Interview with Peter Carl - Biodiversity: "the basis for life" 

Why has the Commission chosen biodiversity as the theme this year? At a time when citizens are worried about globalisation, their jobs (the Lisbon agenda) or climate change, is it really the topic that the EU should be focusing on?

Yes I strongly believe it is. And you may have seen that the choice of biodiversity as the central theme has been welcomed in an open message to all Green Week participants by the presidents of Austria, Finland, Hungary and Lithuania.

Winning the battle against climate change and reversing the loss of global biodiversity are the two greatest environmental challenges the world faces, and they both have enormous economic and social implications as well. As Commissioner Dimas has said, in a way the loss of biodiversity is the greater of the threats because mitigation measures can't help once species are extinct. They are gone forever. 
Last year – when the Kyoto Protocol came into force and the EU emissions trading scheme was launched - was the obvious time to focus Green Week on climate change. Having done that, it was almost inevitable that we would want to focus this year on the other great challenge, which of course is also being exacerbated by climate change.

Our choice was reinforced by the fact that this year marks the half-way stage between the summit at which EU leaders made their commitment to halt the loss of biodiversity in the EU and the year they fixed as the deadline for doing so, namely 2010. It is clear that progress needs to be speeded up and last week the Commission presented an action plan spelling out what all actors involved need to do for that commitment to be met. This I hope will lend additional impetus to the discussions at Green Week.

Loss of biodiversity may not seem as dramatic an issue as climate change or as immediate a concern for many people as finding a job, but that makes it no less important or urgent. Biodiversity is, quite literally, the basis for life. That means that by destroying biodiversity, as we do when economic development is badly planned, we are actually undermining mankind's future. The species, ecosystems and genes that comprise the world's biodiversity supply us with products and services that are vital for life and for our economic development – food, shelter, medicines, for instance, and clean air, fresh water and flood protection. Destroying biodiversity for short term gain is long term suicide. 

One of the sessions in Green Week deals with the concept of the 'ecological footprint.' Is the Commission using this concept to put the Club of Rome's 'Limits to Growth' thesis back on the political agenda?

No, not at all. We are not trying to limit growth – as you know, the Lisbon strategy seeks to do just the opposite – but we have to acknowledge that there are natural limits to the Earth's resources, its 'carrying capacity.' And these limited resources are being further diminished, for instance, by the destruction of biodiversity. The ecological footprint is a way of measuring how far the economic demands we place upon the planet – as individuals, nations and regions – are in line with the resources it can provide.

The latest ecological footprint accounts put together by the European Environment Agency and the Global Footprint Network unfortunately found that we are still far away from achieving sustainable development: they show that on average every person on Earth is taking 23% more from the planet than it can naturally regenerate. That means that to meet today's needs we are raiding our children's inheritance, leaving them with less for the future. Europe is living even further beyond its means: we need the productive area of 2.1 Europes to provide for us.

With the global population rising fast, the way to square this circle has to be to make our economies far more efficient in the way we use resources. In other words, to produce more with less. To some extent this is happening naturally with technological progress, but the improvement is not fast enough. That is why, for instance, we launched our Environmental Technologies Action Plan two years ago, and why last year we issued a Thematic Strategy on natural resources that we hope will contribute to speeding up progress.

In general do you feel that the Green Week concept really still mobilises Europe's citizens? Isn't it time to try another formula to communicate about the EU's environment policy?

This is the first Green Week I have been involved in, but from what I have seen and heard of past editions it is widely appreciated and very well attended. Mobilising up to 4000 people for one event doesn't seem bad to me! In terms of political debate, no other environmental event I know of offers the opportunity for such intensive and thorough discussion of all the facets of a key issue among so many people from different backgrounds. For almost a week the Charlemagne building is like an anthill of constant interaction, and exchange of opinions and facts, both in the conference sessions and around the exhibition stands. The aim is not communication for its own sake but as a means to achieve results. I believe all this activity creates a sense of shared purpose among participants and promotes a common understanding that helps to push forward progress on the ground.

Green Week also generates a fair amount of coverage in the press and audiovisual media which helps to raise awareness among the wider public. And everyone can also go online to watch video summaries of each day's main events and read the daily Green Week newspaper on our website.

The basic concept of an annual international event to raise the profile of an important environment policy issue is pretty well anchored now, but of course we need to look each year at how it can be made most effective, both in the light of experience and because needs and tastes change. If you as professional communicators have specific suggestions on how we could do better, please let me have them!