What can be done across the EU to protect the environment?

Promote and spread ecovillages nets and integrate in eu programs and to promote courses concerning whatever needs to be done to implement sustainable and autosuficient comunities or social economy projects. From permaculture, to biocontruction, to local energy supply...THE EUROPE AND GLOBAL CHANGE SHOULD START LOCALY

We should restructure the access that lobbyists have to the European Commission. Many prominent lobbyists are highly destructive to action on climate change.

Each week, a new home in the EU should be installed with solar panels and/or wind turbines and a greywater recycling system, at no additional cost to the occupants. This should be mandatory by law.

Expanding consciousness, creating an identity which is part of the environment. For instance, we could teach at schools that the breathing system is not just the lungs, but it is also the trees which exhale what we inhale and inhalve what we exhale. Just a pair of lungs is not a self-sustained system. And many such examples exist. It is about shaping a more eco-centric identity instead of the ego-centric one.

As a part of Bulgarian citizens' group figthing for years against the local authorities attempts to destroy 420 ha park area and to build a neighborhood there, I would suggest the EU to be more open and supporting citizens, especially those living in countries with high levels of corruption and dependencies.We are all alone here, trying to save a part of our city's green heart - ecosystem with thousands of trees and hunderd of animals, living along the only river in the city called Bedechka.The environmental problems we are facing everyday are not just local problems, they are applicable to many other areas in our country and in EU at all. They are global problems and we need a policy to protect the nature on global level.

To save rapidly disappearing species, the EU urgently needs to impose a total ban on ivory and confront countries like China and Vietnam about the use of rhinohorn.

The EU shouls stop funding African countries that are selling off their natural heritage : trophy hunters, poachers of rhinohorn and elephant tusks,... Some African countries are lining their pockets through corruption on the backs of near extinct species. We are globally responsible and as long as we financially support these countries and make trade agreements with them, we are equally guilty.

A quota for renewable energy must be set.Limits should be increased on how much pollution can each country make and if they are above that level they should be fined. Also E.U should keep in mind the agriculture stock level because more the stock level more methane is produced by cows and rice. They need to believe in climate change as might some countries might not believe in this. Also educate people about greenhouse effect and its consequences so people can help the change. Money should also be invested in renewable energy so people drive electric cars.

Implement effective waste management. No tolerance for corruption.Make recycling part of everyday life, easily accessible to all citizens near their home.Educate the public about climate change through school, commercials, workshops, programs for the public, etc. Emphasize the impact it has on the average citizen and what each of us can do (for e.g. reduce, reuse, recycle, eat less meat, buy local).Research and promote biodegradable packaging.Make organic products more widely available, support organic farms.Toughen and enforce laws on poaching, illegal logging, pollution and things as basic as littering.

Our food consumption is a main driver of environmental problems such as soil degradation, GHG emissions, habitat loss or nitrogen pollution. The EU should cut unnecessary (agricultural) subsidies and incentivize consumption of local products. There is strong scientific evidence on the negative impacts of meat and dairy products on the environment as well as human health. But instead of promoting a vegetarian diet, governments still favor lobby interests. Thus, in Germany we quarrel whether it is consumer deception to call a tofu "sausage" a sausage while it would be so much more important to discuss the environmental impacts of factory farming.