Water scarcity is projected to become a major problem with almost half the world's population living in areas of high water stress by 2030[11]; New risks are emerging with potentially highly disruptive consequences (space weather related events, multi-risk events such as the 2011 Fukushima triple disaster, risks in a digital and high-tech era, including cyber risks); Extensive risk events (small scale, highly frequent, and localised events such as flash floods, fires and landslides) are often underestimated and under-reported but they nevertheless undermine local development as well as national competitiveness; Economies are globalise ...[+++]d and increasingly structured around complex global supply chains; as demonstrated by the 2011 Floods in Thailand the economic shock of a disaster can ripple out to economies and businesses on the other side of the world; Economic and financial downturn puts pressure on national budgets to secure disaster risk management funding.

Since the Bruntland report, we have been calling for international trade rules to be adapted to the major demands of a new means of development benefiting all the peoples of our small planet.

Given the problems we face on this small planet; poverty which continues to spread rapidly, the spread of infectious diseases, the many environmental problems and, especially, the tremendously rapid development in technology in many areas, some form of regulatory framework is required if it is to work well.

One thing that this whole issue has brought about – if it was needed – is a great awareness that this is a very small planet upon which we live and that mankind is very capable, through its industrial practices, of changing our environment.

Europe is small in global terms, and so the internal market, completed by monetary union, is quite certainly the right answer.

– (EL) Mr President, the accumulations of small arms dotted all over the planet are a cause of destabilisation and crisis and the European Union has promised to do what it can to combat this phenomenon. The European Union has proposed, as part of its joint action on small arms and light weapons, to introduce a series of confidence-building measures, including measures to improve transparency.