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50 years of protecting Europe's environment
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Today the European Union has the most environmentally friendly arsenal of rules in the world and has done more to tackle pressing ecological problems, such as climate change, than any other major power.
But it has not always been like this. Caring for the environment did not feature in the Treaty of Rome, the document that gave birth to the modern day EU. Yet environmental problems were never far away. Europe’s love affair with the car was moving into top gear, industry was busy belching out pollutants and raw sewage was being pumped into our rivers and seas.
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Expert interview: transport and environment
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Peder Jensen, EEA transport and the environment expert.
Transport is harmful to the environment in many different ways. The most visible effect of transport is some of the emissions that we see: we can see the exhaust gas coming out of a car and at certain times it's very dirty and very dark. It's a very visible way where it's harming the environment, harming the air that we are all breathing. But there are also effects that are not quite so visible - when we are burning fuel in our engines we are emitting a lot of different gases and some of them are invisible greenhouse gases that help trap the heat in the atmosphere to get the earth to go warmer.
One of the other important effects of transport is the noise impact. Noise means that people have a hard time sleeping, that they therefore don't get the rest that they need. It also affects the animals, disturbs their life, if roads or railroads run through nature areas it therefore means a reduced quality of life for both animals and people.
Finally, transport infrastructure has a tendency to fragment natural habitats for animals. Lots of animals are disturbed by roads, they cannot cross the road, they are either scared off by the noise or they can't find ways to cross these different infrastructures and this means that the habitats they are living in don't work so well for their reproduction.
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Transport
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Curbing CO2 emissions from road transport
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Road transport generates about one fifth of the EU's CO2 emissions, with passenger cars responsible for around 12%. This makes it the second most important source of greenhouse gases. Although there have been significant improvements over recent years in vehicle technology, these have not been enough to neutralise the effect of increases in traffic and car size.
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Transport
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Scenery from the Greenlandic landscape
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Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), and three of her colleagues have chosen to be part of an extraordinary journey in East Greenland. They travel from their offices in Copenhagen to participate in a multisport race, where they challenge themselves through 250 kilometres of the Arctic wilderness. On their way they encounter the effects of climate change and its impact on the Arctic environment.
The Inuit are among the first people to experience the effects of climate change. They are in the middle of an environmental challenge that will change many parts of their culture. What is happening to Inuit's today will happen to the rest of the world tomorrow. We will all need to adapt to climate change.
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Multimedia centre
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Halting the loss of Europe's biodiversity by 2010
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42% of Europe’s native mammals are threatened with extinction, 43% of birds, 45% of butterflies, 52% of freshwater fish. The list goes on and makes terrifying reading. Worldwide, the loss of species is even more alarming.
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Biodiversity
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Multimedia
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Protecting the tree of life
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Europe is a continent of breathtaking natural beauty and dramatic contrasts. The EU’s 27 Member States stretch from the frozen Arctic Circle in the north to the warm Mediterranean waters in the south. From the wave-lashed Atlantic coast in Ireland to the snow-capped Carpathian mountains in Romania, the EU includes a vast range of natural habitats and a great diversity of flora and fauna.
Our natural heritage includes several thousand types of habitat, 520 species of bird, 10 000 plant species and at least 100 000 species of invertebrate. Yet, in comparison with other regions in the world, these numbers are relatively modest. Europe is the most urbanized and densely populated continent in the world. It is also one of the most polluted. These factors have taken their toll on the natural environment.
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Biodiversity
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Multimedia
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Introduction of the film 'Our Arctic Challenge'
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Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), and three of her colleagues have chosen to be part of an extraordinary journey in East Greenland. They travel from their offices in Copenhagen to participate in a multi sport race, where they challenge themselves through 250 kilometers of the Arctic wilderness. On their way they encounter the effects of climate change and its impact on the Arctic environment. The Inuit are among the first people to experience the effects of climate change. They are in the middle of an environmental challenge that will change many parts of their culture. What is happening to the Inuit today will happen to the rest of the world tomorrow. We will all need to adapt to climate change.
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Multimedia centre
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Turning waste into resources
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As Europe grows wealthier it creates more and more rubbish. Every man, woman and child in the EU generates over a kilo of waste every day. Multiply that figure by nearly half a billion EU citizens and it quickly becomes clear that managing our waste without harming the environment is a major headache.
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Environmental topics
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Waste and material resources
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Multimedia
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Power to the people: Environmental Atlas of Europe — Denmark
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Thisted in north west Jutland is the most climate-friendly municipality in Denmark. Since the early 1980s, they've been using a creative mix of sustainable energy sources to provide heating and power for their 46,000 residents. In recognition of their contribution to renewable energy they were awarded the European Solar Prize in 2007.
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The Environmental Atlas
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Power to the people
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Video
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Prof. Jacqueline McGlade on adapting to the impacts of climate change – speech for the ESPACE initiative
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In her speech, Prof. Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), stresses the importance of imbedding climate change into planning systems and processes. ESPACE (European Spatial Planning: Adapting to Climate Events) is a four-year European project promoting the importance of adapting the entire planning process to the impacts of climate change.
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