mr president yes the commissioner is right
the arctic is quite different in many ways from the antarctic and it was only a few months ago on eight october two thousand and eight that i spoke to this house on this very topic
the arctic as i said then plays an increasingly important geostrategic role in our world and over the past decade several critical issues have emerged in this region
we are now faced with the opening of hitherto closed seaways a direct result of climate change
this comes as no surprise since the arctic is warming at a much faster rate with an increase of two degrees in the last hundred years compared to an average of just zero point six degrees in the rest of the world
this highly vulnerable ecosystem is coming under increasing pressure from resource-hungry nations which wish to exploit its potential without having due regard to its fundamental importance as a stabilising force in the world's climate
i agree with mrs wallis's point that a call for a fifty year moratorium on any exploitation is neither practical nor reasonable but i think a limited moratorium on new exploitation pending fresh scientific studies is something all civilised nations could perhaps agree to
apart from this the eu counts amongst its member states no less than three arctic nations along with two other eea neighbours accounting for more than half the numeric membership of the arctic council
this is reason enough for us to be able to assert ourselves in the best sense of that word on the global stage on this issue
the arctic is critical for global climate and for this reason alone we must be part of a new style of governance for this beautiful and as the previous speaker said one of the last wildernesses of our world
