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The French Law on Biodiversity and the Protection of Soils
Abstract
The French law on biodiversity was voted in August 2016 after 2 years of intense debates between the two chambers and the government. The result is quite positive for soils, even though this law has confirmed that soils are not about to benefit from a proper regime of protection. Among the evolutions brought out by this major law that came into force exactly 40 years after the law on Nature Protection of 1976, we will develop in this article the perspectives allowed by the recognition of the “Non-regression principle”. Moreover, the recognition of soils as a constitutive element of the national common heritage and the recognition of the concept of “biological processes” are likely to bring new evolutions in favor of the protection of soils.
... Still, the growing awareness of citizens and lawmarkers of the need to adapt cities to climate change (in particular to high-intensity rainfalls and heat waves), together with a general expectation of an improved life quality in cities have recently fostered the need for de-sealing measures and soil renaturation (European Commission, 2012). This has been specifically implemented in recent French legislation, in particular with the 2021 Climate-Resilience Law, which aims to halve the rate of artificialisation between 2021 and 2031 compared to the previous ten years and to achieve the objective of 'zero net artificialisation' by 2050 (Desrousseaux, 2018). All these objectives must be translated into planning and urban development documents at the regional level and implemented at the inter-municipal and communal levels. ...
... TCLP Soren's Clause (2022).238 Wolff and Kaphengst (2017),Desrousseaux (2018). ...
This chapter highlights the importance of soil biodiversity in the provision of ecosystem services, and its relevance in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity ‘mainstreaming’ agenda, and Convention architecture. It provides case studies relating to the mainstreaming of soil biodiversity, as well as a ‘Soil Biodiversity Perception Checklist’, to help integrate soil biodiversity, soil health and soil ecosystem services into decision making at all levels and across all sectors, including in policy, and land use and management strategy and practice.
... Still, the growing awareness of citizens and lawmarkers of the need to adapt cities to climate change (in particular to high-intensity rainfalls and heat waves), together with a general expectation of an improved life quality in cities have recently fostered the need for de-sealing measures and soil renaturation (European Commission, 2012). This has been specifically implemented in recent French legislation, in particular with the 2021 Climate-Resilience Law, which aims to halve the rate of artificialisation between 2021 and 2031 compared to the previous ten years and to achieve the objective of 'zero net artificialisation' by 2050 (Desrousseaux, 2018). All these objectives must be translated into planning and urban development documents at the regional level and implemented at the inter-municipal and communal levels. ...
... 64 62 Schwick et al. (2018). 63 Desrousseaux (2017). 64 https://www.gouvernement.fr/en/biodiversity-france-s-strategy-for-action. ...
Excessive “land take” is unsustainable because it causes detrimental and partly irreversible changes to ecosystems as well as adverse social and economic impacts. Here, we showcase three policy instruments for reducing land take, namely quantitative targets, tradable planning permits and infrastructure cost calculators and give an overview of their current application in selected European countries. We conclude that proven and field-tested instruments are available and that it is important to tap their full potential for further reducing land take in Europe.
Improved understanding of threatened species diversity is important for long-term conservation planning and natural area management, especially under ongoing global change. Geodiversity - the diversity of earth surface materials, forms and processes - may be a useful biodiversity surrogate for conservation planning, as well as having conservation value itself. Links between geodiversity and species richness have been demonstrated; establishing whether geodiversity also relates to threatened species' diversity and distribution patterns is a logical next step for conservation biology. We used four geodiversity variables (rock type richness, soil type richness, geomorphological diversity, hydrological diversity), in addition to four climatic and topographic variables, to account for threatened species diversity across 31 of Finland's national parks. We also analyzed rarity-weighted richness (a measure of site complementarity) of threatened vascular plants, fungi, bryophytes, and all species combined. Our 1km(2) -resolution dataset included 271 threatened species from 16 major taxa. We modeled threatened species richness (raw and rarity-weighted) using boosted regression trees. Commonly used climatic variables, especially the annual temperature sum above 5°C, dominated our models, consistent with the critical role of temperature in this boreal environment. Importantly, geodiversity added significant explanatory power, improving our understanding of threatened species. Greater geodiversity was consistently associated with increased threatened species richness across taxa; the combined effect of geodiversity variables was greater still in the rarity-weighted richness analyses (except for fungi). Geodiversity measures correlated most strongly with species richness (raw and rarity-weighted) of threatened vascular plants and bryophytes; such correlations were weakest for molluscs, lichens, and mammals. While it is well known that simple measures of topography improve biodiversity modeling and conservation practice, our results suggest that geodiversity data relating to geology, landforms, and hydrology are also worth including. This reinforces recent arguments