Nature protection and biodiversity - National Responses (France)

Knowledge and preservation of the natural environment

Knowledge of the natural environment (characteristics, flora and fauna composition and geographical distribution) is nowadays regarded as an essential prerequisite for the proper management and protection of our natural spaces.  This knowledge has been gradually increasing from the 1980s onwards, as a result of various programmes, such as the ZNIEFF programme, the Corine Biotopes project, etc.

In order to create a network of protected areas representative of biodiversity, a wide variety of measures have been introduced in France, each of which has its own specific objectives, constraints and management methods.

The various types of conservation measures include:    

·            obligations at the international and European level,

·            national regulatory protection,

·            land-control policy,

·            protection and contractual land management.

Obligations at the international and European level

The 29 RAMSAR sites in metropolitan France (RAMSAR = Convention on Wetlands of International Importance) cover 650 000 ha, and the five sites in the DOMs cover 266 000 ha (three sites in French Guiana, one in Guadeloupe and one in Martinique).  The TAAFs (French Southern and Antarctic Lands) have one site comprising 2 270 000 ha and French Polynesia has one site of 5 000 ha. In all, the 36 sites represent an area of 3 191 000 ha of which 80% are situated overseas.

The Natura 2000 network consists of Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Aries (SPA). Some SPAs and SACs may overlap. The whole of the Natura 2000 network in France, not counting any area twice, covers an area of 75 215 km², of which 7 015 km² are situated in the marine environment. The terrestrial area of the network represents about 12.4% of the territory of metropolitan France.

Member States have to classify as SPAs those areas of land which are most appropriate, and must give the European Commission full details of any measures taken in those areas. In August 2008 France had designated 371 SPAs, covering 46 086 km² (about 7.8% of the territory of metropolitan France), of which 3 297 km² were in the marine environment.

Member States must also propose to the Commission Sites of Community Interest (SCIs) which, following validation at the European level, are converted into SACs. In August 2008, France had 1 334 such sites, covering 52 188 km² (about 8.4% of the national metropolitan territory), of which 6 043 km² were in the marine environment. Most of these sites are still SCIs, but since 2006 the first SACs have been validated.

National regulatory protection

The national parks protect exceptional areas in their central zones, known as ‘hearts’, which are generally uninhabited or sparsely populated) while encouraging economic, social and cultural development in their peripheral zones. In April 2006, 46 years after the founding law of 1960, a new law was adopted (Law No 2006-436 of 14 April) in order to take into account scientific, legal and political developments. There are nine national parks, six of which are in metropolitan France (Cévennes, Écrins, Mercantour, Port-Cros, Pyrénées, Vanoise) and three overseas: one in Guadeloupe, and the parks of French Guiana and Réunion, created in 2007. The ‘hearts’ of the parks in metropolitan France cover 3 525 km² or 0.7% of the territory, while the ‘hearts’ of the overseas parks cover 20 884 km², of which about 94% is accounted for solely by the Amazonian park of French Guiana.

Nature reserves: in metropolitan France, an area of 2 645 km² is protected by various types of ‘nature reserve’ status, while the corresponding area overseas is 25 840 km², which includes France’s largest nature reserve, the French Southern Lands. There are several types of national nature reserve, which differ in the way they were created and the way they are managed, but they all have the objective of preserving fragile, rare or threatened natural environments of high ecological and scientific value. Every year they receive millions of visitors and thus play a major role in raising public awareness of nature and ecology.

Prefectural Decrees on biotope protection, introduced in 1977, regulate human activities on the perimeters of biotopes which vary greatly in size. They are intended to preserve the biotopes necessary for the survival of animal or plant species which are protected at  the national or regional level. At the end of 2007 there were 645 Decrees on biotope protection in metropolitan France and 29 overseas, covering a total area of 1 630 km².

Land-control policy

The Conservatoire de l'espace littoral et des rivages lacustres (CELRL), the Coastal Protection Agency, which is responsible for the conservation of coastal and lakeside areas, implements a land policy which safeguards natural spaces and landscapes within those areas (in metropolitan France, the DOMs, Mayotte and St-Pierre-et-Miquelon). On 1 June 2008, its area of responsibility covered about 600 natural sites with a surface area of 1 172 km², i.e. about 1 000 km of coastline. This land, which is inalienable, consists essentially of acquisitions made by the CELRL in the private sector but also public-sector allocations.

