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Thursday, 10 April 2008 - Brussels OJ edition

The Green Paper on 'Adapting to climate change in Europe - options for EU action' (debate)
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  Vittorio Prodi, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, this debate is the first outcome of the Temporary Committee on Climate Change, which we wished to set up in order to have a forum for the development of an effective policy ensuring a close link between adaptation and mitigation.

We are talking here specifically about adaptation, but we should not in fact forget the need to ensure that the resources for adaptation derive partly from the emissions trading system. Since it is the poorest countries that bear the greatest burden of climate change, we must see to it that the proceeds from the emissions trading system are placed first and foremost at the disposal of developing countries. I believe we can do so by applying a principle of general equity, namely by handing out free rights of emission, to be established essentially on the basis of an equity principle: ‘one person, one right of emission’.

If we think of the one and a half billion poor people in the world and the figures now quoted in the current Kyoto Protocol – approximately €20 per tonne – the granting of a right of emission amounting, for example, to one tonne could make €30 billion per year available to the world's poor for mitigation measures. Just think, this might be what is needed by Bangladesh to implement minimal mitigation measures. Certain African states are already thinking along these lines, and this principle of equity also indicates that we, the countries primarily responsible for the phenomenon, are shouldering our responsibility for carrying mitigation forward.

Furthermore, climate change in our own countries means more intense rainfall, longer dry spells and less snowfall. We must therefore practise integrated land management to protect the soil, and here I would emphasise the importance of what Mr Sacconi said, because in circumstances of widespread water shortages, rain must be kept where it falls so that it can water the lower slopes. In addition, longer dry spells increase the likelihood of fires, which we can address by thinning out woodland to minimise the fire load. However, we must act on all fronts at once in a consistent and determined fashion.

 
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