Karl Falkenberg
General Director, DG ENVIRONMENT, European Commission
There is barely any need to insist on the seriousness of climate change. At the time we are publishing this editorial, governments and international organisations are underlining the imminence of the crucial UNFCC Climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Yet, beyond the hopeful perspective of a proper global agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, the complexity and the scale of the problem weight on the affirmation of a unique response and uniform solutions, as it is clear that each region of the world is and will be affected in a specific way. The contracting Parties of the Alpine Convention, with the adoption of the Action Plan on Climate Change in the Alps, adopted at the Xth Alpine Conference (Evian, March 2009) have started elaborating a collective and specific strategy for a mountainous region highly sensitive to temperature variations. Such changes bear consequences for alpine populations and their economical activities. They also threaten the potential for carbon sequestration of the region, increase natural hazards and disturb the water cycle equilibrium, thus possibly altering the ecosystem services that the Alps provide to a large part of European plains and its cities. The Contracting Parties to the Alpine wish to respond to the huge challenge of climate change in an exemplary way.
The European Union has engaged since the early 1990s in a GHG reduction policy based on market rules and a community emission trading system, taking progressively a worldly leadership in the climate battle. The Green Paper on adaptation to climate change (2007) recognizes the vulnerability of the Alps and entrusts the local authorities with an essential role. In turn, the objectives of the Action Plan on climate change in the Alps are complementary to the objectives defined in the 2009 White Paper on adapting to climate change: developing the knowledge base, exchange of information, energy, tourism, agriculture…
Several fields of collaboration are thus becoming tangible for these two organisations, at the general policy level as well as the concrete level, such as the diffusion of good practices.
I wish the Alpine Convention friends much success in the implementation of the necessary measures to win that major common aim.
