Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-23-Speech-3-242"
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"en.20080423.21.3-242"2
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"Allow me to thank the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and its Chairman, Mr Ouzký, for his oral question to me, the Council and the Commission. With this question you are placing great importance on the very sensitive problem of biodiversity.
To conclude, more than 20 different topics will be discussed at the meeting. I have only talked about those which the Council considers to be of crucial importance for achieving the targets of the Convention, especially the 2010 biodiversity target. This will be the last meeting before the 2010 deadline, so it will be a cut-off date for the adoption of concrete measures. Because this meeting will take place in Europe, it is of even greater importance for the European Union to promote its priorities and endeavours.
I have also familiarised myself with your proposal for the resolution on which you will be voting in the European Parliament tomorrow. In our opinion the resolution is a good summary of the main priorities and targets to be achieved by the European Union in Bonn.
Together with climate change, biodiversity is the Presidency’s main priority among environmental tasks. The ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 9), which will take place in Bonn in May, is therefore an important event for the European Union in general, as well as for the Slovenian Presidency.
Within the framework of the 18-month programme of the German, Portuguese and Slovenian Presidencies, the Council has made intensive preparations to make this important meeting successful in terms of better protection and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity at the global level. The Council has pointed out that the European Union is committed to fulfilling the global aim within which it intends significantly to slow down the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010. It is also committed to achieving the EU target of stopping the decrease in biodiversity in Europe by 2010. Therefore my answer to your question is: yes, the European Union wants to and must preserve its role as world leader in this field.
The Council has stressed that the European Union strives to take an active and constructive role and that, at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in May, it will strive for far-reaching but realistic outcomes of the meeting. The Council has also stated that, to achieve the global biodiversity target by 2010, it is urgently necessary to persist with further concrete measures at all levels.
We must implement the Convention at national and EU levels. The European Union has made a political commitment to reach all three targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity, that is to say protection and sustainability of use of biodiversity, access to genetic resources, and the sharing of benefits arising from their use.
The decisions defining the European Union’s priority tasks for the ninth Conference of the Parties were first adopted by the Council in June of last year and then again in March of this year. Allow me to list some of the priority tasks. We need to emphasise the importance of accelerated implementation of all the work programmes of the Convention on Biological Diversity and improve the synergy between climate change policies and biodiversity in order to obtain as many common benefits as possible. The Council keeps pointing out the necessity for cohesion at all levels in the implementation of international agreements on the environment.
We must emphasise that it is important for the ninth Conference to discuss the problem of production, trade and use of biofuels and biomass and their effect on biodiversity and on ecosystem services. In this respect it is even more important clearly to determine sustainable criteria for biofuel production. We should stress the importance of implementing the programme for forest biodiversity and reduction of deforestation and degradation of forest ecosystems. The Council underlines the importance of forests in the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change and in the preservation of biodiversity.
We must ensure fast and comprehensive implementation of the work programme for protected regions. Within this framework we must provide technical and financial support – you asked about financing – that is to say financial support to establish protected regions throughout the world. The ninth meeting should adopt ecological criteria to determine marine regions in the open sea that need protection. It is important to emphasise the role of the private sector, especially small and medium-sized companies, in implementing the Convention.
Lastly, the European Union has firmly decided to continue its active involvement in planning and negotiating the international procedure for access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from their use. The European Union will strive to conclude negotiations before the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention."@en1
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