that 'conserving Nature's stage' is an important principle in conservation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Most conservation planning to date has focused on protecting today's biodiversity with the assumption that it will be tomorrow's biodiversity. However, modern climate change has already resulted in distributional shifts of some species and is projected to result in many more shifts in the coming decades. As species redistribute and biotic communities reorganize, conservation plans based on current patterns of biodiversity may fail to adequately protect species in the future. One approach for addressing this issue is to focus on conserving a range of abiotic conditions in the conservation-planning process. By doing so, it may be possible to conserve an abiotically diverse "stage" upon which evolution will play out and support many actors (biodiversity). We reviewed the fundamental underpinnings of the concept of conserving the abiotic stage, starting with the early observations of von Humboldt, who mapped the concordance of abiotic conditions and vegetation, and progressing to the concept of the ecological niche. We discuss challenges posed by issues of spatial and temporal scale, the role of biotic drivers of species distributions, and latitudinal and topographic variation in relationships between climate and landform. For example, abiotic conditions are not static, but change through time-albeit at different and often relatively slow rates. In some places, biotic interactions play a substantial role in structuring patterns of biodiversity, meaning that patterns of biodiversity may be less tightly linked to the abiotic stage. Furthermore, abiotic drivers of biodiversity can change with latitude and topographic position, meaning that the abiotic stage may need to be defined differently in different places. We conclude that protecting a diversity of abiotic conditions will likely best conserve biodiversity into the future in places where abiotic drivers of species distributions are strong relative to biotic drivers, where the diversity of abiotic settings will be conserved through time, and where connectivity allows for movement among areas providing different abiotic conditions.
© 2015 Society for Conservation Biology.
Conservationists have proposed methods for adapting to climate change that assume species distributions are primarily explained by climate variables. The key idea is to use the understanding of species-climate relationships to map corridors and to identify regions of faunal stability or high species turnover. An alternative approach is to adopt an evolutionary timescale and ask ultimately what factors control total diversity, so that over the long run the major drivers of total species richness can be protected. Within a single climatic region, the temperate area encompassing all of the Northeastern U.S. and Maritime Canada, we hypothesized that geologic factors may take precedence over climate in explaining diversity patterns. If geophysical diversity does drive regional diversity, then conserving geophysical settings may offer an approach to conservation that protects diversity under both current and future climates. Here we tested how well geology predicts the species diversity of 14 US states and three Canadian provinces, using a comprehensive new spatial dataset. Results of linear regressions of species diversity on all possible combinations of 23 geophysical and climatic variables indicated that four geophysical factors; the number of geological classes, latitude, elevation range and the amount of calcareous bedrock, predicted species diversity with certainty (adj. R(2) = 0.94). To confirm the species-geology relationships we ran an independent test using 18,700 location points for 885 rare species and found that 40% of the species were restricted to a single geology. Moreover, each geology class supported 5-95 endemic species and chi-square tests confirmed that calcareous bedrock and extreme elevations had significantly more rare species than expected by chance (P
Based on an enlarged concept of soil, the competitive use of the six soil functions is identified as the main problem of soil protection. Within the concept of soil protection and remediation, goals, guiding principles and procedures are defined and the actual status of integrated research for soil protection in Europe is discussed under the aspects of the actual advances in soil protection and remediation, the integration and harmonization of concepts and goals, the integration and harmonization of methodological approaches and the integration and harmonization with time.
Luca Montanarella calls for a voluntary international agreement to protect the ground beneath our feet from erosion and degradation.
As reflected in the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 and the National Forest Management Act of 1976, undefined biodiversity mandates and related ecological concepts are increasingly appearing in the federal laws governing the public lands. The question arises whether such general statutory provisions can be translated into enforceable legal standards and policies. Both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service have promulgated extensive policies and rules incorporating new biodiversity and ecological integrity obligations into their planning and decision processes. This article assesses the effectiveness of these efforts, inquiring whether the agencies have established clear management priorities, embraced well-accepted ecosystem management principles, and ensured meaningful accountability. Despite several promising steps, the agencies have thus far been reluctant to adopt a rigorously prescriptive ecological management regime. Nonetheless, these nascent legally mandated excursions into biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management are providing valuable lessons in how to translate new scientific ideas into viable planning and management protocols on the public lands.
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