Opencast mining

Source: David Preutz


ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

Environmental change occurs as a result of both natural and human processes. Environmental systems and human activities contribute to environmental changes through the transformation and transportation of large quantities of energy and materials. Natural systems transform the sun's energy into living matter and cause changes by cycling materials through geological, biological, oceanic and atmospheric processes (the biogeochemical cycles described below). Human activities, on the other hand, transform materials and energy into products and services to meet human needs and aspirations.

Compared with natural processes, human transformation of materials and energy has for the most of human history been relatively small. Nowadays, human activities are altering these flows at unprecedented scales; human-induced consumption and transformation of net primary productivity is estimated to be about 40 per cent of that carried out by the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems (Vitousek et al, 1986). Humans fix almost as much nitrogen and sulphur in the environment as does nature (Graedel and Crutzen, 1989). We are also altering the carbon cycle by releasing large quantities to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. Human emissions of trace metals such as lead exceed natural flows by a factor of 17. The human contribution of other metals such as cadmium, zinc, mercury, nickel, arsenic and vanadium is twice or more than that of natural sources (Nriagu and Pacyna, 1988).

The scale of planetary changes induced by human activities is also evident in the modification of the physical landscape. Since the eighteenth century, the planet has lost 6 million km2 of forests ­ an area larger than Europe (Clark, 1989). In addition, the degradation of land to the point that its biotic function is damaged has increased. According to a recent study from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) the extent of vegetated soil degradation has reached 1964.4 million hectares (17 per cent of the Earth's land area) in the last 45 years, due to overgrazing, deforestation, overexploitation, and improper agricultural and industrial practices (UNEP, 1993). In Europe, the portion of degraded vegetated land reached about 23 per cent of the total over the same period (Oldeman, et al, 1991).

Human ­ biosphere interactions

Humans belong to the biosphere ­ the thin layer surrounding the Earth's surface which embraces the whole living world. Nevertheless, Homo sapiens has not excelled in conserving the planet for either current or future generations. This is particularly significant given the minuscule length of time that humans have lived on the planet, compared with geological time (see Box 2A).

Four ecological phases of human existence can be described (Boyden, 1992): hunter-gatherer, early farming, early urban, and modern high-energy. During the hunter-gatherer phase, humanity utilised no more than one ten thousandth of one per cent (0.0001 per cent) of the then available photosynthesised solar energy (solar energy powers the biosphere and is available to humans through photosynthesis). One of the turning points of human development occurred around 12 000 years ago (Boyden, 1992) when humankind started manipulating biological systems to its own (perceived) advantage, beginning the agricultural transition. Thereafter, populations grew and proliferated. Cultural development added a technological dimension to the metabolism of human populations, increasing food production on the one hand, and lengthening lifespans on the other. Civilisations also developed in parallel with the advance of military innovation, each reinforcing the other in the domination of the local environment, people or the globe.

Since humans began systematically to utilise their closed environment, the natural equilibrium of continental ecosystems has been affected. This had already started when prehistoric tribes regularly abandoned their camps because of the surrounding accumulation of wastes. The degradation of the environment was noticed by Plato who wrote 2400 years ago:

what now remains [of forested lands in Attica] is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having been wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left. (Critias III, section B)

Although the acuteness of problems started to emerge only in the eighteenth century with the intensification of agriculture, demographic development and the start of industrialisation, it is clear that there has always been an interaction between humankind and the biosphere. These interactions led initially to changes which were local; they have now resulted in profound changes in both the biophysical environment and the human condition, becoming global in character.

Today, humanity is seen as the main force influencing ecosystems. We are not distant or external harvesters of Nature's surplus, but intimately part of the natural world. We are subject to most of the same constraints as other organisms, but also have the power to alter our environment. Until relatively recently we have not hesitated to exercise this ability; the consequences for Europe's environment are described in this report.

Biogeochemical cycles

The interactions between humans and the environment can best be understood by considering the Earth's natural cycles. In general terms, the environment can be seen as a system of reservoirs or stores, with fluxes linking them. The global biogeochemical cycles are essential to global ecology, and the critical role of living systems in the Earth's geochemical cycles is becoming increasingly understood. Living organisms may provide regulatory control of the natural metabolism responsible for maintaining the Earth's atmosphere, waters and soils.

