Finns demand green overhaul to save planet

Finland will ask the European Union to overhaul the way it thinks about protecting the environment at an informal meeting this month (14-16 July).

The current approach is too short-term and Europe-focused, according to the Finnish EU presidency. The informal Environment Council will ask ministers to discuss the importance of planning long-term international green policies.

"Globalisation results in global environmental problems, which can only be addressed through more global environmental policies, through which the same rules are applied to everyone around the world," says a statement issued ahead of the meeting.

"Environmental issues must be duly integrated into the EU foreign, trade and development co-operation policies," it explains.

Ministers at the meeting in Turku, in southern Finland, will be asked to debate their long-term priorities for the environment, never forgetting the importance of the wider, non-EU horizon.

Taina Nikula of the Finnish environment ministry said it was difficult to know yet what this "new generation of environmental policy" would look like. "The main idea is to start this discussion now at a high level," said Nikula.

Finland is confident that the time is right for a new type of environmentalism. "We know we are not alone on this," she said. "We have already had informal meetings with other member states."

Several recent political developments in Europe illustrate the need for a 'one planet policy' for the environment, according to Nikula.

The UN's millennium assessment report last year sounded alarm bells over the speed at which the world is gobbling up its natural resources. The report has also prompted calls for a global environment organisation, with more power and a higher profile than the UN Environment Programme, to co-ordinate global green policies.

Finland supports this idea, as well as that of an international resource panel to provide the necessary statistics and forecasts to back up green political decisions. A global network of protected areas should also be established, according to Helsinki, perhaps along the lines of the EU Natura network of nature sites.

In the EU, seven thematic strategies are currently being debated in a bid to streamline EU environmental thinking in areas ranging from air pollution to resource use. The strategies were sketched out in the EU's overarching sixth environmental action programme (6EAP), which is itself up for review under the Finnish presidency.

Finland will also at the informal council back the European Commission line that environmental innovation could offer Europe a competitive advantage and create new jobs.

Other wide-ranging ideas up for debate at the meeting, with Finland's blessing, include using energy taxes and environment taxation to encourage greener behaviour.

According to Nikula, Finland hopes that the Turku meeting will encourage governments to have 'new generation' ideas in mind throughout the Finnish presidency and beyond. Germany is already being asked to think of ways to continue the debate when it takes over the presidency in January 2007.

Finland will ask the European Union to overhaul the way it thinks about protecting the environment at an informal meeting this month (14-16 July).