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The Prince of Wales calls for global partnership to tackle climate change
14th February 2008
The Prince of Wales has today called for a global partnership to find and implement solutions to mitigate climate change. Speaking at the European Parliament in Brussels, The Prince said tackling the issue was, “a task that calls for the biggest public, private and NGO partnership ever seen.”
In his speech The Prince said that millions of people looked to governments, the European Union and international agencies to find a solution to climate change. He added that often the corporate world was ahead of many politicians in leading the debate on climate change, and he believed only a coalition of the public sector, the private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) could find an effective solution to the problem.
Welcoming recent proposals from the European Commission, The Prince said the European Union had a vital role to play in tackling climate change. “Determined and principled leadership has never been more needed. Surely, this is just the moment in history for which the European Union was created?”, he asked.
His Royal Highness highlighted the particular problem of deforestation of the world’s rainforests, which was simultaneously releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere while robbing the planet of a “natural thermostat, helping to regulate our climate” and playing a crucial role in sustaining life on earth.
With experts warning that there is little time left to find a solution to deforestation before the damaging impact on the climate becomes irreversible, The Prince said a way had to be found to place a financial value on the global utility the rainforests provide so that people could be paid to
to stop destroying and degrading them. “In the simplest terms, we have to make the forests worth more alive than dead,” he said.
The Prince has set up his own Rainforests Project with the support of 12 major companies, international organisations, such as the World Bank and the European Union, and representatives from Rainforest Countries, to find just such a solution.
The Prince warned his audience that “the doomsday clock of climate change is ticking ever faster towards midnight…the lives of billions of people depend on your response and none of us will be forgiven by our children and grandchildren if we falter and fail.”
The Prince of Wales was in Brussels as part of a two-day visit. He had a meeting with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso before attending a roundtable discussion with representatives from a number of his charities and European Commissioners. Today HRH met European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering before delivering his speech to representatives from the Environment Committee, NGOs and Parliamentarians. This was his second trip to the European Parliament, having visited it in Strasbourg in 1992.