Each element follows a loop or cycle as it is incorporated into the living cells of organisms and then released as the organisms die and decompose. These cycles are an expression of life; they are the metabolic system of the planet. Their various patterns are the consequence of myriad biological, chemical and physical processes that operate on all time-scales. In the absence of significant disturbances, these processes define a natural cycle for each element with approximate balances in their sources and sinks. This results in a quasi-steady state for the cycle, at least on time-scales less than a millennium. Our knowledge of the way these biogeochemical cycles relate to each other still compares poorly with our general understanding of the individual cycles themselves.

The study of these cycles has at least two fundamental goals. One is the characterisation of the natural elemental cycles and the linkages among the four elements especially significant to Earth biota ­ carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. The other is the identification and quantification of changes in these cycles due to anthropogenic activity.

Disturbances in major cycles due to human activities

Since the industrial revolution, human activity has increased to such an extent that it must now be regarded as a significant perturbation of the critical biogeochemical cycles of the planet. Indeed, it can be argued that some activities, such as mining and agriculture, have initiated new cycles. The magnitude of human activity is global and the effects are vast.

Certain indicators of the state of particular cycles, such as levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4) for the carbon cycle, have moved well outside their recent historical distributions. Similarly, changes in the nitrogen and sulphur cycles are reflected by the onset of what is now called 'acid rain'. It is difficult to identify any major river or estuary that has not been affected in some way by the addition of phosphate from agricultural, urban or industrial sources.

The direct use of natural 'reservoirs' can affect their sustainability if the rate of extraction is greater than their regenerative capacity. For instance, fossil fuels and raw materials, such as ores, can be replaced only in geological time-scales; biological reservoirs can, on the other hand, be regenerated provided certain limits are not exceeded. It is important to note that although fluxes of matter or energy may be small in comparison to the amount in reservoirs, many processes and equilibria are non-linear or rate-limited so that even small disturbances can alter the prevailing equilibrium.

The huge amount of gases and particles released by anthropogenic emissions affects the general equilibrium of the various reservoirs. Sulphur anthropogenic emissions, for instance, represent approximately 25 per cent of the global emissions, and they are concentrated in only 2 per cent of the global area. Disturbing one main cycle will also affect other cycles since they are interconnected, as, for example, are the closely linked iron and sulphur cycles in the atmosphere and oceans (Zhuang et al, 1992).

Carbon

A sketch of the carbon cycle is given in Figure 2.1. The two primary sources of the observed increase in CO2 are combustion of fossil fuels and landuse change; cement production is a further important source. The latest data available from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (IPCC, 1992a) give estimates of global fossil fuel emissions in 1989 and 1990 of 6.0 (±0.5) Gt C (109 tonnes of carbon). The annual average net flux to the atmosphere from landuse change during the 1980s was about 1.6 (±1.0) Gt C. The IPCC estimates the global ocean sink to be 2.0 ±0.8 Gt C per year. The terrestrial biospheric processes which are suggested as contributing to sinks are due to forest regeneration and fertilisation, but these have not been adequately quantified. This implies that the imbalance between sources and sinks (of the order of 1 to 2 Gt C per year), that is the so-called 'missing sink', has not yet been adequately resolved (IPCC, 1992b), although recent research indicates that boreal and temperate forests in the northern hemisphere may be responsible.

Nitrogen

Humans are modifying the nitrogen cycle in four main ways:

  1. agriculture and the production of artificial fertilisers place more than half the global nitrogen fixation process within human influence;
  2. industrial agriculture has increased the rate of decomposition of organic matter in the soil and, thus, the return of nitrogen to the atmosphere;
  3. anthropogenic fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning contributes to 50 to 80 per cent of the total flux of nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere (IPCC, 1992a), which are having an important impact on atmospheric chemistry, biological productivity and the acidity of precipitation in the northern mid-latitudes;
  4. the concentration of human populations in coastal zones and the routine discharge of associated wastes and sewage are having important effects on coastal aquatic ecosystems.

