Debate: Consequences of drought, fire, and other extreme weather phenomena: increasing EU's efforts to fight climate change
Date: TUESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2022
Speaker: Virginijus Sinkevičius
Language: EN

The terrible events we have experienced this summer in Europe and worldwide are yet another wake-up call. Natural question: how many of those wake-up calls do we still need? Many of you call today for clear political will, and I couldn’t agree more that it’s high time to prove our political will – our political will to properly implement European legislation that is in place to make our nature more resilient and slow down climate change, but also political will to further step up efforts and show more ambition. Because what the extreme weather events over the last year showed is that climate change and loss of biodiversity are progressing faster and faster. The reply cannot be a lowering of our ambition, but more commitment to increase it.  Some of you were asking whether we are late. Yes, we are. But hopefully not too late if we now urgently speed up and step up, better prepare for and address the climate crisis – and let us be clear, every single region in Europe will be affected by the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss, even those which so far thought they were more or less safe.  To those who mentioned agriculture today and the need to support our farmers, let me be very clear. Our greener CAP, our biodiversity strategy, our ‘farm to fork’ strategy, they are our straightjacket for our farmers. They are our plan to make them more resilient – more resilient against biodiversity loss, against climate change, including of course natural disasters and their consequences that they are already facing.  Our policy is an insurance policy for the future, for all the sectors, so much dependent on healthy nature. Without a healthy, resilient nature, there will be no food security. This is also what we will discuss with the Czech Presidency at the next Environment Council, when we will prepare our two key international meetings this year: COP27 for climate and COP15 on biodiversity. Sharm el-Sheikh and Montreal will be key opportunities to get the world on-board and to show commitment also at international level and to promote what is a truly smart solution. I am talking here, of course, about nature-based solutions, protecting and restoring wetlands, peatlands, coastal and marine ecosystems, developing urban green spaces and installing green roofs and walls, or promoting sustainably—managed forests and farmland. These smart solutions help mitigate climate change at the same time as reversing biodiversity loss. They all contribute, for example, to better regulate temperatures, to absorb flood overflows and to attenuate the effects of extreme droughts.  It is the EU’s commitment, if a disaster strikes, to respond and to deliver assistance in the spirit of solidarity, both domestically and abroad. Let me join all of those who have paid tribute today to firefighters and all of those who helped and did everything they could to lower the suffering.  But it’s also the EU’s commitment to avoid disaster, to hit hard in the first place and to protect society against suffering and damage. We have the strategic framework and the tools at our disposal. Climate adaptation policy is already mainstreamed in a number of areas. Prevention requires more political attention that it has been given so far. Our legal deadline is to get ahead of climate change, and for this we need to act on science more than ever. We need a more coordinated effort, targeted funding for good adaptation solutions, rigorous and fast implementation at all levels, not only after a summer like this one, but on a continuous basis every day.