Conservative MEP calls for Global Environmental Coalition
Posted, February 18, 2008 @ 00:00
Nirj Deva MEP Responds to Prince Charles's Challenge to European Lawmakers and calls for Global Environmental system
Strasbourg, 18th February 2008 -- Responding to the challenge set out by the Prince of Wales in his address to the European Parliament last week (Thursday), Nirj Deva MEP is urging for the creation of a Global Environmental Coalition. This international group of NGOs, private companies, multinationals and politicians in the field of development would address the causes of climate change.
A Global Environmental Policing System would be set up, with three main priorities: preventing illegal logging, preventing the exportation of illegal timber, and policing countries that manufacture furniture to ensure they are licensed by the international community (for example through a kite mark system similar to that preventing the sale of blood diamonds).
Nirj Deva, Conservative MEP and Coordinator of the Development Committee, the largest group in the European Parliament said:
"The rainforests are a global public good and belong to all of us. Yet we have not recognised that these rainforests are ours and that we should therefore pay to keep and expand them. Instead of helping and supporting the countries in which these rainforests exist and so share the burden, and contribute to the sustainable development of these countries, we expect these poor countries to protect them without any help. Poverty forces people to burn down the forests to make space for agriculture or to illegally cut down the trees to sell as timber. If we do not address the problems in these countries then they will become more and more unstable.
"We must now put our money where our mouth is. We must assist the countries that have rainforests- first to protect and then to expand the forest areas".