Phosphorus

Phosphorus also is essential to growth in terrestrial ecosystems and yet, unlike carbon, it is frequently in short supply. Its relative insolubility limits its availability to organisms in soils, rivers and oceans, while sedimentary deposits provide its major reservoir. Because it is not volatile, phosphorus plays little role in atmospheric chemistry. Without human activities, these characteristics would normally limit this element's involvement in global biogeochemical cycles. However, human interventions have altered the availability of phosphorus both directly and indirectly. The application of phosphorus fertiliser is a direct perturbation, but even more subtle alterations of the phosphorus cycle may influence the dynamics of other cycles. Fire, either natural or as a management technique, may increase the available stocks of phosphorus, because oxidation of plant litter transforms organically bound phosphorus into more available forms. Increased levels of available phosphorus can, in turn, raise the rate of restoration of nitrogen to soils.

Sulphur

Sulphur plays a vital role in maintaining biological systems because it is an essential nutrient for all plants, animals and simple organisms such as bacteria, fungi and algae. In addition, since sulphur is so widely available in sea water (as sulphate), it strongly influences the carbon cycle and the flux of energy in marine ecosystems. The sulphur cycle is shown in Figure 2.2. Current understanding of the global sulphur cycle is limited. Most of the reduced sulphur gases are believed to be biogenic in origin, but little data exist regarding the nature or strengths of the sources or their spatial and temporal distributions. Furthermore, the mechanisms and rates of the processes which oxidise these gases to sulphur dioxide (SO2) remain poorly understood. In contrast to human contributions to the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, where human activity represents relatively minor components of their respective natural fluxes, anthropogenic sulphur emissions may be comparable to releases from natural systems. Recently, this has become a key issue for assessing future climate trends, because of the role that ocean-derived reduced sulphur (mainly in the form of dimethylsulphide, DMS, which oxidises, first to SO2 and then to particulate sulphate) might play in dampening temperature rises by promoting cloud formation.

Demographic and economic trends

The relative magnitude of natural and human processes has changed enormously throughout different stages of human development.The nature and size of environmental changes can be understood by examining the contemporary demographic and economic trends worldwide. The last 100 years has seen the number of people inhabiting the planet multiply by a factor of more than three, the world economy expand by more than 20 times, the consumption of fossil fuels grow by a factor of 30, and industrial production expand by a factor of 50. Most of these increases have occurred in the last 40 years (MacNeill, 1989), in which same time period the world population has more than doubled (Figure 2.3).

A set of macro-indicators is given in Table 2.1 to illustrate the changes at the global level in the population, the economic growth and the human-induced pressures on the planet's resources. The increase in material and energy flows that contribute to human activities is the result of the exponential growth of population and economic activities. Production and consumption have increased globally at a rate far beyond the growth of human population (Figure 2.4), explaining the widespread rise in living standards. Global emissions of carbon dioxide and CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) have grown rapidly in the same period, although reduction in the growth rate of the latter has recently been achieved through international action (Figure 2.5).

The rate and distribution of growth has not been uniform in time and place. Population, production and consumption have particularly increased in the last two decades. Population growth has shifted to developing countries, whereas growth in production and consumption has occurred in the most developed part of the planet. The unbalanced distribution of economic and population growth is clearly expressed by the fact that industrialised countries, which represent only one quarter of the world's population, consume about 80 per cent of the world's resources (UNEP, 1992).

These growth trends are expected to continue into the future for the next 20 to 50 years at least. Today's global annual economic output of approximately $ 20 trillion is projected to grow three and a half times over the next 40 years reaching about $ 69 trillion by the year 2030 (World Bank, 1993). If this is achieved according to current development models, environmental impacts will be enormous.

