Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-07-05-Speech-4-057-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20120705.8.4-057-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I would like to thank Members for all their interventions. I will not tire you with an assessment of how serious the situation is and so on, because I have said that in this Chamber many times. I also share with many of you the frustration sometimes of not having enough energy and determination to move things forward. To some extent, this reflects the reality not only of the conference which we attended but also of many of the decisions we are taking in our daily lives.
So the role of business was honestly quite impressive, as was the role of civil society there. I have never seen such power in one place and, believe me, if they invested the money which they invested to be there, they knew why they were investing it. This is an important message from their side also and we should acknowledge that instead of criticising their presence.
Working with civil society is, for me, something on which I absolutely have to concentrate in the future. Rio was different from Nagoya, it was different from Durban, it was much broader, and it was different from Rio+20. I would not go as far as saying that Rio+20 was a step backwards. I think that is not a fair assessment. It is a step in the right direction, especially because at Rio 92, the top-down and bottom-up diverged, they went in two different directions. At Rio 2012, actually for the first time, they went together, but we have to work on the top-down, on the political part, where we did not reach as far as we would have wanted to reach.
On the means of implementation, at all those conferences, as you know – like it or not – there is a bit of a divide between developed countries and developing countries. Often, developing countries expect more of the carrot and more of the direct development aid. I think again that we should be quite proud of what Europe has done there. We have again committed to 0.7%. I would not like to remind you that we are currently on 0.41% of GDP. The figure of 0.7% by 2005 is a serious additional amount of money because 0.41% is approximately EUR 53 billion. I will leave you to do the calculations, but this was the commitment which was made by all European countries, and I think it is important that we keep that commitment alive.
On the other hand, with the means of implementation, we have to be clear that there is no public money which could turn countries, including ourselves, from the current economic model to a green economic model. So you need private financing as well as public financing at home. For example, not supporting the paragraph on removing environmentally harmful subsidies, which we were very much pushing for, and requesting more official development aid, does not really make sense. It is not consistent.
So, all incentives which you send into the systems need to be consistent. That is why I think we should insist on the broader picture regarding the means of implementation. On UNEP, I can promise you that we will continue working with Africa and ACP countries. Quite a strong power actually emerged and we believe that this is the way in which we should continue. However, in Rio, it was simply impossible to reach that, because there were such clear statements from some strong partners in negotiations that they were not ready to support that in Rio, and that it was impossible to go that far.
In conclusion, what should we do? I think we should simply continue work in the European Union. We should simply try to identify our partners, use all possible institutions, hooks, conventions and continue our work. Basically, without everybody on board, there will be no green economy. The green economy, by definition, is about economic stakeholders and the business sector. Without them on board, we will not change the reality from the top down. We have to work with them and we have to use the positive powers which evolved there.
I think we are basically talking about the very essence of the question of changing the production and consumption models. This is absolutely something where you need bottom-up and top-down approaches and where you need practically everybody on board.
So, as I have mentioned already to some friends who were in Rio, I came from Rio not with any kind of bad conscience but, yes, with some bad feelings. In order to conquer those feelings, I think the only way is to work hard in the European Union to deliver what we have committed ourselves to many times. To be honest, I have seen recent opinion polls showing where our public is placing its attention. Even pushing the agenda which we are all subscribed to will not be easy, but we should basically sometimes ‘walk the talk’ ourselves. I think that is the most we can do at the present time.
Basically, we should share the responsibility with the rest of the world and build trust. I really feel that this is necessary because, at these big conferences, the real question is always the lack of trust. We should work on that. Even if we have the feeling that we are not reaching as far as we should and that the urgency of the situation is much more pressing than anybody thinks, we should continue working with the rest of the world. We should do so because many of those questions simply have no proper answer if we do not get everybody on board.
As I said at the beginning, I do not think that the destiny of the success of Rio has yet been defined but, if we create a strong partnership with your help, I think we can make it better.
What I would like to touch on first, which many of you have commented on, is the process itself. The process did not start in Rio; I could say it did not even finish there. It started a year ago, in New York, negotiations were long and tiring, and there were many sessions, so basically what happened in Rio was the final stage when the host country, Brazil, took the process into its hands. The way they handled it is, of course, their decision and it is true, as some have said, that it was decided before the majority of the Ministers, especially the leaders of the countries, arrived.
That does not make it true that it was the technical experts who decided. That is not true, because they were the ones who were consulting their capitals at every turn, but it is true that some of the work we had invested in preparing good strong partnerships prior to the meeting could not materialise at the meeting because there was simply no chance for us to meet with many of the delegations.
Whether we played our cards well or not, as you said, Mr Eickhout, is something I shall have to review some time over the summer, but it is true that when we have to be critical of ourselves, we always lose too much time in defining our own positions and do not have enough time to share those positions with our partners. That has been a weak link in the European Union approach at all the conferences which I have attended. I personally believe that what we reached in Rio was as far as one could go and that we have to understand that not everybody thinks the way we do in the European Union, that they have different interests, different views on development.
I can tell you that when I visited Brazil, for example, a few months before the conference, the discussion I had about the concept of the green economy, which is pretty well understood here, is far from a concept which everybody would stand behind. I think acknowledging that concept in the paper, in as black-and-white a form as it appears today, was quite a major achievement – provided, of course, that the next steps, which should follow, ultimately materialise.
Some of you mentioned that the leaders – or some of them – were not present. Quite a lot actually were present. I would just like to remind you that the presence of leaders does not guarantee success. They were in Copenhagen as you know, while not many of them were in Nagoya or in Durban, where we achieved quite a lot. I think their presence gives an important political message, but, on the other hand, it would not have guaranteed that the document would be more ambitious or would go further than the one which has emerged from the negotiations now.
It was mentioned by Mr Gerbrandy that the EU was isolated. It is really an interesting thing to look at the international stage and see that we, who are in the deepest crisis economically and financially, are basically the leaders in the field when it comes to sustainability. That is a fact, and I think it is a fact of which we should be proud, but I would say that we were not as isolated as it looks if you only look at the outcome of the document.
There are many countries with whom we had spoken before and with whom we are still in contact, who pretty much share our views and objectives. I think it would be really important, after Rio, for us to continue working with them, to deepen our relations, to find the friends, the partnerships which are absolutely necessary if we want to push forward some of the agendas to which we have subscribed here in the document agreed in Rio.
One thing which I find is really a major breakthrough in the philosophy is the concept of green economics. In many of what I would regard as solid analyses after Rio, this is seen as probably the most major breakthrough and way ahead. Green capital accounting, corporate sustainability reporting beyond GDP: if we focus on that and if we get a solid background on which we can build political decisions, then we can really move things forward. You do not take into account what you do not measure is an absolute fact in politics. I think it is important that we start to focus more on the basics of the green economy, on the fact that we should take natural capital into consideration."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples