MEPs on the European Parliament’s environment committee expressed concern in Brussels on 30 August about the decline in biodiversity that is currently at its paroxysm, noting yet again that most of the targets set for 2020 for stemming this decline will not be reached.
They are determined to push the EU to make an ambitious contribution to the COP 14 meeting of the parties to the Biodiversity Convention (BC) in Sharm el Sheikh (Egypt, 17-19 November), by putting itself into working order. This is demonstrated by the wording of the oral question they adopted with a request for an oral response, with a view to quizzing the Council of the EU about its intentions.
COP 14 will mostly focus on taking account of biodiversity in mining and extraction, energy, infrastructure, industry and health, and on monitoring the strategic plan for biodiversity 2011-2020. It will also try to lay the basis for a long-term vision and a global framework for biodiversity post-2020. The MEPs therefore see this COP as "primordial".
To this end, the MEPs hope to ask which action the Council of the EU is planning to boost efforts to achieve the objectives of the strategic plan 2011-2020, and whether it is planning to propose a boosting of the implementation mechanism for post-2020 in order to halt loss of biodiversity.
The MEPs also ask whether the Council is planning to support the setting up of new financing instruments for biodiversity and preserving the ecosystem, along with internal and external mechanisms for tracing the financing of biodiversity in order to improve transparency, accountability and effectiveness.
Finally, the MEPs ask whether the Council will propose a strengthening of accountability tools, particularly those of the national action plans and strategies for biodiversity in order to improve governance and facilitate the development, review and implementation of post-2020 objectives and achievement of the 2050 vision.
In China in 2020 a strategic framework for post-2020 global biodiversity is to be adopted (see EUROPE 12049). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)