Medium- and long-term projections of the state of the world and national economies are generated by bodies such as the United Nations (UN LINK project), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission, and research institutes such as the London Business School. The latest scenarios available (from the UN LINK project and the World Bank) for the EU are for a modest recovery from 1994 to 2002, with annual growth ranging from 2.5 to 2.7 per cent (UNESC, 1993); this compares with a current annual rate of growth in the EU of just over 2 per cent (CEC, 1993a, p 44). In 1992, the European Commission indicated that annual growth rates for EFTA between 1995 and 2000 will be 2.6 per cent (CEC, 1992, p 25). The period of transition brought a drop in GDP in 1992 for most Central and Eastern European countries. However, projections for Central and Eastern Europe (excluding the former USSR) indicate annual growth rates between 3 to 4 per cent for the period 1994­97, and 3.3 to 4.0 per cent for the period 1998­2002. For the republics of the former USSR, projections indicate annual growth rates between 1.3 and 2 per cent for the period 1994­97, and 2.1 to 5.2 per cent for the period 1998­2002 (UNESC, 1993).

SUSTAINABILITY

The world economy is dependent on the natural environment in a number of significant ways. On one side the environment is a source of energy and materials which are transformed into goods and services to meet human needs. On the other, it is a sink for the wastes and emissions generated by producers and consumers. In addition, the environment provides a number of basic conditions for human life and the economy, such as, for example, a stable climate. Environmental economists refer to this threefold contribution (as source, sink and service provider) of the environment to economic development as 'natural capital'.

The capability of natural systems to provide energy and materials, and to absorb the interference of pollution and waste, is the critical threshold within which the world economy can expand. But how much human-induced change can the global environment sustain? Although knowledge of environmental systems is still too limited to answer this question with any certainty, a host of warning signals provides us with increasing evidence that the impact of human activities might have already gone beyond the capability of maintaining the integrity and productivity of natural resources.

One perspective from which this can be assessed is that of 'carrying capacity'. In ecology, this is the maximum impact that a given ecosystem can sustain, or:

the maximum population that can be supported indefinitely in a given habitat without permanently impairing the productivity of the ecosystem(s) upon which that population is dependent.
(Rees, 1988)

Thus, the critical threshold for the planet is the carrying capacity of the Earth's ecosystem. The concept of carrying capacity provides an objective basis for defining the sustainability of economic activities. For the human population, the carrying capacity is the maximum rate of resource consumption and waste and emissions production that can be sustained in the long term globally and regionally without impairing ecological integrity and productivity. In order to be sustainable, the level and rate of natural resources depletion and pollution emissions should be no greater or faster than the level and rate of regeneration or absorption of environmental systems.

To assess the sustainability of current patterns of development, both the level of demand for natural resources and the transformation processes required by human activities should be considered. These are influenced by the size and characteristics of human activities but also by the processes and technologies employed.

The interdependence between the demand and supply of natural resources across world regions is also crucial to assess the sustainability of human activities. In the last two centuries, radical changes in production and transportation techniques have produced an interdependent global economy. Nowadays, almost no region sustains itself by drawing on the resources available within its regional boundaries. Instead, most world regions depend on the supply of resources from other areas. Trade enables regions to exceed their local carrying capacity by importing materials and energy, and exporting emissions and waste. Trade is not based on real ecological 'surplus' and generates an ecological deficit in the exporting regions. Worldwide trends in trade of raw materials and waste show exceedance of the carrying capacity in importer countries and an ecological deficit in those countries exporting their natural capital (Rees, 1992). Due to increased integration among production systems, trade among the world's various regions is expected to increase, especially in view of the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in December 1993.

Measuring sustainability

The UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, 1992) pointed out the inadequacy of indicators of economic development, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross National Product (GNP), and of the System of National Accounts (SNA) more generally, to reflect sustainability. Current approaches to national accounting fail to take into account pollution and the depletion of natural resources. Indicators used to assess development do not reflect the conditions and trends in environmental resources. Agenda 21 thus concludes:

Indicators of sustainable development need to be developed to provide solid bases for decision-making at all levels and to contribute to a self-regulating sustainability of integrated environment and development systems.
(UNCED, 1992)

To develop and implement this approach, conceptual work is required to define the factors involved and how they interact. To meet this challenge, international and national initiatives have been undertaken for revising the system of national accounting. The UN statistical division and the World Bank have prepared a handbook, Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, to accompany the revised SNA (UN/WB, 1993).

