Every year on 14 October, the international standardization community celebrates World Standards Day. This year’s edition “Our shared vision for a better world” is dedicated to how standards support the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDGs). The 17 SDGs are ambitious objectives stated in 2015 by the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They aim, among other issues, to address social imbalances, develop a sustainable economy, and slow the rate of climate change. To be achieved, the SDGs require the cooperation of many public and private partners, and the use of all available tools. In this context, standards, and standardization organizations such as CEN and CENELEC, have an important role to play. Voluntary, consensus-based standards can provide valuable solutions to complex, global challenges.

The Commission adopted a Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles, setting out how to increase removals of carbon from the atmosphere. To balance out the impacts of our CO2 emissions, the EU will need to drastically reduce its reliance on fossil carbon, upscale carbon farming to store more carbon in nature, and promote industrial solutions to sustainably and verifiably remove and recycle carbon. Removing and storing more carbon, from the atmosphere, oceans, and coastal wetlands, is essential to achieve the EU's legally binding commitment to become climate neutral by 2050. The Communication sets out short- to medium-term actions to support carbon farming and upscale this green business model to better reward land managers for carbon sequestration and biodiversity protection. By 2030, carbon farming initiatives should contribute 42Mt of CO2 storage to Europe's carbon sinks.