EU Green Week: Raising the stakes

Green Week’s focus on biodiversity is welcomed, but further political action is urgently needed, argues the MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz.

Biodiversity in all its possible guises is this year’s theme for the European commission’s annual Green Week event.

Starting on May 29 and ending on June 2, Green Week’s purpose is to point out the importance of biodiversity and everything that goes along with it.

Through various events, speeches, conferences and a competition for pupils from member states, the EU is looking to improve peoples’ awareness of this topic.

Biodiversity can be defined as the diversity of life in all its forms - the diversity of species, of genetic variations between species, and of ecosystems.

It constitutes the fabric of life and is the very foundation of human health, quality of life and prosperity.

The provision of ecosystem services, such as food production, water purification, nutrient circulation and climate regulation could not be possible without the protection of biodiversity.

If we want to ensure that these services will be available to this generation as well as to future generations, we have to make sure that biodiversity continues to exist in all its variety.

However while using these services, humanity has had an enormous impact on biodiversity and is putting ecosystems under severe stress.

Once biodiversity has been damaged, it is often impossible to reverse any detrimental effects, as life forms within a habitat mutually depend on each other.

Every action has its impact and while we cannot reverse the mistakes made in the past, we can consider the protection of biodiversity in everything we intend to do in the future.

Biodiversity loss has gained a high political profile both globally, nationally and at regional level.

The EU has been legislating on biodiversity since the 1970s with major steps taken in 1993 when the EU ratified the UN convention on biological diversity.

This is the world’s largest global agreement on protecting biodiversity and addresses the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources.

To date, it has been signed by 188 parties. While at global level, the target is “to achieve a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss”, the one addressed at EU and pan-European level, is even more ambitious, namely to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010.

Although, the EU has taken a number of important steps toward its 2010 target, there is still much more to be done.

The European parliament is the major force in pushing forward biodiversity protection, as it is also of major concern to Europe’s citizens.

The parliament welcomes the steps taken by the commission, but is also pressing for further action to be taken.

 The parliament has welcomed the commission’s biodiversity action plans as a positive first step but proposes that further steps to be taken.

MEPs consider the recent measures as insufficient and are of the opinion that they should be completed through reforming the common agricultural policy, common fisheries policy and structural funds regulations and by developing additional action plans for other key sectors such as forests.

Furthermore, we request the integration of the 57 international conventions dealing with sustainable development and insist on the creation of specific indicators in order to measure progress on biodiversity.

Another instrument to halt the decline of biodiversity is the Natura 2000 project. This is the major tool regarding the protection of biodiversity in the EU.

Here, the parliament voted in favour of setting up funds to co-finance this network and welcomes the commission’s strategic approach. MEPs recognise the need to push its implementation forward.

In calculating the network’s annual costs we must take into consideration the full costs of managing the network and the costs associated with the accession of 10 new member states.

These steps need to be taken to make the Natura 2000 network even more effective.

Additionally, the parliament believes that a dedicated biodiversity objective has to be included into the LIFE+ programme in order to fund Natura 2000 network activities that cannot be financed through the structural funds.

All in all, the EU already puts a lot of effort into meeting its goal of halting biodiversity loss, but there is still much more potential available.

If all the necessary steps are taken, it should be possible to meet this goal. Green Week is a significant step in raising the profile of biodiversity in everyone’s mind.

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