Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-01-Speech-3-071"
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"en.20090401.13.3-071"2
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"Mr President, yes, the Commissioner is right. The Arctic is quite different in many ways from the Antarctic, and it was only a few months ago, on 8 October 2008, that I spoke to this House on this very topic.
The Arctic, as I said then, plays an increasingly important geostrategic role in our world, and over the past decade several critical issues have emerged in this region. We are now faced with the opening of hitherto closed seaways, a direct result of climate change. This comes as no surprise, since the Arctic is warming at a much faster rate, with an increase of two degrees in the last hundred years, compared to an average of just 0.6 degrees in the rest of the world.
This highly vulnerable ecosystem is coming under increasing pressure from resource-hungry nations which wish to exploit its potential without having due regard to its fundamental importance as a stabilising force in the world’s climate.
I agree with Mrs Wallis’s point that a call for a 50-year moratorium on any exploitation is neither practical nor reasonable, but I think a limited moratorium on new exploitation – pending fresh scientific studies – is something all civilised nations could perhaps agree to.
Apart from this, the EU counts amongst its Member States no less than three Arctic nations along with two other EEA neighbours, accounting for more than half the numeric membership of the Arctic Council. This is reason enough for us to be able to assert ourselves, in the best sense of that word, on the global stage on this issue.
The Arctic is critical for global climate, and for this reason alone we must be part of a new style of governance for this beautiful and – as the previous speaker said – one of the last wildernesses of our world."@en1
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