Informationen zur Stellungnahme 

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS



- expresses its concern about the serious consequences of increasing loss of biodiversity, both for ethical reasons, as well as with a view to ensuring economic and social stability, mitigating climate change and achieving the Millennium Development Goals;

- stresses that, if biodiversity is to be preserved in the EU and worldwide, regional and local authorities should be equipped with adequate human, financial and technical means, commensurate to their responsibility and to the task of helping to stem biodiversity loss. The CoR encourages local and regional authorities to lead by example;

- urges the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy to focus on a limited set of sub-targets which include agriculture, fisheries, land use and habitat destruction and fragmentation, and allow regional and local authorities to measure their own contribution and put in place corrective measures in a timely manner;

- calls for a significant increase of the financial means within post 2013 EU budgets to meet the targets and urges the European Commission to maximise the benefits of EU funding, particularly by tackling the current under spending of Structural Funds in the fields of biodiversity and looking at ways to improve the integrated model to fund biodiversity and Natura 2000;

- calls upon the EU and the European Commission to explore the CoR becoming observer to the EU delegation to the COP 10 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in order to assure that the voice of local and regional authorities is represented in an appropriate manner and offers to contribute by promoting decentralised development cooperation in this field;

- urges the COP 10 to accompany the Strategic Plan 2011-2020 with a specific decision dedicated to sub-national authorities, including a Plan of action on Local Authorities and Biodiversity 2011-2020, in order to further enhance and leverage the significant contribution of sub-national authorities to play on the implementation of the CBD Strategic Plan.