04/12/2023
New taskforce for climate action and sustainable development
ECF Campaigns
Building new approaches to meet intersecting challenges
Climate change imperils every aspect of our lives, from health and prosperity to global peace and human security. Continual and interconnected emergencies – ecological, political, economic and social – are rocking the global community, including in Europe. These crises are dynamic, intersecting and ever-evolving – they are here to last. If we are to achieve the ECF’s core mission, we must respond with agility and flexibility that is founded upon deep insight, as well as with broad-based collaboration and collective activism.
To better integrate our work across complementary sectors and levels of action (local, national, European, and international), we are developing the following cross-cutting campaigns to accompany our long-term programmes.
Landing an ambitious European Green Deal
This work focuses on securing European policies to translate and anchor the ambition of the Green Deal in legislation and regulations, with strong social justice considerations. We are broadening our grantee network, supporting progressive coalitions and forging new alliances with a diverse array of stakeholders to mobilise actors from all parts of society. Our objective is to land an ambitious European Green Deal that will provide not only the foundations for climate action in the 27 EU Member States but will act as a driver for real global change.
Fight the backlash – build for the Green Deal
Our aim is to build a critical mass of citizen support for climate action, which in turn can secure vital political support to avoid climate backsliding in the short term and ensure a suite of necessary long-term climate policies. To do this, we are using detailed data on public opinion and insights on emerging trends, and prioritising our interventions based on evidence for the highest risks of backlash and to the overall European Green Deal project.
Fossil free energy
We aim to push decision makers and citizens across Europe to acknowledge the need for phasing out all fossil fuels, including natural gas, and to embrace key clean energy solutions, primarily solar, wind and electrification. The ECF is backing a vocal, diverse coalition in support of wind and solar power, reinforcing campaigning against gas projects at a local level, consolidating coal phase-out in Eastern Europe, accelerating the switch away from gas for heating homes and key industrial sectors, as well as promoting social justice within policies.
Target true zero
This campaign seeks to support the establishment of global standards for defining and assessing net-zero commitments, pushing for ‘true net-zero’ legislation while combatting false solutions and denouncing ‘fake net-zero’ pledges. We are focusing on building consensus on what ‘true zero’ is, including the role for offsets, removals and innovation, considering the implications for people and ecosystems. We aim to maximise our role in the UN and international fora and continue to work on an accountability framework for national net-zero targets.
Green Deal diplomacy
Our goal is to push the EU to use its market and financial power to accelerate the transition in other countries, making the European Green Deal a focus for diplomacy and cooperation, and to leverage its potential to set international gold standards while offering proof of concept for a whole-economy, whole-society transition towards climate neutrality. We are strengthening the EU focus on adaptation and resilience, and increasing public scrutiny of EU action and finance that is not aligned with the Paris Agreement.
Trade for climate
Our objectives are to foster a closer integration of climate in the EU’s trade policies to harness trade for climate action and avoid having trade policy objectives trump climate. These require acting on multiple fronts: on domestic policies with an impact on EU trade, on free-trade agreements and other EU trade negotiations and on the multilateral front, as initiatives for integrating the Sustainable Development Goals in trade policy multiply at and around the World Trade Organisation.