21.4.2023
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
C 140/47
1.4.
While nature restoration is necessary in protected areas due to deteriorating conditions, not all restored areas can nor must become protected areas.
Even though the EESC considers it “essential” that “some parts of the protected areas should be subject to strict protection (with non-intervention management)” (2), it is even more important to ensure uses that maintain biodiversity across the board.
Most areas must aim to restore their ecosystems without excluding specific and adapted economic activities.
In fact, extensive agriculture and forestry have contributed to the high level of biodiversity that today needs to be protected.
These extensive forms of agriculture and forestry, which are more and more abandoned nowadays because of their low economic viability, should therefore be additionally supported (3).
Rehabilitation is therefore perhaps a more suitable scientific term also used in policies coined to ensure a balance between living and producing.
The EESC therefore recommends dropping the term “restoration” in favour of “rehabilitation” (4), especially as nature is not static and cannot be “restored” to its original state like a broken house or car.
Numerous studies have shown that rewilding measures, for peatlands for example, in many cases have significant costs, without really being able to deliver actual full restoration of the “original state”.
We need to think about what we are aiming to achieve: the aim of the regulation should not be to restore the natural state of the environment, but to restore the ecosystem services of the environment and thus to support a sustainable, multifunctional use of these areas.
With humans having modified the natural environment over the years, it is scientifically impossible to achieve a “restoration of nature”.
Progressive climate change can also be a factor in why the conditions of some ecosystems from the past can no longer be fully achieved.
Conversely, ensuring the sustainability of environments by promoting the viability of ecosystem services is a realistic objective.
The EESC would like to see an appropriate policy framework; this is where the Commission’s document is disappointing.
1.5.
Fixed timetables and rigid thresholds do not work perfectly well with the unpredictable ways of nature.
Imposing strict deadlines on Member States is only appropriate in terms of the administrative and planning conditions to be put in place.
However, a flexible approach is needed to take into account the precise needs, conditions, opportunities, production and income status, and starting point of each natural area.
The proposed regulation is unclear about the prioritisation and allocation of restoration measures that should be made by the Member States and thus, imposes a risk to achieving high quality results cost-effectively.
Decision-making at the level of Member States is clearly a justified principle since it also secures the fulfilment of the rights of landowners and reflects the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.
1.6.
The Commission’s document is disappointing as regards the overall impact assessment, which should focus especially on economic, social and food issues, and the EESC therefore calls for an additional impact assessment.
1.7.
The EESC recommends that adjacent areas that are initially unproductive but which are also of value for biodiversity be included in the 10 % target.
The EESC stresses that the text sets particularly ambitious targets for farmers, and points out that it is important to take into account all natural habitats.
However, it is important to involve the whole of society in improving our ecosystems.
In this respect, the EESC recalls the principle of proportionality of measures (fair distribution of burdens and costs, but also of benefits) between the various stakeholders.
1.8.
The EESC supports the objective, as it is relevant to a strategic ambition for the future of the EU, and recommends strengthening the targets by encouraging, in particular through extensive agricultural activities, the restoration of all aquatic environments, including the rewetting of peatlands, while securing the social and economic sustainability of agriculture and forestry.
1.9.
The EESC is aware that Europe needs a completely new water policy.
The policy of draining water from landscapes as quickly as possible, practised for centuries, has had many negative consequences for biodiversity, but in the meantime — partly as a result of climate change — the negative impact on forestry and agriculture (dryness/fires) and on local people (floods) has also become apparent.
The EESC therefore stresses that water must return to nature or be retained there, while not forgetting that human action remains beneficial in many situations, in particular through the maintenance of watercourses.
(2) (3) (4)
Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on “Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions — EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 — Bringing nature back into our lives” (COM(2020) 380 final) (OJ C 429, 11.12.2020, p. 259).
EESC information report on the Benefits of extensive livestock farming and organic fertilizers in the context of the European Green Deal (EGD).
Rehabilitation means focusing on restoring certain ecological functions.