The Conservatoires d’espaces naturels (CEN) are bodies for the conservation of natural spaces, associations which form a network within a national federation (FCEN) and which benefit from subsidies from local authorities and the State. In the mid-1980s there were 21 of these regional conservation bodies and eight conservation bodies at department level in metropolitan France, which protect and manage 1 376 km² of natural environments spread over almost 2 230 sites. In the spring of 2008 a similar body in Réunion officially joined the network and forms the 22nd regional conservation body.

The national parks, nature reserves and decrees on biotope protection

 Source : ‘Protected spaces’ database, MNHN (SPN) and RNF, 2008.

Contractual land management

The parcs naturels marins (PNM) are marine natural parks created by the Law on National Parks of April 2006. This new legal tool is intended to reconcile protection of the marine environment with the sustainable development of the activities which depend upon it. It provides a framework for concerted governance between all the partners affected by enormous marine spaces which are remarkable for their natural heritage. Greater knowledge of the marine environment is also one of the chief objectives of the PNMs. The first marine natural park, Iroise, was created by the Decree of 28 September 2007. It covers an area of more than 343 000 ha. Several projects are currently being studied, such as the one covering the Côte Vermeille, the one for the Somme, Authie and Canche Estuaries, and the one for Mayotte.

The parcs naturels régionaux (PNR) are regional natural parks which, since 1968, have had the task of protecting and making optimum use of the natural, cultural and human heritage of the land that they cover, as well as implementing a planning and development policy which respects the environment. Each park was created by Ministerial Decree at the initiative of the region, for a renewable period of ten years. The creation and renewal of ‘park’ status is based on a charter, a contractual document which lays down the objectives of nature conservation and economic, social and cultural development. The regional natural parks are managed by mixed syndicates involving those local authorities which have approved the charter. Since December 2000 and the ‘Solidarity and Urban Renewal’ Law, the creation of these parks has been the subject of a public inquiry procedure.

For more information about the PNRs, go to: http://www.parcs-naturels-regionaux.tm.fr

Policy on the protection of the landscape

In France, policy on the landscape is the responsibility of the Environment Minister. The first measures to protect the landscape were taken in 1906. Since 1993, French policy on landscapes has been based on the so-called ‘Landscape Law’ and the European Landscape Convention, which came into force, in French law, in 2006. This led to the definition of a national policy on landscapes:

·                      to develop our knowledge of the approximately 2 000 landscapes in French territory and to set landscape-quality objectives, such knowledge to be acquired through the use of different tools such as landscape atlases, the National Landscape Photography Observatory and support for research programmes;

·                      to improve the consistency of territorial policies, so as to understand how landscapes develop, involving the use of landscape charters and plans, which are essential tools for achieving coherent management of landscapes at individual territory level;

·                      to support the responsibility of all those who are involved in the landscape, by increasing the awareness of the public and of the main players  in the protection of landscapes (engineers, design offices, landscapers).

Several programmes and tools have been developed in the context of this policy:

·         landscape atlases which are intended to record and describe the landscapes of a territory and which have to be updated every 10 years;

 ·         classified sites and registered sites: a registered site is described as being ‘a site of an artistic, historic, scientific or picturesque nature’, while a classified site is defined as ‘a site of an artistic, historic, scientific, legendary or picturesque nature, the quality of which requires, in the public interest, its conservation in its present state and its protection from any serious harm’.

·         the National Landscape Photography Observatory which should make it possible to form a database consisting of series of photographs, in order to analyse changes in landscapes and the roles of the different players involved, so as to be able to guide landscape developments in the right direction.

·         landscape charters and plans are frameworks for the drafting, by local authorities, of landscape management projects in the form of landscape charters and landscape plans, which are a form of concerted action on the future of the landscapes of a territory (urban sprawl, preservation of wildlife corridors, etc.). 

