Parliament backs new 2020 biodiversity target

The European Parliament’s Environment Committee has backed the Commission’s proposed goal of halting biodiversity loss by the end of the decade. The Committee’s draft resolution also calls for the further integration of biodiversity into other EU policy areas such as agriculture and forestry, and stresses the need to integrate external costs such as damage caused to biodiversity into the price of a product. MEPs rejected a call by four committee members for a review of the European Commission’s decision not to propose legally binding sustainability criteria for biomass and reaffirmed their commitment to improve existing biodiversity legislation. The Council endorsed the target of halting biodiversity loss by 2020 earlier in March.

The Environment Committee draft report on the implementation of EU legislation aiming at the conservation of biodiversity can be found here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+COMPARL+PE-441.267+01+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN

A European Parliament press release can be found here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/064-78666-193-07-29-911-20100712IPR78665-12-07-2010-2010-false/default_en.htm