The Ministry of Environment must come up with a proposal to protect the green spaces that still exist in cities, given that they are under a complex assault to disappear in the coming years, in favor of hugely profitable apartment blocks, is the opinion of the Minister of Environment, Diana Buzoianu.
„We must accept the evidence. All science confirms that climate change exists, that it affects us. It is not an abstract concept, it is not a distant idea, climate change is here, it is already impacting our lives. We have entire counties in Romania in the process of desertification and, when we say that, I don’t know if we realize what it means for the farmers there, for the people there. We have entire communities that don’t have water every day, for hours, because of climate change. We have increasingly extreme situations, floods upon floods that destroy entire communities every year and in the face of this evidence we must act. How do we act? First of all (…), „Romania must be engaged in the European mission regarding the emissions that we need to reduce in order to be able to fight climate change, this is the first pillar. The second pillar is for us to also start adapting to climate change, because the reality is that it is already here. We must rethink the cities we live in today, which have become concrete heat islands, which increasingly need green spaces, which need an infrastructure designed so that we can cope and live with a decent quality of life in these cities, in the climate conditions that have been announced,” said Diana Buzoianu, at a specialized conference.
She emphasized that with every storm, destruction is recorded in large cities, and with every heat wave, „more and more deaths are announced.”
„It is a tragedy, and in the face of these tragedies we must be increasingly prepared with concrete measures. From the perspective of the Ministry of Environment, we will be a ministry that will prioritize the implementation norms that we will give, so that key areas are adapted to climate change. For the first time, for example, in the new Forestry Code, we have included the idea of thinking about technical norms and thinking about management plans, thinking about implementation norms from the perspective of adaptation to climate change. And I’ll give you an example – you may already know – there are entire forests that are literally drying out in Romania, entire hectares, especially in southern Romania, that simply can’t cope with climate change, forests that were planted with certain species of trees, which today are no longer found in the climate of the respective areas. An idea for example that those areas where they have dried out could be cut down trees and then planting the exact same trees would be suicide for those forests. So, we need to rethink what trees we plant in certain areas of Romania where certain species are found today, but which no longer effectively cope with the climate changes in those areas,” she explained.
According to the minister, in the implementation norms „which we will expressly provide, for example, in the area of the new Forestry Code, we will have experts who will look very carefully for the first time, including the introduction of measures and solutions that take into account these climate changes”, and this will be a measure that solves part of the problems in the forest area.
„If we look at the urban area, we will have to have a much more robust package on the Green Spaces Law, because we are in vain talking about heat islands, in vain talking about European funds, in vain talking about how we adapt to climate change, if the cities we live in are under a danger, a complex assault that the few green spaces we still have will disappear in the coming years. And here is a very serious discussion, because, yes, indeed, those green spaces are viewed, on the one hand, by certain people as bringing a huge profit, if the green spaces there were to disappear and three more blocks were to be built. But, on the other hand, the general interest of all communities is that for those two or three blocks, millions of people do not end up suffocating between concrete. And yet In this regard, the ministry must come up with a proposal to protect the green spaces we have,” the head of the Environment Department said.
Diana Buzoianu emphasized that the issue of climate change will have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis in each field, „with each solution, in each specific area.”
„If we try to approach this topic by thinking only about some global or national or European targets that we have and with that we have finished the discussion, we will never be prepared for the changes that have already come upon us. We will have to take each field separately and for each field separately we must think transversally and adapt the measures that we have today to a reality that today is changed compared to the moment when the respective laws were first given. This is part of the mission of the Ministry of Environment, but also part of the missions of other ministries,” she conveyed.
The Minister of the Environment, Diana Buzoianu, participated, on Friday, in the conference organized by the National Meteorological Administration, together with DC News Media Group, on the theme „Climate Change and the Impact on the Economy”.
AGERPRES
