Green Deal, Biodiversity, Nature: Myths and Realities

In the upcoming days, the European Parliament and Member States will vote on a major text of the Green Deal: the nature restoration law, the equivalent of the European climate law for biodiversity. This law aims to halt and reverse the collapse of biodiversity in Europe and to fulfil the international commitments made under the Kunming-Montreal Agreement last December, which is the nature counterpart of the Paris Climate Agreement. Its main objective is to restore 30% of degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2030. France particularly supports this text after being actively involved in the COP15 negotiations, as recently emphasized by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.

In concrete terms, the law will require each European State to implement restoration measures on their degraded ecosystems. This includes removing old dams in rivers that unnecessarily obstruct fish habitats, establishing hedges or small groves of trees on agricultural farms to create refuges for insects that will later pollinate crops and work the soil, rewetting drained peatlands that can absorb large amounts of carbon, increasing the diversity of tree species to improve forest resistance to diseases and fires, etc.

This nature restoration legislation is currently under major attacks in the European Parliament. In recent weeks, the European right wing, particularly the German CDU, has turned opposition to this legislation into a political totem. A race for fake news has been initiated by the right and the far-right, who are largely aligned. I am currently fighting to win this critically important legislation for the protection of biodiversity. Each vote will count during the Environment Committee and plenary sessions. Let us examine the facts and address each allegation made by the opponents point by point.

"This law would lead to freezing 10% of European agriculture"

That is obviously a fake news. The intention is not to encapsulate a portion of agricultural land but rather to reintroduce "landscape infrastructures" such as hedges, trees, or ponds that will both restore biodiversity and ensure future yields. It also involves implementing crops like leguminous crops that sequester carbon in the soil, thereby improving its health and value. Furthermore, the text stipulates that these landscape elements should follow a positive trajectory at the national level and should never become mandatory at the individual farm level, let alone in the form of fallow land. A simple reading of the legislation (Article 9 of the draft regulation) confirms this. It is also important to note that each of these landscape infrastructures is weighted differently. For example, planting 1m2 of hedges represents 5m2 in national accounting in France, which makes sense since hedges are highly biodiverse and therefore receive a higher multiplier coefficient. In other words, the right-wing attack claiming that 10% of our agricultural spaces will no longer be able to produce food is completely false, as recognized by Copa-Cogeca. On the contrary, these landscape elements aim to restore the productive capacities of ecosystems. For agricultural land, this is the foundation of economic activity and one of the criteria for food security. Many governments are therefore active in this field, such as the French Government, which launched a "Pact for Hedges" recently. The majority of agri-food companies and those reliant on biodiversity for their operations are also advocating for these measures, as they are concerned about the decline in available resources necessary for their activities due to decreasing agricultural yields.

?"This law jeopardizes our food security."

It is the exact opposite. Maintaining the status quo poses a risk to our food security. Restoring ecosystems is the best way to become more resilient in the face of climate shocks and protect our yields. This is clear in areas as significant as the Beauce Plateau in France, where agricultural yields have been plateauing or declining for several years. In Spain, the negative impact of drought and resource overexploitation on agricultural production in the Donana Park, as well as in the eastern and southern parts of the country, is now evident. In Italy, agricultural production in the Po Valley has dropped by nearly 30% in the past two years. We can bury our heads in the sand and lie to farmers, but that would not be doing them any favours! We are confronting reality, and the reality is that urgently adapting our agriculture to the consequences of climate change is crucial for safeguarding our long-term food security.

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"This law would prevent us from deploying clean energy because biodiversity would take precedence over energy."

Once again, this is false. The legislation is in line with the texts we have adopted to accelerate renewables and specifies that all projects of this kind will be excluded from the scope of the law. That is why European renewable energy federations like Wind Europe, as well as companies like Iberdrola, a European renewable energy giant, support the legislation. It strengthens the legal certainty of projects by requiring States to plan the implementation of energy and biodiversity restoration objectives in a coherent manner. This is also why these same federations are very concerned about the all-or-nothing position of the EPP regarding renewable energy development. These provisions have been further strengthened and clarified in the Council and Parliament texts.

"This law would increase forest fires because keeping deadwood in the forest is dangerous."

The legislation requires increasing the national level of deadwood (standing or on the ground) in the forests of each Member State. Maintaining deadwood in the forest is an action to protect biodiversity, as well as soil health. The provisions of the legislation do not require that all deadwood shall be left in the forest, but at the very least, the national level of deadwood in 2024 (the time when the legislation should be enforced) should not be degraded, allowing flexibility in its management. For example, large, moist deadwood in the heart of the forest should be conserved, while drier deadwood on the outskirts may be removed to prevent forest fires. To ensure the full coherence of our restoration measures with forest fire risk management, particularly in high-risk regions like southern France, South-Eastern Europe, or the Iberian Peninsula, specific elements related to forest fire risk management have been included in the Environment Committee's text. As the rapporteur of the text is Spanish, this is obviously a subject of concern.

?"This law would prevent small municipalities from using hydroelectricity."

Reconnecting 25,000 km of freshwater rivers is one of the important objectives of this legislation. This measure contributes to combating the drying up of rivers and, ultimately, the proliferation of droughts in Europe. Each Member State will have to make the inventory of obsolete barriers to the free flow of freshwater and remove them if necessary. This includes restoring meanders (making a river more sinuous to facilitate flow) and removing hydroelectric dams that are no longer of use. The decision lies within the Member States. However, since the Water Framework Directive also applies to the Nature Restoration Law, a State can invoke the economic and energy interests of a dam to exempt it from the legislation and not remove it. Similarly, considering that the 25,000 km of freshwater rivers represent 1.5% of the total length of European rivers, there is room for manoeuver to protect mills or ponds used for energy production or biodiversity conservation.

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I am currently fighting to win this incredibly important legislation for the protection of nature. Every vote counts during the Environment Committee and plenary sessions. I am appalled to see the European right drifting more and more towards the populism of the far right, at the expense of nature, the economy, and farmers.