Adoption of four reports on climate change

The Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs of the Parliamentary Assembly adopted four reports on 4 September in Paris concerning the challenges raised by climate change. The first stresses the need to arrive at an ambitious binding agreement on reduction of CO2 emissions at the next United Nations Conference on climate change in December 2009 in Copenhagen. The second reaffirms the status as a fundamental human right of access to water, while the third proposes the adoption of an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights recognising the right to a healthy, viable environment. The last calls for the establishment of a new governance of the oceans, indispensable in order to contend with growing marine pollution. These reports will be debated at the Assembly’s forthcoming session from 28 September to 2 October in Strasbourg.