For further information about landscapes, go to:

http://www.stats.environnement.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/acces-thematique/territoire/occupation-des-sols-et-paysages/le-paysage.html

Wetland protection measures

The protection measures which apply to wetlands of major importance are the same as those which cover natural environments in general. The National Wetlands Observatory monitors developments in wetlands of major importance. On record at the observatory are 152 zones representing various ecosystems within metropolitan France. They are divided into four types: Atlantic shoreline, Mediterranean shoreline, alluvial valley and inland plain. A total of 52 mountain masses rich in peat bogs have also been identified and are treated separately. Some 69% of the area covered by wetlands of major importance is protected by a regulatory, land-management or contractual measure. Wetlands are to a large extent covered by designation as Special Protection Areas (SPAs) and Sites of Community Importance (SCIs).

The new concept of ‘undersea landscape’

Knowledge of habitats is an important prerequisite for the overall and consistent management of all activities in the sea, or for the designation of new protected marine areas. However, undersea biological data are often limited to sectors where considerable research has been carried out and it is not possible to carry out continuous mapping of habitats over vast areas. With a view to filling this gap, for several years new predictive measures have been used in order to define submarine landscapes. Various types of data are used: the nature of sea-beds, bathymetry, luminosity, turbidity, temperature, intensity of surge, and agitation close to the bottom … When all these data are combined, the different landscape classification types can be defined and mapped: sunlit rock, shallow sandy area, mixed sediments with considerable surge stress … At the same time, on the basis of biological data for the test sectors, it is possible to identify the physical and chemical parameters associated with the presence of a particular a habitat (the concept of ‘biotope’ or ‘ecological niche’).

By combining all this information, with the support of statistical methods, it is possible to produce maps predicting the presence of one species or another, or one habitat or another.

Map predicting the presence of Fucus vésiculeux in waters off the Isle of Bréhat

After E. De Oliveira, J. Populus, B. Guillaumot, 2007. « Prédictive modeling of coastal habitats using remote sensing data and fuzzy logic ».

Physical and economic approaches to the services provided by ecosystems in France

Following the publication of the MEA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment), France started to carry out work with the aim of enhancing the physical evaluation of the services provided by ecosystems. In particular, an exploratory study launched in 2006 by MEEDDM (the French Environment Ministry: Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea) enabled a methodology to be proposed for qualifying and quantifying the services provided by ecosystems in France, based on MEA typology. Ecosystems are associated with 43 services, comprising support services, provisioning services, regulating services and cultural services, provided via their ecological functions. This exploratory study will have to be intensified in order to achieve a real ‘MEA France’. Moreover, MEEDDM has launched a study, carried out by the MNHM, on the indicators of ecological functions associated with support services and regulating services. This exploratory study proposes an initial methodological framework for qualifying and quantifying ecological functions, as well as pathways of function indicators, which could be used, for example, for the purposes of environmental accounting or compensation in kind for certain types of harm caused to biodiversity.

In April 2009, a report entitled ‘Economic approach to biodiversity and ecosystems services’ was published by the Strategic Analysis Centre (CAS). It had the following main objectives:

–        ‘to present and critically analyse the methods that can be used to estimate the economic values of biodiversity and ecosystem services;

–        to apply these methods to the ecosystems present in France in order to provide reference values that can be used, in particular, in the socio-economic evaluation of public investments’.

The report sets out possible courses of action for integrating the economic dimension into the approach to biodiversity, and makes a distinction between ‘remarkable’ biodiversity and ‘general’ or ‘ordinary’ biodiversity. The first definition covers entities (genes, species, habitats, landscapes) whose value lies essentially in their exceptional heritage nature, which is difficult to measure by classic economic methods. The second definition refers to ecosystems which are common but in which the multiple interactions of their entities contribute to the production of the services that our societies use.

The document proposes minimum monetary reference values for two ecosystems which form part of ordinary biodiversity (temperate forests and permanent grasslands) which can be used in the context of the socio-economic evaluation of infrastructure projects alongside other tutelary values such as that of carbon.

It also suggests that additional work should be done, taking other services into consideration, thereby significantly enhancing the value of ecosystem services. The report recommends a rapid broadening of the scope of this work so as to cover all national ecosystems for which data from similar ecosystems are available, taking into account predictable variations, in the medium term (30-50 years), in the rates of use of the various ecosystem services. It recommends thinking about the structures responsible for carrying out, discussing and regularly updating this work and specifying how this reference should be used for practical purposes, as well as laying down procedural rules giving it legitimacy and allowing it to be taken on board by all the operators involved.

