France will plant 1 billion trees by 2030 adapted to the future climate taking into account in particular the increase in temperatures and the new rainfall regimes with droughts more frequent and greater risk of extreme events.
The French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, presented this Friday the main axes of her National Biodiversity Strategy, that he plans to make nature conservation “a collective challenge,” his department explained in a statement.
Borne, who paid a visit to the Champagne and Burgundy Forests National Park Accompanied by the European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevicius, and several of his ministers, he wants to involve regions and municipalities, companies and citizens.
One of the challenges of the municipalities is the “renaturation” of city centers, and with companies is the environmental labeling of clothing and food products from 2024.
One of the axes of the French strategy is to reduce the pressure on biodiversity, for example with the plan that will be presented in a few weeks to decrease the use of pesticides, but also the practical application of the so-called Zero Net Artificialization (ZAN) principle.
With the ZAN, France has set itself the first goal of reducing by 50% by 2030 the rate of artificialization of soils at the expense of natural, agricultural and forest spaces, to reach 100% in 2050.
That means that in the middle of the century to, for example, build householdswarehouses, factories, roads or any other infrastructure on a natural soil, an equivalent surface until then artificialized will have to be returned to the natural state.
It’s about ending the progressive reduction of natural soilswhich in France has a rate of 20,000 hectares per year.