French biodiversity minister assesses 2023 progress on key measures

In an interview with Euractiv France, French Secretary of State for Biodiversity Sarah El Haïry reflected on the EU’s progress this year, following the COP28 summit in Dubai, the adoption of France’s national biodiversity strategy as well as the EU’s pesticides directive and nature restoration law.

Read the original interview in French here.

While the COP28’s outcome was met with mixed reactions, El Haïry was nonetheless pleased with the summit’s “forestry contracts” signed with Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

These contracts “enable countries that are home to primary forests to be remunerated at international level for the environmental services they provide to humanity” and allow for “new private funds” to be raised, El Haïry explained.

While “there is a global financing gap for biodiversity […] the diversity of ecosystems and the pressures they face makes biodiversity offsetting more complex than carbon offsetting, which is easier to quantify,” El Haïry added.

“Biodiversity credit” systems could indeed end up suffering from the poor image associated with carbon credits, whose debated effectiveness in combatting global warming has been noted in several studies, the secretary of state remarked.

To address this issue, “together with my British counterparts, we have set up a special mission bringing together experts from all sectors,” said El Haïry.

The aim is “to draw conclusions from our experience with carbon credits, to bring together existing initiatives and find the right indicators for preserving and restoring biodiversity,” she told Euractiv.

And according to El Haïry, businesses have an essential role to play.

“Nearly half of the world’s GDP depends on services provided free of charge by nature. If companies don’t take into account their dependence on biodiversity and the increasing scarcity of natural resources, their resilience and even their business models, and therefore their ratings and financial valuations, will deteriorate,” she explains.

“There is, therefore, a risk of economic collapse,” she warns.

To involve the private sector in biodiversity matters, El Haïry pointed to the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will require every company with over 500 employees – 250 employees by 2025 – to set up a “biodiversity transition plan”.

“Then, large companies will take all production and value chains on board with them,” she added.

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Nature restoration, glyphosate

In the interview, El Haïry also spoke of EU proposals related to biodiversity, including the much-contested nature restoration law, which was considerably diluted in the European Parliament, the Commission’s proposal to extend the authorisation of glyphosate for another 10 years, and the Parliament’s rejection of the pesticides sustainability directive.

“France fought hard to change the European Commission’s position on glyphosate,” she assures, rejecting the notion that Paris helped tipped the balance by remaining neutral on the matter.

“We achieved some progress, such as the assessment of impacts on biodiversity and certain targeted bans,” she claims, saying France will maintain its ambition to cut pesticide use in half by 2030, despite the EU’s lower level of ambition.

“It’s not because Europe is unresponsive that France should reconsider its ambitions,” she said.

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French strategy

At the national level, France unveiled its third National Biodiversity Strategy (SNB), which aims to protect 30% of the country’s marine and land areas.

“As we were unsure about the future of the Nature Restoration Law, we decided to move forward on the issue of ecosystem restoration,” said El Haïry about the French strategy’s targets for restoring wetlands, as well as plans to plant 50,000 kilometres of hedgerows by 2030.

“We are now committed to developing a National Restoration Plan to complement the SNB on this matter and to do so within the two years granted by the EU after adopting the regulation – our hope is for early 2024,” she added.

Under its national plan, France plans for a “strong protection” of one-third of the 30% of protected areas. These strong protection zones should cover 100% of glaciers, she added.

For these special zones, El Haïry also said she would like to “reverse the burden of proof, which means that it would be up to those who wish to develop an activity to prove that it doesn’t harm the environment”.

Talks about extending the “strong protection” status to the country’s coastlines are currently underway.

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Green Deal and EU elections

However, biodiversity efforts may be threatened by the upcoming EU elections in June, particularly as conservative and far-right groups currently leading the polls are resistant to backing the EU’s flagship climate policy package, the European Green Deal.

“There will always be a risk that the Green Deal’s ambitions will be curtailed,” said El Haïry.

However, “there can be no European economy without living things. Without biodiversity, there can be no European energy, industry or agriculture,” she warned.

In her opinion, “the key is to move away from moralistic rhetoric and implement the necessary transitions”.

Still, she did comment on the far-right Rassemblement National leader and head of the EU election list, Jordan Bardella, who she said holds “demagogic” views that “only serve to divide and stir up people’s fears”.

By pitching the EU elections as a “sanction” vote against the French government, Bardella is “nationalising a European election,” she warned.

[Edited by Frédéric Simon]