As years go by, Europe is increasingly facing severe wildfires, floods and many other natural disasters resulting in significant causes many losses, such as economic ones.
Today, the committee ENVI discussed this important matter, researching it from various perspectives and searching for a way to make the impact of these natural disasters as little as possible.
One of the countries trying to find a way to do the former, is the Netherlands. Although the delegate of Netherlands doesn’t feel the impact of the disasters as much as others, they do find it important to contribute their opinions to the meeting to find the perfect solutions for this life-threatening problem.
According to the delegate, climate change isn’t the only thing that leads to natural disasters. They stated that nature itself is another aspect at the source of, for example, the floods. If there are obstacles in a river, it will flood quickly. The river’s capacity would reach a maximum, thanks to the rain, and the river would flood. Damage would be done to nearby houses, and they would need to move.
The floods can also release pollutants stored in the ground and spread them even more widely, they may also destroy wetland areas and reduce biodiversity. This may also bring economic losses that we have to deal with. However, the delegate mentioned that it’s a very difficult problem to solve on the European level. He doubts that giving funds to the companies would be efficient, because the EU will never reach all of the small businesses and the people in general. Therefore, he believes that this problem should be solved on a more local level.
The only way to prevent floods is to reduce the frequency of them happening. Therefore, this delegate wants to prevent climate change from developing further, by making sure that every country is doing the best they possibly can.
They stated that we must adapt to living with climate change, which means that we must learn to live with nature and not beaggressive against it by simply ignoring it or saying that nothing has happened.
Having to adapt to climate change also includes the farming market. Due to the floods, the soil become infertile, and we will be unable to grow any crops on it. As a possible solution, the Netherlands suggested that we move the farming lands to another place in the European Union that still has fertile soil and that can still produce the right amount of food for everyone. They stated that we help each other and form strong relationships between European countries, so that every citizen has the food they deserve.
Next to floods, wildfires are also a prominent issue that is being taken care of by this committee. We asked the delegate of the Netherlands what he had to add to this statement.
‘The wildfires are a grand problem in some countries’, stated the delegate. It really is a problem, not as much in the Netherlands, but in other countries like Greece.
The delegate proposed various solutions like planting more trees. They stated that planting trees sounds weird at first, but doing it reduces the temperature of the surroundings and increases the humidity, which eventually leads to less wildfires. A negative aspect of planting trees is that it takes a lot of time, sometimes even time that we won’t possess.
Because a case like wildfire is a danger to all civilians, they should be educated about what to do in case of emergency.
Conclusion:
Today, a delegate from ENVI talked about floods and wildfires. They talked about some problems and made several propositions on how to solve their specific question.
Myrre De Nies , Reuters
