Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-28-Speech-3-377-000"
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"en.20110928.23.3-377-000"2
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"Mr President, Ms Hedegaard, Mr Potočnik, honourable Members, it is indeed the case that at the present time achieving sustainable development is probably the most important role of environment protection. Twenty years have now passed, and we are on the eve of an important conference, which on the 20th anniversary of the first one is going to try, firstly, to do a stocktake of everything which has been done in the field of sustainable development. Secondly, it is going to try to map out new courses of action so that this development can be achieved.
I am sure that all of you – and also very many people who are interested in matters relating to environment protection – are asking yourselves the same question which I heard in Mr Leinen’s speech: have we done everything possible to be able to say that sustainable development is on the right road? I do not have a very good opinion about this. I think that although we have made certain important advances, we have not done what we should have done. This therefore is why I think the Council has a very important task, so that here, too, the European Union will be a leader – just as it is in other fields – and so that an ambitious plan and ambitious conclusions will be drafted for this important conference next year.
The subjects of the conference are the green economy and institutional changes, which are also very much needed. This does not exhaust, of course, the question of sustainable development, but the green economy is something which – if I may repeat what Mr Leinen said – is an absolute necessity. How many examples do we still have, even in developed countries, of linear economies which operate on the principle of take, make, sell, use and dispose? This has to stop. The earth cannot afford to squander resources in this way. This is a very important factor. It is a factor which is not only to do with technology, but is about educating a new kind of consumer. A consumer who will know the importance of resources, who will know the importance of what the earth gives him, and who will know how to use those resources in such a way, firstly, as to conserve energy and raw materials, and secondly, he will know he should recycle what he uses. The conclusions we are working on now are about all of these matters.
I would like to thank Parliament very sincerely for giving thought to this matter and for adopting its own document, one which lends us support in our work. This is important for us, because thanks to this our document will be better.
The question of institutional changes is equally important, because we think that the current UN institution – the United Nations Environment Programme – is not enough in view of the challenges being faced by the modern world. We support the establishment of a specialised UN agency which will have a mandate which has been fully discussed and which will be able to work efficiently towards achieving, among other things, the priority objective of sustainable development. This is very important.
This does not mean we have not considered the social agenda, which is the third pillar of sustainable development. The conference, which will take place next year in Rio, will give time to the fight against poverty. This is extremely important, because the social dimension should on the one hand work against excessive consumerism and the type of economy which is happier the more humanity consumes, but which on the other hand should also care for those among us – the people of this planet – who very often do not have basic living conditions. Therefore, this other aspect of this work, which will also be discussed at the conference, is very important.
Honourable Members, the things which I have discussed here in brief will be contained in the conclusions we are working on now. We are working on them at the moment, and this includes questions of finance. I have to say that the Polish Presidency has made these questions one of its priorities, and in two weeks we will be holding a Rio+20 conference in Poland, which will consider these very matters and where we will discuss these questions.
Once again I would like to thank you very sincerely for inviting me to this important sitting. In coming here I am fulfilling, in a measure, the promise I made during the hearing before the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, that I would try to talk often with Parliament and with Members of Parliament. We have not finished yet, so I hope there will also be other opportunities for this. Thank you very much."@en1
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