Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-28-Speech-3-376-000"
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"Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, Professor Kraszewski, Ms Hedegaard, Mr Potočnik, ladies and gentlemen, the European Parliament very much welcomes the fact that the United Nations is holding the Rio+20 conference. We are submitting a resolution to the European Parliament which has been sponsored by Members from a number of different political groups, in other words, it has broad support in this House, and which states that this Earth summit next year in Brazil must be a success.
I would like to say in conclusion that sustainability requires commitment from the local level through to the global level. Civil society is a very important resource. People must take part and we must involve them. The state has a job to do, but the private sector also has responsibilities. We must ensure that the private sector does more to make use of its knowledge and expertise in the service of sustainability. At a global level, we simply need better governance, a better structure, in order to organise these environmental and sustainable trends. In Rio we will be discussing whether the United Nations environment programme (UNEP) is adequate in its current form. The answer is clear: it is not. We need better structures at a global level. We in Parliament are hoping that the EU will speak with one voice. We will have a delegation in Durban and we will help to ensure that Europe sets itself a genuine target and plays a pioneering role. We need an agenda 2020 for sustainable development on this planet.
If we look back 20 years to the first Rio conference in 1992, there was a huge amount of commitment and hope that we would be able to reverse the trend in our economic activities on this planet. When we consider what has happened over the last 20 years, there has certainly been a lot of commitment. Some things have been achieved, but the trends and the megatrends are still going in the wrong direction.
If we look at the economy, and we discussed it at length this morning, we can see that a financial economy has developed alongside the real economy, which is far more powerful than the traditional economy. The speculation in the financial economy is threatening the real economy and also jeopardising whole countries and regions and many, many people.
If we look at developments in the social sector over the last 20 years, there is incredible wealth and unfortunately also incredible poverty. The divide between rich and poor is getting wider. If we move on to the environment, it is clear that our environmental footprint on this planet is still a negative one. Over the last 20 years we have cleared huge areas of forest. We have overfished the seas. We have used up energy resources which took millions of years to form. We have damaged the soil. These are warning signs for the 21st century which indicate to us that we cannot go on like this. There must be a change of direction. We really need to make a renewed attempt to introduce sustainable development.
We need a new departure next year in Rio. We need a new political will and a new sense of commitment. We also need an agenda with concrete proposals. It is clear that the three pillars – the economy, the environment and social development – must be better integrated. Economic activities are a good thing, but the economy must serve people and the environment. An economy which destroys people and the environment is not a good economy. We must redefine our economic activities in this broader context. Parliament has made a number of proposals about what is needed: the creation of the right basic conditions, regulation, but also marketable instruments, which will help the economies in our countries to bring in private capital, and the management of natural capital in order to prevent it from being overused and to intervene when ecosystems are exploited.
The balance sheet for our activities is the gross domestic product or GDP. We know that GDP is no longer adequate, because it does not tell the whole truth about our activities from an environmental and social perspective. This is why we believe that the leitmotif for the next few years, for the next decade, must be a sustainable economy, a low-carbon, resource-efficient economy.
We know that people all over the world do not have fair access to resources. We see large estates being bought up and in many countries, including in Africa, there is the risk that people will no longer be able to cultivate their own food as a result of land theft. This is a phenomenon which we need to devote our attention to.
It is clear that many people do not have access to energy. Around 2 billion people have no proper, regular energy supply, which is a huge disadvantage in terms of development. Access to water is by no means evenly distributed all over the world. I only want to mention these three issues. However, there are other obstacles which prevent people from accessing resources easily because they are poor, underprivileged or have other problems.
To make sustainable development possible, we need to shift the burden of taxes paid by the citizens of our countries. Currently the major part of the tax burden relates to the work which is done and it is clear that this tax burden must be reduced and shifted from work to the consumption of natural resources and energy. This is an important subject for which we also need the support of the finance ministers and ministers of economic affairs in the Member States."@en1
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