E3G

Europe’s Mars Mission

By John Ashton

Why worry about these differences?

The effort to build an international framework for sustainable development is in crisis. The agenda has been clear for a generation. But on all the big issues of the global commons - climate, ecosystems, freshwater, soil, oceans, fisheries - we are no closer to the outcomes we need.

We will not break out of the crisis unless we can turn sustainable development into a common purpose powerful enough to harness the combined resources available on each side of the Atlantic.

The key requirement for sustainable development is the capacity to innovate. It needs to span six dimensions: not only technological but also legal, social, financial, institutional, and cultural. What we have learned over the last generation is that it is not enough to drive change separately in each sphere. We need an integrated approach, recognising that the outcomes we seek, like the problems we are trying to address, themselves reflect the combined effect of what happens in each dimension.

Innovation of this ambition is beyond the scope of any single country – even a global hegemon – or region. It is in Europe and North America that the necessary capacity is currently concentrated. But it will not be released unless the EU and the US can stop defining themselves by how different they are from each other.

Here are five things the EU can do for a start.

First, we should redirect the thrust of our environmental politics, from sacrifice to benefit – from “gives” to “gets”. We can debate the cost of climate action or the value of a stable climate: the goal is the same in either case, but the latter is likely to be more productive with the US, where the EU is too easily criticised for its moralising tone. That is not a comment on whether or not the US is less moral than the EU. The point is simply that we need a language of engagement that will get us closer to the outcomes we want.

Second, much of the environmental debate can be expressed in terms of the need to channel investment in new directions. If international treaties do not provide a stimulus for this, there is little point in wasting time arguing about them. Climate policy can certainly be couched as an investment proposition. A transatlantic dialogue of that kind is more likely than the current one to shift US investment in the right direction.