The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted on Wednesday 26 April a Recommendation calling on member states to support Turkey and Syria after the earthquakes that hit them, but also, more broadly, to put in place better state preparedness for extreme events.
“The number of natural disasters will increase”, Belgian environmentalist Simon Moutquin, who is in charge of the report, toldAgence Europe.
“They will be more intense, more frequent, more devastating and will affect the most vulnerable first”.
Faced with this reality, he continued, we are calling for national strategies covering preparedness (e.g. education in fire, flood and heatwave protection), response (which should be shared between national and decentralised levels of government) and reconstruction (led by ‘forums’ bringing together authorities, experts and NGOs).
All of this, the Recommendation states, by putting in place renewed measures to eradicate corruption and bad governance.
“This text obviously refers to the right to a healthy and sustainable environment, which we are asking to be included in the agenda of the Council of Europe summit, scheduled for 16 and 17 May in Reykjavik”, said Simon Moutquin.
According to him, “a decision must be taken on a binding instrument, such as an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and/or the European Social Charter, which raises the question of the financing of the Court and the Council of Europe in view of the complexity of the issues to be dealt with and the risk of congestion due to a large number of applications. Making the best use of existing instruments such as the Council of Europe Landscape Convention or the European and Mediterranean Major Hazards Agreement (EUR-OPA) would already be a step forward”, concluded the MEP.
Link to the Recommendation: https://aeur.eu/f/6l0 (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)