Act for sustainable land consumption
10 May 2012

We've only got so much land.

Yet Europe continues to use more - putting greater pressure on the limited land the planet has left.

Europe already depends on one and a half times its own area of land to satisfy its high levels of consumption.

Us Europeans are more dependent on foreign land to provide imported products than any other region in the world.

This unsustainable hunger for land is:

pushing up food prices
driving land-grabs
contributing to climate change and biodiversity loss
increasing social inequalities.

Europe must tackle these issues by deciding on a robust way to monitor its global land use - as part of European plans to increase our resource efficiency.

This June, a high-level group will begin discussions on how to measure Europe's land use.

We want to bring the voices of European citizens to the table.

Please email the European Commissioner for the Environment, Janez Potočnik to ensure Europe:

measures its overall land use
and introduces targets for reducing this land use.

Take action

Dear Commissioner Potočnik,

I am writing to urge you to ensure the European Union measures its global land use (using the land footprint) as part of its Roadmap towards a Resource Efficient Europe, and adopts European land use reduction targets by 2013. Europe's level of land consumption is unsustainable. We are currently consuming an area of land one and a half times the size of our continent. 60% of this comes from outside our boundaries. On a per-capita basis, the average European citizen consumes 1.3 hectares of land per year, whereas countries such as China or India use less than 0.4 hectares per capita . Europe's high consumption of land is having devastating effects, especially outside the European Union. It is driving land-grabs, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to biodiversity loss. Policies such as the Renewable Energy Directive, which set a 10% target for renewable energy in transport, almost all from biofuels, are driving Europe's land footprint up even further and contributing to land speculation by companies. It is imperative that the European Union makes reducing Europe's land footprint a political priority. The Roadmap towards a Resource Efficient Europe sets out a process by which the EU will decide how to monitor its resource use, including land, in the next year or so. To ensure that Europe takes this opportunity to effectively combat its over-consumption of land, I am writing to request that you do all in your power to ensure: • The adoption and standardisation of land footprint as the way to monitor Europe's global land use, as this approach will include the total amount of land consumed by Europe, including the land consumed outside the continent. • The inclusion of the land footprint in all policy impact assessments. This is the only way to ensure that the EU never again adopts policies that increase our land footprint (like the biofuel targets). • The introduction of quantitative, binding resource reduction targets by 2013, based on equitable global distribution and sustainable use. Thank you for your time and consideration.

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Act for sustainable land consumption10 May 2012

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Act for sustainable land consumption
10 May 2012