29. Underlines the urgency of further environmental protection measures, bearing in mind, for example, that in 2014 only eight out of 74 major cities reached the national standard of PM 2,5 air pollution concentration and given the fact that in China 190 million people fall ill due to contaminated water yearly; warns that the double water crisis (massive pollution combined with increased water usage) could cause major political and social instability; recalls that the cost of China’s environmental degradation is also felt in the neighbouring countries; highlights the costs of environmental degradation and hopes that the next Five-Year Plan will make the environment a priority; also stresses that a lack of environmental protection not on ...[+++]ly fails to prevent ecological damage, but is also a source of unfair competition practices; welcomes the EU-China agreement to enhance cooperation to address key environmental challenges such as air, water and soil pollution; welcomes the fact that under the new environmental protection law local cadres are accountable, also retroactively, for environmental damage caused during their tenure and that commitment to environmental protection will count stronger in the process of promotion of those local cadres; urges both national and local authorities to constructively and actively involve environmental organisations and grassroots movements as regards the monitoring, implementation and enforcement of China’s environmental policies and initiatives; points out that the June 2015 EU-China Summit also established environmental policy and climate change measures under which China is to comply with CO2 emissions limits with a view to the Paris Summit in December 2015 and in line with the objectives of the 2020 Strategic Agenda adopted in Beijing in 2013;

29. Underlines the urgency of further environmental protection measures, bearing in mind, for example, that in 2014 only eight out of 74 major cities reached the national standard of PM 2,5 air pollution concentration and given the fact that in China 190 million people fall ill due to contaminated water yearly; warns that the double water crisis (massive pollution combined with increased water usage) could cause major political and social instability; recalls that the cost of China’s environmental degradation is also felt in the neighbouring countries; highlights the costs of environmental degradation and hopes that the next Five-Year Plan will make the environment a priority; also stresses that a lack of environmental protection not on ...[+++]ly fails to prevent ecological damage, but is also a source of unfair competition practices; welcomes the EU-China agreement to enhance cooperation to address key environmental challenges such as air, water and soil pollution; welcomes the fact that under the new environmental protection law local cadres are accountable, also retroactively, for environmental damage caused during their tenure and that commitment to environmental protection will count stronger in the process of promotion of those local cadres; urges both national and local authorities to constructively and actively involve environmental organisations and grassroots movements as regards the monitoring, implementation and enforcement of China’s environmental policies and initiatives; points out that the June 2015 EU-China Summit also established environmental policy and climate change measures under which China is to comply with CO2 emissions limits with a view to the Paris Summit in December 2015 and in line with the objectives of the 2020 Strategic Agenda adopted in Beijing in 2013;

10. Warns against aiming for global emission reduction pathways that allow for significant carbon emissions in 2050 and beyond, as this would carry great risks and require reliance on unproven, energy intensive and costly technologies to remove and store CO2 from the atmosphere; depending on the level of the overshoot, the ability of such emission reduction pathways to maintain climate change below 2 °C depends on the availability and widespread deployment of biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation without plausible land availability, as well as the use of other unknown, yet to be developed, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) tech ...[+++]nologies;

23. Welcomes the Commissions’ initiative to enlarge the scope for bottom-up partnerships between farmers, consumers and civil society by mainstreaming the LEADER method to all structural funds; Warns however the Commission not to give up the principle of earmarking certain percentages of the CAP budget for development of these partnerships and for specific agro-environmental measures so that the necessary transformation of farming into sustainable and integrated systems which respond to challenges like climate change, loss of biodiversity and soil fertility and water quality can take place;