make it to Britain (even though Mr Pughsley never said that).

On that basis then, since there are estimated to be 5,000 migrants now ‘amassed’ in Calais, according to The Mail statistics department it must mean that around 3,500 (i.e. 70% of 5,000) were making it to Britain.  Oh and that of course must surely mean that 900 of these ‘illegal’ migrants are arriving from Calais to Britain every month.

It’s nonsense of course, but this is the world as The Mail sees it; or rather as they want their readers to see it, because this misinformation (rather than the truth) reinforces their readers prejudices against asylum seekers.  And that, of course, is how the Mail sells their newspapers to their ‘market’.

Having reported the mistruth as an established fact, with the unwitting source being the Chief Constable of Kent (without his knowledge or consent), the Mail could then refer to this as a ‘fact’ in future stories and editorials.  So, last Friday, in their leading editorial comment, the Daily Mail felt confident to repeat their ‘fact’ and pontificate:

‘As we learned this week, 70 per cent of those who reach Calais eventually make it to England.’

Voila, the Mail’s mistruth was now an established truth: 70% of Calais migrants were making it to Britain.  The Mail could now unashamedly quote this as a fact, without even bothering to refer to their maligned original source (after all, why would the Mail want to alert the Chief Constable of Kent that what he had told a prominent Parliamentary Committee was being grievously misquoted by the newspaper?)

Since this was now being repeatedly circulated by The Mail as the truth, other media and politicians could quote from it, reinforcing that yes, the Mail must be right, others are saying it too. If anyone asked the Mail where this so-called ‘fact’ came from, the Mail could vaguely answer oh, it was the Chief Constable of Kent who said this, and he must surely know!

The same technique was employed in the ‘Mail on Sunday’ story claiming that ‘hundreds’ of migrants illegally arriving from Calais were being put-up in hotels at tax payers’ expense. That’s at least what the story reported on the front page and first paragraphs.

Lower down the story on the inside pages, however, the Mail added, as an aside to the main thrust of their article, that only 100 were being accommodated in hotels by Serco, the private firm contracted by the government. Did the Mail hope that readers wouldn’t spot the difference between ‘hundreds’ and ‘one hundred’?

And only lower down the story did The Mail stop referring to ‘illegal’ migrants and instead correctly describe them as ‘asylum seekers’.

So when I complained to the Managing Editor of the Mail on Sunday, Mr John Wellington, that the Mail’s story had incorrectly reported that ‘hundreds’ of asylum seekers were being temporarily accommodated in hotels, whereas in fact there were just one hundred, he was able to respond to me, “The figure was clearly presented as an estimate and explained lower down in the story when we said that Serco admitted 100 recent arrivals were staying in hotels.”

It seems that at the Mail’s highest management not an eyebrow is raised nor a forehead furrowed when it’s pointed out that so-called ‘facts’ presented in the opening headlines and paragraphs of an article don’t match what’s presented “lower down in the story”.

Those who have studied the Daily Mail method of  journalism might agree with me that this is a well known technique.

In my view, these two Daily Mail stories misreported the truth to enable a sensational front page headline and opening paragraphs, which were then ‘balanced’ by more accurate information albeit subtly hidden ‘lower down’ the story.  That way the Mail, if challenged (as indeed I have challenged them) can respond that that their story, after all, was accurate, because look, there it is ‘lower down’ in the story.  (Even though the front page headline and opening sentences didn’t match what was presented ‘lower down’).

This is surely too clever by far to be considered a mistake? Could this be a purposeful technique employed by the Mail to enable them to fashion their headlines and stories to match a view of the world which they know will appeal and therefore sell to their market (readership)?

I wonder how many Mail readers actually spotted that the headlines and opening paragraphs in these two stories bore little resemblance to the more accurate but less noticeable reporting that inconspicuously took place ‘lower down’?  In fact, how many readers just glanced at the front page headlines and never actually read the rest of the story on page 5 or 10 or wherever?

Some might consider that presenting seemingly incorrect or misleading information in the headline of a story and then subtly balancing it with more accurate information ‘lower down’ to be the work of geniuses, worthy of a post-graduate thesis on effective propaganda techniques.

But I consider this to be the lowest form of journalism, that does not serve the interests of this country or its citizens well, or that of refugees who are fleeing horrible wars and terror.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related stories by Jon Danzig:

• Daily Express business model: selling prejudice and bigotry?
• Mail outrage: Asylum seekers are given food and board
• Daily Mail and Calais: Making it up as they go along?
• Calais: Questions the Mail must answer
• Calais: Mail inaccuracies not significant, says Editor

• New Facebook page:  Jon Danzig Writes. On Facebook, click the ‘Like’ button to get updates

#DailyMail coverage of #Calais #refugees crisis is a disgrace. Read and share my latest blog: http://t.co/mnXOT3rCNd pic.twitter.com/EcoGOch8Ps

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 10, 2015

I report #DailyMail’s #Calais misquote to @kent_police and @UKParliament Read latest update http://t.co/j93Lrrrx1R pic.twitter.com/7GhCdFZ5TR

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 10, 2015

8 Steps Towards #Genocide – and how the #DailyMail portrays #immigrants and #refugees See: http://t.co/ohg4Z83TTh pic.twitter.com/r8VuI6Ibrm

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 16, 2015

There are 8 steps to #Genocide says @genocide_watch. Is the #DailyMail stepping closer? Read http://t.co/oO2t3hoaL0 pic.twitter.com/otvydSUucH

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 17, 2015

The post How The Mail degrades journalism and refugees appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

 While we celebrate today the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, we take stock of the progress achieved towards ending all forms of discrimination and in ensuring that indigenous peoples' rights are respected, protected and fulfilled. 

In September of last year, the EU contributed to the success of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples and promoted equal participation of indigenous peoples in preparation of this meeting. We supported the Outcome Document of the conference which serves as a blueprint for actions at international and national level, bringing positive changes to the lives of indigenous peoples. 

As follow up to the World Conference, the EU is further developing its policy in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and in close consultation with their representatives. 

Despite the many positive examples of progress achieved around the world, indigenous peoples, particularly women and girls, continue to experience multiple forms of discrimination, vulnerability and marginalisation in their lives. We are therefore committed to their empowerment. 

By reaffirming its support to the UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the EU restates its determination to work closely with indigenous peoples, along with other partners and stakeholders in its endeavour to promote the recognition that human rights are equally guaranteed to all men and women.