3-5 June 2015 was Green Week, a conference and ideas pool held by the European Commission at the Egg Conference Centre in Brussels. It’s the kind of chance that not many people get, let alone teens – but Forum members Leanne Tough and Meg Carroll (that’s us!) were lucky enough not only to attend Green Week, but speak there. Twice. While we were in Brussels, we met MEPs, a senior UK Representative for the Environment, heads of huge NGO’s like BirdLife International, and many other powerful people. We had a whirlwind three days, and have both come back inspired and with a new grasp of how biodiversity figures in our daily lives.
The focus of our mission was to speak out against changes to the EU Nature Directives. Hopefully you’ll have read a bit about them and signed the campaign to keep them as they are – if you haven’t done it yet, please do it straight after reading this blog post! The “ND’s” are made up of two major pieces of legislation: the Birds Directive, and the Habitats Directive. These are laws which protect thousands of species and habitats, and have more of an impact on you than you might think - 98% of EU Citizens live within 20km of a site protected by these directives. They also protect water, food, climate, air and health – so we felt that we were speaking for our lives, and your lives too.
We started in the EU Parliament building, and talked to four MEP’s from our constituencies about the Nature Directives, and other issues which are important to us. They all seemed impressed that young people were so concerned about the environment, and that we were so clued up about fundamental laws like the ND’s. We also spoke to the UK Permanent Representative for the Environment at the British Consul. We headed to the Egg Conference Centre to register for Green Week, and realized the scale of efforts to keep EU and global territory healthy. From reintroducing Spanish Bearded Eagles, to lobbying the Commission, there were so many NGO’s doing great things.
There were a lot of decision-makers there too: Commissioners Vella and Timmermans – Commissioners for the Environment and Better Regulation respectively - spoke at the opening session. Leanne, on the other hand, spoke at the closing session and “on behalf of all young people in Europe” urged Commissioner Timmermans “not to allow the Nature Directives to be opened up and weakened, but to instead ensure that they’re properly implemented, so all the joy and health benefits that nature gives me can be enjoyed by Europe’s citizens in the future”. Leanne also took part in a Youth Forum debate on “why does biodiversity matter?”, with other young people from Bristol Nature Network and UN Decade of Biodiversity (find out more in the link below). The whole RSPB and BirdLife team were very proud to hear such a powerful youth presence speaking up for all of us, and the audience loved it too.
Maybe the best way to tell you what we were talking about is to show you – here’s a bit from Leanne’s speech in the closing session (it went down a storm!):
“At a time when 25% of Europe’s wildlife is at risk of extinction it seems inconceivable that our most important laws could be weakened. We must focus all of our attention on ensuring that the Directives are properly implemented, so they can fulfil their potential to restore nature. They should not be seen as a roadblock to growth, but rather as a pathway to a sustainable future in which young people can grow up in a world in which they flourish alongside nature because further biodiversity loss would leave us impoverished on many levels: economically, emotionally and culturally.
Those that are in power have a responsibility to use the Directives to not only protect the nature that we still have left, but to restore the biodiversity that has sadly been lost at such an alarming rate over the last 50 years.”
And to hear the Youth Forum debate, go to http://bit.ly/1GqRRN6 (go on, we dare you!).
Finally, we encourage everyone to find out more about Green Week and get involved in preserving our beautiful, biodiverse world. Go to http://bit.ly/1FAlZje to get started. Also this link includes a small section of the speeches made at the closing session, including Leanne’s. A full version will be uploaded soon so look out for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDBWH2jyH7c
Here are some pictures from the event.
Leanne and Meg :)