Dear <<First Name>>,

In Europe the watchword is ‘Restore our Ocean and Rivers’. New legislation is on its way in order to translate the international treaties negotiated for years in a hard won consensus into a new set of rules to deliver the long expected improvements for urgent nature restoration and human wellbeing. The Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in December 2022 and the BBNJ Treaty to protect biodiversity on the High Seas of agreed in March 2023 now need to ratified and translated into action also at regional EU and national levels across the globe.

The lighthouse projects across European regions and the Conference ‘Beyond Growth’ in the European Parliament (EP) are among the many places and platforms where concepts for positive change are debated in lively exchange and new ways of satisfying human needs respecting nature are being tried and tested. According to surveys, a majority of European citizens wants action taken for nature protection and against climate change.

So it came as a brutal dampener when the centre-right EPP and liberal Renew groups joined far right groups in a disastrous anti-nature, anti-Green Deal position in the EP’s Committee on Fisheries (PECH) in rejecting the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) – the first EU law to set legally- binding targets to restore nature. Denying this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises the walk-out directly threatens the European Green Deal’s objectives of putting the EU on a path to a green and just transition. Short-term benefits for a few at the expense of the many’s future. That dovetails with a backlash against the transition towards forms of agriculture that do not harm pollinators and leave some space for wild fauna and flora.

Civil society organisations promoting nature restoration and human well-being like Mundus maris invite citizens to express their support for an agenda for livable futures more actively. Together with many others we call on the MEPs in the lead committees for the NRL legislation to put the common good before the lobbies.

Please help make the forthcoming Ocean Week an exemplary demonstration of citizen mobilisation and cooperation for a healthy ocean, healthy nature, healthy citizens. We’ll continue working in this direction throughout the summer months and report back about achievements in July/August in our next issue. Support this work with a donation.

Mundus maris, Belfius Bank, Rue de Linthout 224, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
IBAN: BE54 0688 9178 6297     BIC: GKCCBEBB

Our website in five languages www.mundusmaris.org offers you already more stories showing: Together we achieve more.

Cornelia E. Nauen and the entire Mundus maris team

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