The Center for Environmental and International Law (CIEL) is educating and mobilizing the public on the effects of agrochemicals on the environment. By taking legal action, researching, and building campaigns around the world, CIEL hopes to expose the hold that fossil fuels have on industries, including the food system.
The Global Alliance for the Future of Food (GAFF) reports that the food system contributes to 15 percent of the total fossil fuel consumption every year. In addition to plastics—which are made from fossil fuels—and transport emissions, petrochemicals are a major contributor to fossil fuel consumption in the food system. Approximately 2 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from nitrogen fertilizers, according to a study in Nature.
“Petrochemicals are an escape hatch for the continued growth of fossil fuels,” Lisa Tostado, CIEL’s Agrochemicals and Fossil Fuels Campaigner, tells Food Tank. While other companies around the world are decarbonizing, fossil fuel companies are increasing their hold on the petrochemical industry, according to Tostado.
The prominent chemical ingredient in synthetic nitrogen fertilizers is ammonia, which comes from combining hydrogen and nitrogen gases through burning fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas. Because of the close ties between fossil fuels and agrochemicals, “they are one and the same industry,” Tostado says.
Food production “doesn’t even start at the farm, it starts at the fossils. The entire industrial agri-business-based system needs fertilizers and pesticides to function,” Tostado says. CIEL is working to help people understand that “there is future growth for fossil fuels if we don’t contain fertilizer growth.”
Their Fossil Economy Program is one of CIEL’s campaigns to challenge the fossil fuel industry by publishing research, taking legal action against fossil fuel companies, engaging with grassroots organizers, and advocating for policies that would end government subsidies for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in Europe and the United States.
CIEL’s team of litigators files class-action lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. But Tostada tells Food Tank that legal action is only “one tool in the toolbox” for strategies that could contribute to decarbonization and a world without fossil fuels and agrochemicals. CIEL is also working with American organizations on the front lines of fossil fuel company land grabs for pipelines, and pollution from fertilizer runoff. Most recently, CIEL successfully advocated for the Global Framework on Chemicals, guiding the phase-out of hazardous chemicals in agriculture by 2023.
CIEL is also publishing research on the connection between agrochemicals and fossil fuels to raise awareness and drive policy. CCS is a process that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reuse or store in gigantic facilities, pipelines, or the oceans.
“The fertilizer industry would be a major beneficiary for government subsidies for CCS,” Tostado says. For example, the agrochemical company, Yara, is constructing a CCS plant with ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies next to its ammonia plant. CCS offers agrochemical companies the chance to deepen their integration with fossil fuels rather than serving as a decarbonization solution.
To prevent additional subsidies for fossil fuel companies to build and operate CCS plants, Tostado tells Food Tank that CIEL conducts research and outreach. By campaigning with farmers, frontline communities, and international agencies like the United Nations, they are working to raise awareness and build a movement against CCS.
Collaborating with farmers, CIEL promotes natural agroecological practices such as crop rotation, legume cultivation, and the use of beneficial insects, fungi, and organic manure instead of chemical additives. Tostad says “it’s super crucial to always be very context-specific, and not even country-specific, but soil-specific.” CIEL also recommends using green hydrogen and green ammonia sparingly to replace nitrogen-based fertilizers. Green hydrogen and ammonia may be at the forefront of new technologies for renewable energy, but they will not contribute to decreasing nitrogen from the atmosphere, according to CIEL research.
The organization is looking forward to the first International Conference on Petrochemicals and Climate in the United Kingdom in July 2024. The conference aims to bring technology, legal, policy, and economic experts together to discuss and fine-tune technical arguments for what it means to “phase out fossil fuels everywhere,” Tostado tells Food Tank.
CIEL is also planning on power mapping: collaborating with other petrochemical experts to consider who to target in a joint campaign against petrochemicals. They hope to devise an international agreement to hold fossil fuel and petrochemicals accountable for their carbon consumption and pollution, similar to the United Nations’ global plastics resolution.
Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.
Photo courtesy of Kees Streefkerk, Unsplash
