The European Union will seek ideas next year on how to improve its readiness for climate change, a European Commission official told reporters on Friday. "Just one example of (climate change) impacts -- in 2003 we had a heatwave in Europe which killed at least 35,000 people who could still be alive if we would have been prepared for these kinds of events," said Artur Runge-Metzger, who is an official of the European Commission's Climate Change and Air directorate. "The climate projections tell us that this heatwave of 2003, which was under current conditions very exceptional, in 2050 will be a rather normal summer."

The EC will early next year seek public feedback about how to push preparedness for climate change through every aspect of EU policy. "As regards the European level there is a policy gap. We will be launching the Green Paper early next year," he said.

Until now EU policy had focused on how to cut the 25-nation bloc's contribution to climate change, rather than to prepare for its impacts, he said. "We need to ensure that decision-making at all levels takes the need for climate change adaptation properly into account. It s not just talk. It s preparing for concrete action."

Particular sectors the EC has started focusing on include agriculture, forestry and human health. "In the forestry sector trees that are planted now will have to cope with the climate of 50 or 100 years from now." Runge-Metzger was speaking on the sidelines of a UN conference where some 189 countries are discussing a global response to climate change after present Kyoto goals expire in 2012.
(Planet Ark, 13/11/2006)