Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-20-Speech-1-145"
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"en.20100920.20.1-145"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, as we speak, Commissioner Potočnik is in New York for the United Nations discussions on the International Year of Biodiversity, so I am sure you will understand that he is unable to be here in person today.
The Commission is also working on a communication on financing the Natura 2000 network of protected areas. A better use of the available funding will certainly provide higher biodiversity and nature conservation benefits.
We fully agree with the very strong emphasis included in the report on the crucial need to fully implement nature legislation, without which we will never be able to meet our new target.
We look forward to the discussions with the Members of Parliament with a view to working together to shape the package of measures that will allow us to attain our new biodiversity target. I should like to take this opportunity to welcome the very valued contribution to this debate provided by Mrs de Lange’s report.
It therefore falls to me on behalf of the Commission to thank Mrs de Lange for having prepared this very timely report on the protection of biodiversity and the implementation of EU nature legislation. I would like to highlight the word ‘timely’, as the EU is now at a political crossroads concerning its policy on biodiversity and nature protection.
The Commission shares MEPs’ deep concern about the extremely fast pace of human-induced biodiversity loss. The Commission is aware of, and alarmed at, the huge degradation of the ecosystem services which biodiversity provides, and on which we all depend for our survival.
Since the 2010 target was adopted, we in the EU have accomplished a number of things of which we can be proud. The EU’s Natura 2000 network of protected areas has expanded to cover almost 20% of the EU’s territory, and is still expanding both on land and at sea. Despite this, however, we have failed to achieve our previous EU target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010. In spite of this failure, and in spite of difficult discussions on an unprecedented economic crisis in Europe, the Spring European Council endorsed a new biodiversity vision and target.
Our new target reflects a high level of ambition. It calls on the EU to halve the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services by 2020 and restore them, where feasible, while stepping up the EU contribution to averting global biodiversity loss. In his speech on the state of the Union, President Barroso recently declared his commitment to this course, an issue to which he attaches the greatest importance and that needs to be tackled urgently.
We know what the main challenges to meeting the targets have been. One of the key problems is the very nature of biodiversity policy itself. Biodiversity is complex and cross-cutting. Ownership of the problem is widely spread, and this diffusion has been a handicap, because in the end, it boils down to the usual problem that when everyone is guilty, no one is to blame.
This is a time of metamorphosis in the EU and many policies which have a very significant impact on biodiversity are in the process of being reviewed. This is the case of the common agricultural policy, the common fisheries policy and the cohesion policy. We are thus at a very important crossroads, where we can follow the right road by fully mainstreaming biodiversity in those policies and reach our ‘safe way home’, or we can make the mistake of taking another road and never reaching our final point – the agreed 2020 target – and face irreversible biodiversity loss and potentially catastrophic consequences.
Much is said in the resolution about the very worrying trends of biodiversity loss in Europe and globally, the huge pressures exerted on species and ecosystems, the possible solutions, the value of ecosystem services and their very strong links with the Millennium Development Goals and the fight against climate change.
We have an enormous task ahead to preserve life on our planet, but we should not be discouraged by the magnitude of the challenge. The Commission is certainly not discouraged and we will be developing a new EU strategy to deliver on the 2020 biodiversity target."@en1
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