French position and participation in the Copenhagen summit
(7-18 December 2009)
A political will firmly rooted in French national policy since the 1970s
France is probably one of the leading European countries in the fight against global warming. With the second lowest rate (after Sweden) of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP, France has historically been a nation determined to protect the natural environment. Indeed on 27 January 1971, she became one of the first countries to set up a Ministry for the Protection of Nature and the Environment.
Between 1970 and 1998, her environmental policy was geared mainly to establishing regulations and specialised institutions for the recovery and elimination of waste products (1976), air quality (1981) and energy management (1982).
At global level, it was the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro which first brought international attention to environmental issues, leading to the Rio Declaration and subsequently to the development of an Earth Charter, of which a first benchmark draft was released in March 1997.
In France, 1999 saw the Sustainable Development Act and 2000, adoption of the Environmental Code.
The Climate Plan (drawn up in 2004 and regularly updated) was designed to reduce CO2 emissions and includes measures in every area of France’s economy and the people’s daily lives, and the incorporation of the Environment Charter into the French Constitution provided yet more concrete evidence of France’s commitment to environmental protection and sustainable development,
One of the candidates in the 2007 presidential election, the popular TV ecologist Nicolas Hulot even circulated an “Ecological Pact”, pledging to make the environment and the fight against global warming a priority, which was signed by the major candidates.
The Grenelle Environment Forum (2008) was another landmark, designed to prepare France for the post-oil, energy-efficient economy and increase the use of renewable energies. Finally, the forthcoming introduction of the carbon tax will stimulate energy savings, reducing oil and gas bills of both the country and families and create an incentive to step up development of green technologies
Need for global harmonized action: Copenhagen stakes and French expectations
The European Parliament’s adoption of the energy/climate package (2008) showed that Europe was on course for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol. But the whole world has to speak with a single voice if we are to succeed in the fight against global warming, which is the main goal of the Copenhagen summit. France wholly supports the summit’s key aim to limit global temperature rise to 2°C and is convinced that the only way to do so is to reduce global CO2 emissions by at least 50% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels./.
Further reading:
Presentation of the Grenelle Environment Forum conclusions – Speech by M. Nicolas Sarkozy
President Sarkozy’s speech on France’s strategy in the fight against climate change