11 Amendments of Catherine GRÈZE related to 2012/2295(INI)
Amendment 2 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Underlines that biodiversity and ecosystems deliver collective benefits and must be considered as common goods; recalls that when properly managed and governed, biodiversity based assets can yield significant economic benefits; laments however that many policy-makers see little economic gain from conserving or investing in biodiversity; stresses therefore the value of "ecosystem services" and their contribution to economic and social development;
Amendment 3 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Paragraph 1 b (new)
1b. Stresses that no system for generating wealth can be sustainable if it degrades its resource base; underlines that, in parallel to the market oriented functions, the bio- economy sustains also a wide range of public goods functions, not currently rewarded by the market, that should be preserved, such as agricultural and forested landscape, farmland and forest biodiversity, water quality and availability, soil functionality, climate stability, air quality and resilience to flooding and fire;
Amendment 4 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 c (new)
Paragraph 1 c (new)
1c. Takes the view that the transition to a sustainable bio-based economy will only be successful if resource efficiency is the pillar of the economy and if genetic engineering is not the driver of this economy;
Amendment 5 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 d (new)
Paragraph 1 d (new)
1d. Believes that any bio-economy strategy should adopt the guiding principle of a biomass hierarchy and support a 'cascade utilization' of biomass first directed to ensure basic services not rewarded by the market and then to high value applications like materials (rather than bioenergy which has a lower value);
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 e (new)
Paragraph 1 e (new)
1e. Stresses that a sustainable bio-based economy must be built on modal transport and reduction of the overall consumption of biofuels to the strict minimum; in particular, underlines that in order to assess whether a specific bio-based process or product is reducing direct and indirect greenhouse gases emissions, all the stages from the extraction of the raw material to the end-use-state should be considered; stresses that the EU and national policies should promote clean alternatives to fossil fuels, such as vehicles that run on renewable electricity as well as solar and wind energy, instead of stimulating the shift to biomass in sectors where lower value is added to it (like in the production of biofuels and other bioenergy);
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Notes that the amount of sustainable biomass from EU sources will never be enough to meet current energy demand and increasing and competing uses of biomass, and that the EU will therefore be increasingly dependent on imports from developing countries, where biomass exploitation represents a major challenge in terms of governance, as in the case of forest conservation and sustainable management of forest resources, thereby making it difficult to fulfil EU sustainability criteria and measures for imported biomass or to check their implementation through monitoring and evaluation;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Insists that the EU has a duty to reduce its dependency on fish from developing countries for food, as well as for feed in aquaculture, stresses that in the current reform of the CFP, priority should be given to measures that underpin an environmentally sustainable management of fisheries and the use of non-carnivorous species in aquaculture;
Amendment 13 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
Amendment 14 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Stresses the importance of mangrove, seagrass meadows, salt marshes and kelp forests as highly performing carbon sinks, warns of the rapid destruction of these coastal ecosystems due inter alia to increasing demand for seafood from aquaculture; calls for a marine equivalent of the REDD scheme to safeguard coastal and marine ecosystems as carbon sinks;
Amendment 18 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4a. Recalls that the protection of biodiversity is a key component to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (among which Goal 1 on Eradication of Extreme Poverty and Hunger and Goal 7 on Ensuring Environmental Sustainability); in particular, stresses upon the importance of healthy biodiversity and ecosystems for primary production like agriculture, forestry and fisheries; accordingly, deems that production of biomass shall be analysed in respect with its impact on ecosystem services;
Amendment 19 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Fears that growing demand for biomass exacerbates food insecurity in developing countries, through land grabbing and volatile food pricesdiversion of crops and lands away from food production, deprivation of land-use rights and impoverishment as a result of land-grabs and exacerbation of food price volatility; points out that the demand for biofuels is already one of the drivers for land acquisitions in developing countries, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa; recalls that due to these land acquisitions, indigenous people loose their access to land, and thereby their access to food and water; also underlines that while MDGs set a target of cutting by half the number of people without safe access to water by 2015, water-consuming bio-economy activities can aggravate water stress in developing countries and thereby contribute to widespread food scarcity; urges the EU to follow the recommendation of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food on agro- ecology to achieve food security, while addressing climate change;