Companies invited to address the issue of biodiversity

2023-11-27 19:58:18

Published on Nov. 27, 2023 at 6:54 p.m. Updated on Nov. 27, 2023 at 6:58 p.m.

“Biodiversity is still the blind spot of the economic world. However, companies that do not take up the subject risk no longer existing tomorrow! » While the government presented France’s national biodiversity strategy (SNB) this Monday, the Secretary of State for Biodiversity, Sarah El Haïry, wants to mobilize not only citizens and public actors, but also businesses.

As such, she will bring together 150 of them at the Ministry of Ecological Transition on Wednesday, and plans to launch working groups to support them in their approach. “Some people don’t know that natural ecosystems provide them with services that allow them to follow their models,” she insists during an interview with “Echos”.

Agriculture flagship sector

Supposed to come into force on January 1, the transposition into French law of the European directive CSRD (Corporate sustainability reporting directive), which includes reporting obligations in this area, should enable them to become aware of it. “It will be presented to the Council of Ministers on December 6, for transposition before the end of the year,” indicates the Secretary of State.

Certain sectors, whose impact on biodiversity is more significant, will undoubtedly have to mobilize more. In energy, for example, the SNB includes the obligations, provided for by the law on the acceleration of renewable energies of March 2023, for solar and wind professionals to take into account biodiversity issues in their projects , or even to offset their impact.

But the sector most affected will undoubtedly be agriculture, which is both one of the major contributors to the protection of biodiversity (plantations, preservation of meadows for extensive agriculture, etc.) and one of its major destroyers (use of polluting pesticides).

The SNB specifies that the government plans to “support its agroecological transition” – a broader objective already set in other national strategies such as the National Strategy for Food, Nutrition and Climate or the National Strategic Policy Plan. common agricultural.

Do not put nature under cover

And this, without calling into question the Ecophyto 2030 plan, currently under consultation, the government confirmed this Monday. While the new Ecophyto plan plans to halve the use of pesticides (compared to the 2015-2017 period), stakeholders in the agricultural world had hoped that it would be abandoned, after the rejection of the corresponding European text by the Parliament last week. “It’s an ambitious but necessary plan,” argues Sarah El Haïry.

But overall, agriculture is relatively spared from the SNB – to the great dismay of environmental NGOs. During this Monday’s meeting in Matignon, the president of the chambers of agriculture Sébastien Windsor welcomed the desire to “take on board and not impose”, to “not put nature under cover and not stigmatize this or that profession,” reported AFP.