The European Environment Agency (EEA) announced the Signals 2012 Report addressing the theme of consumption and production impacts on the environment.
Targeted towards non-specialists, the report concludes that transition to a green economy will help ensure long-term sustainability by preserving natural, human, social, manufactured and financial capital.
5 June 2012: The European Environment Agency (EEA) has released the 2012 edition of its “Signals” report, titled “Building the Future we Want,” which focuses on the impacts of consumption and production patterns, and ways to reduce their impact on the environment.
Signals is an annual publication that aims to explain complex environmental issues for a non-expert audience. This year’s theme was chosen to highlight an important element of a green economy, on the topics of the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20). The report, which was launched on World Environment Day, includes sections on: a path to global sustainability; living in a consumer society; from mine to waste, and beyond; food waste; waste in Greenland; getting the price right; makes business sense; local and global; and a European view on sustainability.
Among its main messages, Signals 2012 emphasizes the interlinkages among species extinction and biodiversity loss, climate change, population growth, and current levels of consumption and production. The report concludes that transition to a green economy will help ensure long-term sustainability by preserving natural, human, social, manufactured and financial capital.
Signals 2012 also features stories on water consumption and forest degradation in Burkina Faso, waste management in Greenland, and water risk management in the Netherlands. The report describes production cycles from “mine to waste” and identifies food waste as a particular challenge, with one third of food produced lost, despite one billion people lacking proper nutrition. [Publication: Signals 2012 Building the Future We Want] [EEA Press Release]