Europe’s Nature Restoration Law seeks to restore at least 20 percent of the land and sea areas by 2030, and all degraded ecosystems by 2050. The new law is the first comprehensive, continent-wide law of its kind. The law sets binding targets and obligations for EU member states to rehabilitate their natural habitats, 80 percent of which are currently reported to be in poor condition
By Salam Rajesh
Earlier this month, Europe woke up to the realization of a longstanding issue on having a new law for nature restoration to meet global deadlines on ecosystem restoration by the target year 2050 over climate and global warming concerns.
The European Union passed Europe’s new Nature Restoration Law in mid-June, and this is being hailed as the first-of-its-kind regulation that aims to restore Europe’s damaged ecosystems and subsequently boost biodiversity. This comes in line with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) aiming at restoring Nature to its near-natural status.
The Nature Conservancy’s frontrunner Noor Yafai calls it ‘a momentous day for nature that will deliver a vital boost to efforts to implement international climate and biodiversity targets’. Europe’s World Wildlife Fund stated that the move is a ‘game-changing law for Europe’s degraded ecosystems’, and calling it ‘a huge win for the EU’s nature, citizens and the economy’, reflecting upon the WWF’s global “Restore Nature” campaign.
Siim Kuresoo, European Forest Campaigner at forests and rights NGO, Fern, says, “This is a defining moment in the fight to restore Europe’s endangered forests which are being assailed from different directions, including logging, demand for bioenergy, wildfires and pests. This law provides the vital structure to direct desperately needed resources and energy to restore nature across Europe”.
Europe’s Nature Restoration Law seeks to restore at least 20 percent of the land and sea areas by 2030, and all degraded ecosystems by 2050. The new law is the first comprehensive, continent-wide law of its kind. The law sets binding targets and obligations for EU member states to rehabilitate their natural habitats, 80 percent of which are currently reported to be in poor condition. It focuses especially on habitats with the most potential to capture and store carbon.
The move seeks in restoring wetlands, rivers, forests, grasslands, urban and marine ecosystems, and the species thriving within these ecosystems. The broad goals of the new legislation are to increase biodiversity, as well as harnessing the power of nature to clean water and air, pollinate crops and improve food security, and prevent and reduce the impact of natural disasters like floods.
As part of the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy, it is widely anticipated that the Nature Restoration Law will help Europe meet its Paris Agreement pledge to limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius.
Whereas, everything is not smooth going for the EU in accepting the new legislation within its fold. There are setbacks along the track. The law was first proposed by the European Commission in June 2022. At the UN Biodiversity Conference COP15 in Montreal that year, the proposal received appreciation with member countries agreeing to the call for ‘30×30’ – a pledge to restore 30 percent of the world’s degraded ecosystems by 2030.
However in 2023, conservative parties in Europe like the European People’s Party (EPP) blocked the proposal claiming that the law would threaten the livelihoods of the European farmers, decrease food production, disrupt supply chains and push up food prices for consumers.
With that, the proposal had since been locked in fierce debate and infighting, with the European Commission, left-wing groups, climate scientists and commercial entities arguing that the law is essential to the long-term viability of European industry.
There was strong opposition from the farming community who voiced that the EU’s environmental regulations are putting added strain on an industry already badly impacted by climate change. The farmer organizations stressed on contradictory regulations that required farmers to reduce their environmental impact while increasing food production. Farmers contended that with fuel subsidies being removed and emissions regulations ramped up, they complained of lack of support in the green transition.
Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden rejected the law when voting for the new legislation, while Belgium abstained. However, Austria, which had initially wavered, voted for the law, allowing the minimum threshold for it to pass. Under the new law, EU member states will prioritize restoration of Natura 2000 protected areas, which cover Europe’s threatened species and habitats.
Under the new regulation, habitats that are considered to be in poor conditions will be sought to be restored by at least 30 percent by target year 2030, 60 percent by 2040, and 90 percent by 2050.
The law also seeks member states to make efforts in preventing the deterioration of areas already improved by restoration measures and those that host important land and marine habitats, such as peatlands and coral beds.
The new law significantly includes specific measures to restore Europe’s declining pollinator populations, such as honey bees, and protect certain species of butterflies and birds that are seen as important for pollinating plants and spreading growth through seed dispersal.
It is expected that under the new regulation, at least three billion new trees shall be planted by the target year 2030, six years hence from now, and EU countries must ensure that there is no net loss on urban green spaces and tree canopy cover.
Additionally, human-made barriers are to be removed from rivers to improve water connectivity, with a goal of restoring 25,000 kilometers of rivers to free-flowing conditions by the end of the decade. Nature Conservancy’s Noor Yafai opines that the law has the ‘potential to unlock significant investment in nature and biodiversity, both public and private’.
The new regulation is to be published soon in the EU’s Official Journal and enter into force, becoming directly applicable in all member states. Its impacts will be reviewed by the European Commission in 2033, assessing whether it is headed in the right direction and if not, how to redirect the effort to achieve the targets set by 2050.
The push and pulls on nature restoration and conservation is there, with the objections on off-limits to people from investing in economies in nature reserves, whereas, the move is being seen by conservation strategists that unless nations dedicate to active nature restoration the planet is headed towards serious crises in the coming years, with several instances of extreme weather events already creating havoc across the globe in recent years.