Madrid, 24/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - If it implements the measures provided for in the initial phase of the European programme on climate change, the European Union will manage to save between 120 million and 178 million emissions of carbon gases in three years, or fulfil 35% of its undertakings under the Kyoto Protocol. This is what Jaume Matas, Spanish Minister of the Environment, currently chairing the EU Council of Ministers, said in a day of European policies relating to climate change, organised in Madrid on Thursday by environmental NGOs (WWF/Adena, Entorno Foundation) and the German ministry of the environment.
Jaume Matas highlighted the "sustained efforts made by the Presidency for industrialised countries to ratify the protocol" (Ed: procedures are ongoing in the Union for the Community and its Member states to jointly deposit their ratification instruments be 1 June at the Secretariat of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Japan has begun its ratification procedure) and "continue contacts with the United States for concerted efforts in scientific and technical fields". The President also placed emphasis on the benefits to expect from the future directive on the trade in CO2 emission rights in the Union (proposal currently on the table in the Parliament and Council), given that "environmental and climate change considerations play an important role within the market economy".
The presence in Madrid of Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme), who was there to present the third report on the future of the global environment (GEO-3), provided Jaume Matas with the opportunity of having preparatory talks for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 26 August to 4 September). This report, drawn up by over 1,000 experts, scrutinises the policies conducted over thirty years and presents choices for 2032 depending on four possible scenarios (from the disaster scenario "Market first", to the more optimistic scenario "sustainability first") in which it compares the probable effects on man and nature. The growing gravity of disasters caused by the climate (in the 1990s, 90% of victims of these disasters perished due to flooding, storms and drought) - evolution that certain experts link to global warming, predictor of serious meteorological disturbances in the next decades - is one of the marking tendencies singled out by the report. EUROPE will return to this.