Labour to make full use of 2005 EU presidency
Britain is to take the lead in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions and implementing sustainable development polices, a minister said yesterday
Environment Minister Margaret Beckett, speaking at the Environment 2003 meeting in west London,
said the UK’s presidency of the EU and the G8 in 2005 was a “unique opportunity” to make big environmental changes.
She argued failure to curb global warming emissions would mean that 90 million more people, mostly in developing countries, would be affected by flooding alone every year by the end of this century.
Britain would continue to press Russia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, she pledged.
Russia must affirm the protocol for it to come into effect as the US has declined to ratify the pact.
Mrs Beckett said: “Sustainable development is essential to long term peace and security. The idea that a rich world and a poor world can co-exist without dramatic implications is untenable.
“We must with equal vigour address the underlying causes of conflict and instability — poverty and environmental degradation.”
Mrs Beckett outlined the stark reality facing world leaders: “Over a billion people currently lack safe drinking water; almost 2.5 billion lack sanitation; more than two billion lack access to modern energy services, and that causes much illness and death to women, particularly in the developing word.
“The 1990’s saw the loss of around 16 million hectares of forest – two-thirds the area of the UK annually! We’ve lost around 30% of our coral reefs, and will lose another 30% in the next 30 years if we don’t take urgent action. So we need to do far more if we are to meet these challenges and to make development sustainable.”
Concurring with the head of the World Bank, she said coexistence between a “rich” world and a poor “one” given the problems of poverty and starvation was simply untenable.
“We must with equal vigour address the underlying causes of conflict and instability – poverty and environmental degradation,” she said.
