30 Mar 2006 - Curitiba, Brazil
– While recognizing that the European Union has
played a positive role on various issues discussed
at the Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention
on Biological Diversity (CBD COP8), WWF believes
the EU delegation needs to urgently revise some
of its positions on some other key issues if it
wants to make this conference successful.
In particular, WWF urges the EU
to give up its resistance to addressing perverse
subsidies under the CBD’s Programme of Work on Protected
Areas.
“The EU must agree to remove perverse
subsidies and redirect them to support protected
areas,” said Gordon Shepherd, head of WWF’s CBD
COP8 delegation.
Following a meeting between non-governmental
organizations, including WWF, and the EU Commissioner
for Environment, Stavros Dimas, the global conservation
organization also calls upon the EU to support a
protected areas work programme that incorporates
an immediate and unequivocal ban on bottom trawling
in high sea areas beyond the limits of regional
fisheries management organizations and to refrain
from including any language pushed by some EU member
states to assess a ban on a case by case basis.
This would be in line with the European Council
decision of March 2006 and with the statements made
by Commissioner Dimas.
WWF also urges the EU to conform
to the statements made by Commissioner Dimas to
increase the overall funding for biodiversity and,
in particular, to make overseas aid and development
funding available for biodiversity conservation
as endorsed by the EU Council.
“The EU must commit to increase GEF funding for
biodiversity instead of trying to remove or weaken
the relevant text in the Programme of Work on Protected
Areas and in the document on financial resources
and mechanisms,” said Shepherd.
