Green Week: Commissioner Stavros Dimas

As Green Week begins, Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas outlines the goals, events and issues of this year's events.

"Get to grips with climate change is our slogan, and our goal, for the 2005 edition of Green Week, the European Commission’s flagship annual programme of environmental events which takes place in Brussels from today until Friday June 3 in the lead-up to World Environment Day on June 5 .

The slogan could not be more apt: tackling climate change is not only what the EU is working hard to do, but what we and the rest of the world must do.

It is timely and right that our biggest environmental event should this year be focused entirely on the biggest environmental challenge we face - indeed, one of the gravest threats to our economies, and, in time, our livelihoods.

The evidence is mounting that climate change is already happening as a result of the greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

Over the past 100 years the average surface temperature has increased by more than 0.6°C worldwide, by almost 1°C in Europe and by no less than 5°C in the Arctic.

Sea levels are rising, glaciers are melting and extreme weather events, such as storms, floods and droughts, are becoming more common – and more costly to our economies.

 Insurers say natural catastrophes related to severe weather are almost three times more numerous now than in the 1960s. Getting to grips with climate change is thus an essential investment in our future physical and economic well-being.

Climate change is the natural theme for Green Week 2005 also because this is such an important and busy year in the fight against global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol finally came into force in February. A month earlier we launched our ground-breaking EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which we expect will make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industry.

The debate about the future climate change regime is also starting.

At the end of November we have the next annual climate change conference, including the first meeting of parties to the Kyoto Protocol, where we are very keen to get down to serious discussions with our partners on what needs to be done after 2012, when the Kyoto targets are due to have been met.

These current developments and future challenges provide the focus for Green Week’s programme of 20 conferences, workshops and talks, which will bring together key players and stakeholders from Europe and around the world.

The aim is not only to look at climate change from these and other angles but to try to move towards solutions. I am particularly pleased that several MEPs have found time to speak at some of these events.

The Kyoto Protocol is a crucial initial step in that it commits the industrialised countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases for the first time.

It puts us on the path towards the low-carbon economy of the future – itself the subject of one of our Green Week sessions – thereby creating enormous potential for innovation by the scientific and business communities over the coming years and decades.

By taking advantage of these opportunities Europe will enhance its competitiveness, helping us to reach the goals of the relaunched Lisbon Strategy for strengthening economic growth and creating more jobs.

But Kyoto can only be the start of global efforts to reduce emissions, and the Green Week programme reflects the fact that most of the work still lies ahead of us.

The world’s climate experts project a further temperature increase of between 1.4°C and a staggering 5.8°C by the end of this century.

Even the lower of these figures would represent the fastest warming since the last Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago.

The challenge facing the international community is to bring worldwide emissions down to a level at which dangerous human interference with the global climate system can be prevented.

The European Council in March agreed that this means limiting the increase in the global average surface temperature to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

This will require further determined action to cut global emissions after 2012.

In February, just before Kyoto came into effect, the Commission set out what we see as the basic elements for a post-2012 climate regime.

These ideas have been welcomed by the European Council and I know we can also count on the European Parliament’s support.

 Green Week provides a further important opportunity to air these ideas and garner feedback from a wide range of interests.

First, we believe there must be the broadest possible participation in this future effort. All industrialised countries, including the US and Australia, need to be on board, but so too do the economically more advanced developing nations whose emissions are rising fast.

These issues are likely to inform much of the discussion during Green Week, and one particular session will bring together politicians from Europe and the US to look at current political ambitions on each side of the Atlantic.

Second, future climate policies need to control emissions from a broader range of sectors, including aviation, maritime transport and forestry.

How to tackle aviation emissions most effectively will be the subject of a full-day Green Week conference.

Third, we need a determined push to spread the many climate-friendly technologies that already exist, such as hybrid vehicles, wind power, energy efficient appliances and better insulation.

We also need to continue developing innovative new technologies which we are going to need three or four decades from now.

Several Green Week sessions will look at these issues, including a conference on road transport technologies in which my colleague Jacques Barrot, Commissioner for Transport, will be taking part.

Fourth, emissions trading and the other market mechanisms set up under the Kyoto Protocol should remain part of any future climate regime.

They are essential for limiting the costs of action. Evaluating our own Emissions Trading Scheme after six months with a view to how it might be developed in the future will be the focus of a full-day conference.

The Green Week programme will also look at a range of other aspects of climate change, from how broadcasters cover the climate change ‘story’ to how far nature will be able to adapt to rising temperatures, and from boosting renewable energy sources to creating effective teaching aids on climate change for children.

Children will take centre-stage when we award the prizes for the best drawings, paintings and video films on climate change that have been entered in our Green Week schools competition.

With Green Week attracting some 4,000 participants, we have always attached great importance to minimising the event’s own environmental impacts.

I am pleased to say that we will be going a step further this year. We want to make Green Week ‘climate neutral’ so that it does not exacerbate the very problem at the centre of our discussions.

By investing in suitable projects, for example renewable energy schemes, we intend to neutralise or ‘offset’ the emissions generated by Green Week itself – for instance, from heating, cooling, lighting, food and travel by speakers and other invited guests.

We are also inviting all other participants to offset their own emissions voluntarily. Various ways of doing this will be on offer at Green Week by companies and associations active in carbon offsets.

In this way, we aim to make Green Week truly green.

I hope many of you will be able to attend what promises to be a very stimulating and constructive event that will help shape our own thinking for the future, and I look forward to welcoming you there."

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