The development of key environmental indicators is a parallel complementary initiative which can contribute to a better measure of sustainability by providing base sets of reliable and comparable information on the state of the environment (see Box 1A).

EUROPEAN AND GLOBAL DIMENSIONS

Europe's environment is tightly interlinked with the global environment, natural processes and economic activities. Environmental changes in different parts of the world are also linked together through the interdependence of the demand and supply of natural resources. During the last few decades, increased evidence has emerged showing the interdependence between the environmental conditions of different countries, and between these conditions and the demand and supply of natural resources worldwide. Economic development in Europe not only depends on the trade of natural resources from other regions, but also results in the production of pollution and wastes, which often have global consequences.

Irrespective of political and geographical boundaries, once released into the environment, pollutants are transported by natural processes. Air pollution is one of the most demonstrable areas where the significance of the European and global dimensions can be clearly illustrated. The radionuclides transported across Europe as a result of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 is a powerful reminder of this.

Accidental releases of pollutants on this scale are rare, but emissions are routinely and continuously occurring from myriad sources across Europe as part of the normal functioning of the economic infrastructure. Thus, as air masses pass over Europe they also carry a host of airborne pollutants, dispersing and depositing them at the surface in rain, snow and by simple transfer.

Meteorological variabilities and fluctuations facilitate the dispersion of atmospheric pollutants. Eventually these give them the chance to reach any location in Europe and beyond, exposing humans and ecosystems to the transported contaminants, either directly, or after they have been deposited. Taking sulphate (SO4) in air as an example, Map 2.1 shows the results of a model simulation of the global mean SO4 concentration distribution, and the fraction that is due to European anthropogenic emissions. The figure shows a region extending from the North Pole to the Sahel region in Africa, and from central Asia to the mid-North Atlantic, where more than 50 per cent of the sulphate in air derives from Europe.

The disproportionate role that Europe often plays in environmental problems is found in many areas, not only in those related to air pollution. With the European population representing approximately 12.8 per cent of the world's total (1990), atmospheric emissions from Europe contribute comparatively greater proportions of global values: approximately 30 per cent for CO2, and 36 per cent for CFCs. Figures for industrial waste production show that Europe is responsible for 38 per cent of the total; indeed OECD countries, which account for about 16 per cent of the world's population, produce about 93 per cent of the world's total industrial waste (OECD, 1991).

Europe's interactions with the globe should not, however, be seen solely in terms of sharing out the pressures in the right proportions. The consequences of Europe's impact on the global environment go far beyond this. Thus, for example, some European activities require the extraction of natural resources from non-European countries; and certain compounds, now forbidden or restricted in Europe (eg, DDT and other pesticides) are exported to other countries, not only potentially causing environmental problems there, but also possibly returning in agricultural or processed products through importations to Europe.

RESPONSES

How environmental problems emerge and become recognised depends on society, its organisation, its values and objectives, as well as on the level of environmental awareness. The past two decades have seen an increasing awareness of environmental problems, and in this period some important progress towards their resolution has been made.

The last 20 years

The United Nations conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 was a turning point for better understanding of the extent of existing and expected future impacts of humankind on the earth. Also in 1972, The Limits to Growth, the first report of the Club of Rome (Meadows et al, 1972), called attention to the constraints of natural resources, and, although many of its projects and assumptions came under detailed criticism, it contributed to building the concept of sustainability. The Action Plan for the Human Environment adopted by the Stockholm Conference, the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the creation of environmental ministries in many countries of the world, and the enthusiasm of non-governmental organisations gave further impetus to the environmental movement and gave it effective expression in the international community for environmental awareness.

This growing awareness did not develop evenly across Europe. From the beginning of the 1970s, a strong divergence appeared between Eastern and Western Europe (Kara, 1992). Most Western European countries began to pursue environmental strategies to tackle environmental problems, achieving some improvements in the process. However, environmental concerns did not achieve the same attention in Eastern European countries where different economic and political conditions gave the environment little priority until the end of the 1980s. This growing tension contributed to the changes in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s and eventually advanced the desire, forcefully endorsed at the Dobris ministerial conference in 1991, to pursue a pan-European approach to environmental restoration and improvement.

