EP Intergroup Newsletter January 2015: Editorial
Dear readers,
We wish you a very happy and successful New Year!
In December the European Parliament officialised the establishment of 28 Intergroups for the mandate 2014-2019. The Intergroup on “Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development” got officially re-established for the 5th consecutive parliamentary term since its creation in 1994.
This successful outcome shows the importance that Members of European Parliament (MEPs) confer to environmental and inter-linked socio-economic issues in times of great societal changes. We would like to thank in particular the MEPs for their trust and support during the campaign. We hope that policy-makers and stakeholders will find Intergroup events informative and challenging, and that all sectors –NGOs, private sector, experts, civil society – will engage in finding sustainable solutions to some of the most pressing challenges we are faced with.
Pavel Poc, Chair of the Intergroup, and the 17 Vice-Chairs will be having a Bureau meeting at the end of the month to set up the agenda of activities for the year. Stay posted!
2015 will be a very important year for International Climate Governance, as the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP21) will take place in Paris in December. The Intergroup will closely follow the processes leading up to the conference at both the European and international level. 2015 is also the year of the post-2015 Sustainable Development agenda, with the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit taking place in New York in September. The Intergroup will organise a series of events in the Parliament on these two major milestones this year aiming at fostering open and balanced debates on major issues linked to the climate and sustainable development agendas.
2015 is also an important year preparing and paving the way for major conventions and congresses that will take place in 2016, such as: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI), and the IUCN Congress to name only a few. The Intergroup will keep you updated on all these processes.
In this newsletter Luc Bas, Director of the IUCN EU Representative Office in Brussels, discusses the opportunities and challenges of a paradigm shift for genuine sustainable development in Europe.
You will also find relevant information regarding Future Earth, a global research platform providing knowledge and support to accelerate transformations to a sustainable world. The European launch event will be taking place on the 3rd of February in the European Parliament.
Lastly, the Intergroup will be launching its new website next month so don’t miss the next edition!
For more information on our activities follow us on twitter @EPIntergroup_SD
Enjoy the reading!
The Secretariat