Green groups head chorus for tough action on wildlife

Date: 13/02/1997

By Michael Mann

ENVIRONMENTAL groups are turning up the pressure on the European Commission to ensure that the EU's biodiversity strategy will be strong enough to guarantee the survival of Europe's species and habitats.

'Green' campaigners, led by Birdlife International and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), fear the Union may be about to miss a major opportunity to integrate the environment into all areas of policy.

They are concerned that instead of a firm mechanism to include a commitment to biodiversity in all new pieces of legislation, the Commission will limit itself to a list of areas where it feels EU laws will be affected.

The draft paper currently being prepared by the Commission's environmental unit, fulfilling an obligation made at the 1992 Rio 'earth summit', will be circulated to other departments before the end of the month.

But it is guaranteed a difficult journey as it negotiates its way past various directorates-general, not least DGVI (agriculture), DGXIV (fisheries), DGXVI (regional policy) and DGXVII (energy).

WWF Director Tony Long believes that environmental groups possess vital expertise which the Commission should be tapping in to. “We hoped they might give us a more privileged relationship, but non-governmental organisations are not expected to be brought into the process until after April,” he said.

Meanwhile, some EU governments have already been asked to give their initial reactions to the Commission's preferred approach.

Biodiversity is a term originally coined by the zoologist EO Wilson to summarise the phrase 'biological diversity'. It covers the whole range of living organisms, calling for the maintenance of genetic, species and ecosystem variation.

Work on preparing the Union strategy began after environment ministers asked the Commission in October 1995 to put the undertakings made at Rio into EU law.

At that ground-breaking summit, more than 150 heads of government signed the convention on biological diversity, which called on them to develop strategies and “integrate the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity into relevant plans, programmes and policies”.

While six EU member states already have their own strategies in place and the others are working on them, the Union is also a signatory to the convention.

The extent of the crisis facing a number of species was reflected in the 1995 report by the EU's own European Environment Agency. This concluded that biodiversity in Europe was “under stress from all of the target sectors” and that natural habitats such as hedgerows, open, natural and semi-natural grasslands and wetlands were “specifically under pressure and change continually”.

Birdlife believes 278 bird species alone are currently threatened with extinction because they cannot adapt to the changes going on around them.

“The strategy has to be a strong and binding document, because then it will be easier to enforce,” said Nelly Paleologou, Birdlife's EU policy coordinator .

WWF legal consultant Marta Ballesteros fears the Commission's approach will be too general to prove truly effective. “What we really need is a legislative plan, with a set of concrete measures. The strategy needs to be very precise as to who is responsible for what, and establish dates and budgets for achieving each of the targets,” she said.

WWF believes the document will merely consist of a chapter on nature conservation and one setting out how other policy areas - such as agriculture, fisheries, tourism, research and energy - can improve species protection.

Commission officials are still awaiting a final steer from Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard, but stress that some of the Rio requirements are already written into the much-disputed habitats and birds directives.

The resistance of a number of European governments to these pieces of legislation is an indication of the problems any binding biodiversity strategy will face.

But the Directorate-General for the environment (DGXI) would ideally like to ensure that when new policies are drafted by other departments, the need to preserve biodiversity is one of the priorities taken into consideration.

“Whenever the Commission prepares work plans, it should have biodiversity in mind. It must be one element alongside things like employment,” said an official.

The Commission hopes to present its strategy before the summer.