Former President Áder opens Planet Budapest 2023 expo

Former President János Áder opened the Planet Budapest 2023 sustainability expo on Wednesday.

Climate change, water crises, diminishing bio-diversity, the exhaustion of arable land and deforestation were “the big, enduring, common stress situations of mankind”, Áder, the event’s founder and chief patron, said in his opening address, adding that the situation was unprecedented. “We must find different forms of adaptation,” he said.

The expo, the largest international sustainability event in central Europe, runs until 1 October.

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LMP: Hungary ‘is not a climate champion’

“Hungary is not a climate champion,” the opposition LMP party has said in a message to the government, urging more ambitious climate protection targets.

In reaction to a recent speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, LMP co-leader Erzsébet Schmuck told a press conference on Wednesday: “This isn’t football where there are winners and champions … our lives are at stake.” The question was, she added, “how much damage there’ll be and how far we can manage the losses”.

Schmuck rejected the prime minister’s statement that Hungary had made progress in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, insisting that while emissions had fallen between 1990 and 2013, they had increased again by 5 percent between 2014 and 2021. In addition, a further increase is expected due to plans of building three gas-fired power plants to serve new battery factories, she added.