EU Biodiversity Action Plan

Stavros Dimas, Member of the European Commission, responsible for environment, convened on 11th of February 2009 a conference in the European Parliament on the nature protection and biodiversity issues. The main questions were: would the EU meet its 2010 nature protection targets, and what more actions were needed?” Biodiversity is one of the EU political priorities; MEPs are key partners in the process of developing and shaping nature protection policy and the Commission-EP cooperation gives a good chance to focus political attention on the critical issues. The BC publishes an abridged version of the Commissioner’s speech.

Nature protection and biodiversity are not yet on the top of political agendas in the same way that climate change is, mentioned the Commissioner, but there can be no other political issue that is more important or more fundamental as it concerns quite literally, the future of life on Earth. However, one of the main reasons the EU takes measures to combat climate change is because of the threat it poses to ecosystems and species. Protecting biodiversity needs to be given the same political attention as combating climate change.



The Commissioner compared the recent assessment of the EU’s Biodiversity Action Plan to a school report card, which would presently depict that “good efforts over recent years have been made but it must be done considerably better”.

Sursa