On Thursday 2 May, 317 civil society organisations, including WWF Europe and Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, urged Europe’s leaders in an open letter to make a firm commitment to a carbon-neutral, pollution-free economy that benefits nature.
In the run-up to the European elections, the signatories are calling for the ‘European Green Deal’ to be stepped up and accelerated.
They are also calling for a radical increase in public investment in the climate, environment and social fields, as well as a strengthening of EU governance and democracy with the effective participation of civil society.
These calls come at a time when, despite the fact that the EU accounts for just 7% of the world’s population, its ecological footprint would require three planets if everyone lived like Europeans. According to the data put forward by these NGOs and based on calculations by the Global Footprint Network (https://aeur.eu/f/c28 ), if European consumption patterns were adopted worldwide, the planet’s natural resources would be exhausted by 3 May each year, which would be the ‘Overshoot Day’.
The letter: https://aeur.eu/f/c27 (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)