Brussels, 06/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - Governments from across the world, particularly in Europe, are nowhere near meeting the commitments they made on environmental protection and ecosystems by 2020, according to a warning from the NGO Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) and CEEweb for biodiversity. These organisations sounded the alarm on Monday 6 October, just as the UN discussions were beginning in South Korea (Pyeongchang, 6-17 October) on biodiversity (12th meeting of the Biodiversity Framework).
Friedrich Wulf from the FoEE pointed out that “four years ago, governments met in Japan to discuss their failure to meet their 2010 biodiversity goals. Today, the talks look set to be depressingly similar: after four years, there has been little action to suggest that governments are serious about meeting their commitments and responsibilities to nature.”
The mid-term review of the progress accomplished towards achieving the 2020 targets, carried out by the United Nations and published on Monday, recognises the level of inaction and any real progress being made. In its Global Diversity Outlook report, the UN warned that “the current rate of progress will not be sufficient to achieve the targets unless further urgent and effective action is taken to reduce the pressures on biodiversity and to prevent its continued decline”.
A serious problem in Europe. According to the FoEE and CEEweb for biodiversity, the problem is particularly serious in Europe. Its new research shows that in the 20 countries surveyed by the two NGOs: no country has yet banned subsidies that are detrimental to biodiversity, and most are yet to identify them all; funding for protected areas and biodiversity is insufficient across the board, with biodiversity-related expenditure below 0.1% of the budgets of every country other than Norway and Switzerland; Hungary aside, none of the countries assessed have yet finalised their Natura 2000 site designation process - an essential move towards creating conservation areas in the EU; less than 1% of agricultural land is used for sustainable organic farming in eastern non-EU countries, in contrast to Switzerland (12%) and Estonia (15%); despite conservation efforts, the state of habitats has not improved since 2007, with still only 16% having favourable conservation status. They are best off in Romania and Estonia (where 63% and 51% of Natura 2000 habitats have favourable conservation status), and worst off in the UK (7% of habitats in an appropriate conservation status).
The NGOs believe that these disappointing results come at a time when the EU under Jean-Claude Juncker is considering re-writing its nature laws as well as legislating for controversial biodiversity offsetting measures, which could allow the destruction of ecosystems in one place to be offset by increased protections for others elsewhere. Wulf stated that “there are grave concerns that European governments, instead of acting on their commitments to protect and restore nature and ecosystems, are commodifying nature and spending time and money promoting unproven initiatives like biodiversity offsetting. This would deliver a licence to trash - it would be a conservation disaster”. (AN)