French President Emmanuel Macron has said he hopes to negotiate “the equivalent of the Paris Agreement” around biodiversity at COP-26, a climate meeting scheduled for November this year in Scotland.
“It is not possible to pursue our climate goals without also adopting the biodiversity agenda,” said Macron, interviewed Tuesday (26) by the founder and president of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab.
The agreement, according to the French president, involves “changes in the production methods of our agriculture, in our common consumption and way of life”.
The aggression against biodiversity is one of the main criticisms leveled by Macron and other politicians and international entities against the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, mainly in relation to deforestation in the Amazon.
According to Macron, the “top priority” is to resume coordinated global action in relation to the climate, favored by the return of the United States to the Paris Agreement under the presidency of Joe Biden – former President Donald Trump had withdrawn the country from the agreement in 2017.
According to the French president, the two years which followed the American exit were “a formidable resistance, in which the house of cards did not collapse”. To get around resistance from the Trump administration, governments have engaged in debate with the U.S. private sector, he said.
Pressed by the growth of the Green Party in France, Macron has aggressively adopted the environmental agenda in his speeches and public policies. Last year, he established a group of 150 citizens chosen by lot to formulate environmental policy measures, which are currently under discussion in the executive and legislature.
In December, France signed a commitment with CAC 40 companies (index of the largest listed companies) to adopt a common methodology for transparency of information on efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.
According to Macron, the coronavirus pandemic has shown that not everything can be decided from the point of view of profit: “We have done everything that was unimaginable in the world; we cripple economic activities to protect life ”. Another lesson, according to him, is that everything related to ecology and climate has a direct impact on our daily life.
Commenting on the statement that “capitalism has gone mad”, made by him at a meeting of the ILO (International Labor Organization) in 2019, Macron said that the crisis of democracy requires not only action from the State, but also the responsibility of the main beneficiaries of the system for the damage it causes to the environment and income inequality.
“We have created a system around two kings, the consumer and the shareholder, which serves them to the detriment of an adjustment on workers and the planet”, declared the President of the Republic. According to him, the state cannot pay for these negative externalities (climate change and income inequalities) on its own, because “in the end, it is the taxpayer who will pay for all of this, although he cannot reap it. all the benefits “.
The French government, according to him, intends to “reform companies from within, so that they take into account the impact of their actions in the economic, social, environmental and democratic dimensions”.
Macron pointed to the system’s “real successes” – opening up economies, global trade, innovations – which “lifted millions out of poverty”, but said the flip side was “loss of business, of social utility and access to the wages of many of our fellow citizens ”, the destruction of nature and the crisis of democracy.
But, according to him, it is necessary to build “a new consensus, whose rules are not the reduction of the State, the decline of the public sector and the creation of value only for the shareholders”.