Vol. 457 No. 7
135 Mr. Dempsey asked the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht the Government's policy in relation to sub-terranean ecosystems in the context of the Sofia conference; and the Government's policy in relation to the amendment proposed by the GLOBE working group meeting in Ljubljana on 10 October 1995. [16296/95]
The recent Ministerial Conference, "Environment for Europe", which was held in Sofia, Bulgaria, endorsed the pan-European biological and landscape diversity startegy which was drafted for it by the Council of Europe. This new strategy, which I welcome, presents an innovative and proactive approach to stop and reverse the degradation of biological and landscape diversity throughout Europe. The strategy reinforces the implementation of existing measures and identifies additional actions that need to be taken in future years.
I am aware that a working group of the GLOBE Europe Network prepared a position paper on the pan-European biological and landscape diversity startegy in advance of the Sofia meeting. However, I understand that the question of including the specific topic referred to by the Deputy in the final version of the strategy was not taken up by the conference.
