page_title: Grenelle Environnement
section_title: Measures
hierarchical_section_title: Grenelle Environnement / Measures
caption_attribution_description: English: Class 373 in altered SNCF livery at Haute-Picardie Station. More high-speed railways will be built to curb transporting pollution.
context_page_description: The Grenelle de l'environnement was an open multi-party debate in France that brings together representatives of national and local government and organizations on an equal footing, with the goal of unifying a position on a specific theme. The aim of the "Grenelle Environment Round Table", instigated by the former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy in the summer of 2007, was to define the key points of public policy on ecological and sustainable development issues over the following five-year period.
  The "Grenelle Environnement" brought together the government, local authorities, trade unions, business and voluntary sectors to draw up a plan of action of concrete measures to tackle the environmental issue. The name "Grenelle" came from the first conference bringing all these players together which took place in May 1968 in the Rue de Grenelle.
  Officially launched on 6 July 2007, the "Grenelle Environnement" combined the state and civil society in order to define new actions for sustainable development in France.
context_section_description: The working groups at Grenelle have set ambitious goals in many areas: biodiversity and natural resources, climate change, relations between the environment and public health, modes of production and consumption, issues of "environmental governance" and "ecological democracy", the promotion of sustainable patterns of development favorable to competitiveness and employment, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), management of waste.
  The main commitments are:
  Building and housing: generalization of standards of low consumption in new housing and public building, plus setting up incentives for the renovation of housing and building heating.
  Transportation: construction by 2012 of 2000 km of high speed railway, creating a tax system favoring the least polluting vehicles, establishing an environmental tax levied on trucks on the roads, various urban transport projects including light rail.
  Energy: development of renewable energy to achieve 20% of total energy consumption by 2020, ban on incandescent lamps by 2010, project of a tax based on goods and services energy consumption ("carbon tax").
  Health: banning sales of building materials and plant protection products containing possibly dangerous substances, mandatory reporting of the presence of nanomaterials in products for general public, establishment of a plan on air quality.
  Agriculture: tripling of the share of organic farming which is expected to reach 6% of total agricultural land by 2010, halving the use of pesticides, adopting a law to regulate the coexistence between genetically modified and other cultures.
  Biodiversity: creation of a "green grid" linking natural areas, to enable flora and fauna to live and travel throughout the territory, giving priority to new urban developments.
caption: More high-speed railways will be built to curb transportation pollution.
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