In the European Parliament in Brussels, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) outlines its demands for the Biodiversity Convention's COP15, the biodiversity equivalent of the Paris agreement on climate change, taking place in China in 2020. MEPs may propose the agreement to include ambitious legally binding targets, detailed timelines and clear performance indicators. Statements by Pascal CANFIN (FR, Renew Europe), Chair of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safet.

Brussels

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Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

COP 15 (T)

fight against climate change (T)

CANFIN, Pascal (Renew, FR)

COP15 to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) - Kunming (2020): extracts from the vote and statement by Pascal CANFIN (RE, FR), Chair of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/15262520/I181246Chapters%5BSD-EN%5D.srt

ENVI Chair Pascal CANFIN (FR, Renew Europe) announcing vote on the whole resolution

Sign showing the results of the vote: adopted with 60 votes for, none against and 9 abstentions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Pascal CANFIN (RE, FR), ENVI Chair, There are three U.N. conventions on the environment, one for climate, which is the COP in Madrid and in Paris, it was the COP21 where we found the global agreement and climate. There is another convention on desertification and the last one is on biodiversity. And that's this convention on Biodiversity, which where there will be the COP 15 taking place in China next year, in 2020, November 2020. And we what we expect from this column in China next year is to be the equivalent of the Paris agreement for climate change.

SOUNDBITE (English), Pascal CANFIN (RE, FR), ENVI Chair,  In order to find this first global agreement on very diversity. One of the key thing the EP is requesting is for this agreement to be a legally binding agreement, because we see that if it's not legally binding, at the end of the day, it's nice to have, but it does not deliver enough to fight what we are facing not only climate change crisis, but also a huge biodiversity crisis.

SOUNDBITE (English), Pascal CANFIN (RE, FR), ENVI Chair,  Everybody knows that bees are disappearing from Europe, but it's same for birds. We had a figure that 75%, for instance, of insects, that is the feed for birds are disappearing in Germany, in protected areas, in protected areas, imagine that when the particular area is not protected. So we are facing a huge disappearing of nature around us and why we should care about it? Just because if I take this example of bees. Without bees, you cannot pollinise crops and then you don't have yield. And if you do not yield, you do not have food in your plate. So there is a direct connection between what the services nature give freely, freely to us and the fact that we are living in an ecosystem. And if this ecosystem is vanishing, then we will have to pay to replace these free services. And it would be very, very costly.

SOUNDBITE (English), Pascal CANFIN (RE, FR), ENVI Chair,  It's 2.5 times the global GDP on Earth, 2.5 times the wealth we produce as human beings. So if nature vanishes, it's the whole natural capital that would be destroyed. And at the end of the day, it's not only about nature. It's also about economy, about society, about human beings. So that's why we should care much more to biodiversity than we do today.