Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-06-Speech-3-095"
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"en.20101006.12.3-095"2
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"Madam President, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate.
Many of us did not believe we would see the Berlin Wall come down in our lifetime. Now we take it for granted that the former Soviet-dominated countries are our EU partners. The wall of poverty between north and south can also come down and we can make a world that is better and safer – a place where we can have new partners and an environment safe for us all.
Last week, I chaired Parliament’s delegation to the UN summit on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. For the duration of the summit and at each side event, I was gripped by the enthusiasm of my colleagues, governments, international organisations and the people on the ground who are committed to achieving the ambitious targets set in 2000. Some progress has been made and there is much we can be proud of, but much more needs to be done.
Access to education is rapidly improving. Enrolment in education has reached 76% in Sub-Saharan Africa and 94% in North Africa. Access to drinking water is increasing. By 2015, 86% of those living in the developing world will be able to access clean drinking water – up from 71% in 1990. Targets for accessing drinking water have already been met in four regions – Northern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and South-Eastern Asia. Access to energy is increasing. There is near universal access to electricity in North Africa.
However, although progress has clearly been made, there is so much more that needs to be done. It was put to us by an Assistant Secretary of the United Nations that we really do need ‘a dash to the finish’ over the next five years. One billion children live in poverty, 1.4 million children die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water, and 2.2 million children die each year because they have not been immunised by vaccines that are so easily accessible in the developed world and which we have had for over 30 years.
Goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals is to ensure environmental sustainability. Within this goal, there are several sub-targets. Target 7b is perhaps the most encompassing: ‘reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss’. The indicators of biodiversity include, inter alia, the proportion of land area covered by forest, CO
emissions, the proportion of total water resources used, consumption of ozone depleting substances, and the proportion of fish stocks within safe biological limits. The reduction in biodiversity loss is therefore a key component of the Millennium Development Goals.
Seventy per cent of the world’s poor live in rural areas and depend directly on biodiversity for their survival and well-being. The urban poor also rely on biodiversity for ecosystem services, such as the maintenance of air and water quality and the breakdown of waste. There can be little doubt that biodiversity and climate change will affect the world’s poor first. It will affect countries like Tuvalu in the Polynesian islands – a country that is merely four and a half metres above sea level – and the Maldives, where President Nasheed held an underwater cabinet meeting this year to highlight the fact that by the end of the century, his country could indeed be under water.
I am calling on the Member States and the Commission to give new impetus to the global climate change alliance and its support facility in order to increase developing countries’ capacity-building and knowledge base on the expected impacts of biodiversity loss and to effectively integrate it into development plans and budgets.
I have also highlighted the fact that programmes aimed at the protection of biodiversity and poverty reduction must address the priorities of the poor and put more emphasis on locally-based environmental management, ensure access to biodiversity resources, land reform, and acknowledgement of customary tenure.
By 2050, there will be two billion more people on the face of the earth and 90% of these will be born into what is now the developing world. If we allow abject poverty to continue in those countries, there will be massive migration from south to north and inequality could well be the cause of a world conflagration."@en1
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