From problems to institutions

Recent years have seen the development of another phase of the environmental movement, characterised by the concern evinced at the national and international level around some important, complex, and widespread problems. Major issues such as climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain, the disposal of hazardous wastes, desertification and the destruction of tropical rain forests, have seen an increasing application of science in the identification and better understanding of the problems and in the search for strategies to help tackle them. At the same time environmentalism and environmentalists have increasingly entered the political arena.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, was convened in this context to underline that a new responsibility for environmental protection has to be shared by all countries if sustainable development at the global level is to be ensured. The principal achievement of UNCED was the action plan for the 1990s and into the 21st century, commonly referred to as 'Agenda 21'. This agenda details strategies and an integrated programme of measures to halt and reverse environmental degradation and to promote environmentally sound and sustainable development in all countries (UNCED, 1992). A direct result of UNCED was the establishment of the high level Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) (Agenda 21: Chapter 38). Particularly relevant to environmental information were Chapters 8 (Integrating Environment and Development in Decision-Making), 35 (Science for Sustainable Development) and 40 (Information for Decision-Making).

A series of initiatives before this conference paved the way for this Agenda. The World Conservation Strategy of 1980 (IUCN/UNEP/WWF, 1980) promoted the idea of sustainable development. In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development reported on the integration of environment and economic activities, firmly establishing this approach and calling for relevant policy and institutional reforms (WCED, 1987). A new World Conservation Strategy known as 'Caring for the Earth', was published in 1991 elaborating the principles and actions for a sustainable society (IUCN/UNEP/WWF, 1991).

At European level these considerations have been the subject of a series of initiatives. The Bergen Ministerial Conference (May 1990) on sustainable development in the ECE region emphasised the need to improve reporting on the state of the environment and to encourage debate on the environmental implications of national policies. Prompted by the social and political changes beginning at that time in Central and Eastern Europe, a special joint meeting of environment ministers from this region and the EU was held in Dublin in June 1990. A first 'pan-European' conference of environmental ministers took place in Dobris Castle in the former Czechoslovakia in June 1991 at which the present report on the state of the European environment was requested.

Attention on the environment, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, has often been triggered by concerns over health. This complex and important relationship between environment and health was discussed for the first time at ministerial level for the whole of Europe in Frankfurt in December 1989. At this meeting, organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Charter on Environment and Health (WHO, 1989) was adopted, incorporating the basic philosophy of the World Commission on Environment and Development. In preparation for the second environment and health conference (Helsinki, June 1994) the report 'Concern for Europe's Tomorrow' was compiled to assess the health-environment issues of concern across Europe (WHO, in press).

The way forward

Solutions to environmental problems require a new approach and view of societal life, requiring the cooperation and participation of all sectors of society in the identification of problems, the search for solutions and their implementation. Improved environmental education and awareness raising are particularly vital for achieving greater cooperation. Europe, together with other industrialised countries, has a particular responsibility to establish policies which take better account of sustainability. The EC Fifth Environmental Action programme, Towards Sustainability, is one contribution to a more participatory form of environmental policy making (CEC, 1993c). The programme promotes the integration of environmental concerns into the different sectors of the economy and encourages closer cooperation between them.

Worldwide, many different strategies are being adopted to tackle environmental problems. These include: regulation (through legal and economic instruments), control and management, international cooperation and agreements, and monitoring and assessment. There are a number of philosophies, principles and concepts which are employed by some of the adopted strategies, many of which are implicitly or explicitly included in international conventions, environmental legislation or in the formulation of environmental standards. Some of the most important of these are briefly described in Box 2B.

The supply of objective, reliable and comparable information on the European environment to inform the public and policy makers about environmental problems and to improve the way they are tackled, is now the task of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and its network. The Regulation establishing this Agency, published in May 1990, came into force at the end of October 1993 with the decision to place its headquarters in Copenhagen. The EEA's commitment to meet the 'public right to know' will be important in providing timely environmental information and for encouraging openness and public access. The activities of the Agency are also expected to improve the coordination of European data systems with global ones, strenthening the European partnership towards the solution of global environmental problems.