Economic instruments for the conservation of biodiversity

In addition to the regulatory instruments, France is interested in economic instruments likely to contribute towards preserving biodiversity. A thematic report for the Commission des comptes et de l’économie de l’environnement (Audit Commission for the Economy of the Environment) is currently in preparation on this subject. Amongst other things, this report emphasises fiscal incentives in favour of biodiversity, payments for environmental services, and also the taking into account of the degradation of natural assets in the search for new indicators of measurement of economic, social and environmental performance. Having placed economic tools within the framework of the development of policies preserving biodiversity, the report gives a broad picture of the places where economic tools are used in France and abroad. It analyses 27 types of economic tool. finally, it looks at existing thinking on the conditions for the use of these tools in the French context.

One of the potential economic tools was launched by (MEEDDM) in 2008. This was a trial run of a compensation scheme (similar to the compensation banks which exist in other places, such as the USA and Australia).

This scheme requires an operator to anticipate the potential compensation requirement. The operator acquires land which he rehabilitates with a view to enhancing its subsequent value as compensation for various clients, for whom this arrangement remains optional and applies on the basis of established law.

The first trial run was launched in the plain of Crau in May 2009, by MEEDDM and the operator CDC Biodiversité jointly. CDC Biodiversité acquired 357 hectares of orchards at the Domaine de Cossure, in order to run a rehabilitation project for the Coussouls de Crau nature reserve. CDC Biodiversité will manage the land for a period of 30 years, at the end of which time the operator has undertaken to guarantee the permanence of the site’s ecological vocation.

The operation will make it possible for the value of the land to be increased later, as compensation, via the sale of credit units, for projects likely to have a significant residual impact on equivalent environments close to the Cossure site, in accordance with the currently valid inquiry procedures.

Bibliographic references:

·         Bensettiti F., Gaudillat V. (coord.), 2002. Connaissance et gestion des habitats et des espèces d'intérêt communautaire (Knowledge and management of habitats and species of Community interest) (7 vols.). Paris, La Documentation française, Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. 353 p. (collection: Cahiers d'habitats [Habitat notebooks], Natura 2000)

·         Bernard P. (ed.), 1994. Les zones humides - Rapport d'évaluation (Wetlands – An evaluation report), La Documentation Française, 391 p.

·         Bernard Chevassus-au-Louis, Jean-Michel Salles, Sabine Bielsa, Dominique Richard, Gilles Martin,Jean-Luc Pujol, 2009 ; Approche économique de la biodiversité et des services liés aux ecosystems (An economic approach to biodiversity and ecosystems services) , 348 pages. May be downloaded at the following address: http://www.strategie.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/04Rapport_biodiversite_28avril2009_.pdf

·         Collectif, 2004. Balades entre terre et mer, sur les sites du Conservatoire du littoral (Walks between sea and land, on Coastal Protection Agency sites). Paris, Dakota Éditions. 248 p.

·         Comité français pour l'UICN (French Committee for IUCN), January 2005. La France et la biodiversité : enjeux et responsabilité (France and biodiversity: risk and responsibility. UICN - France, Paris, 8 p.   

·         Fustec E. et Lefeuvre J.C. (ed.), 2000. Fonctions et valeurs des zones humides (Functions and values of wetlands). Paris, Dunod, 426 p.     
(collection: Technique et ingénierie, série Environnement).

·         G. Rocamora, D. Yeatman-Berthelot, 1999. "Oiseaux menacés et à surveiller en France" (Endangered birds and birds to be monitored in France) . Société d'études ornithologiques de France/LPO, Paris, 598 p.   

·         Giran J.-P., 2003. "Les parcs nationaux : une référence pour la France, une chance pour ses territoires" (The national parks: a reference for France, an opportunity for its territories) (Official report by the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development). Paris, La Documentation française. 104 p.

·         IFEN (French Institute for the Environment), 2000. "La flore de France, enjeu majeur de la politique de conservation de la nature" (The flora of France, a major stake in conservation policy), collection: Les données de l'environnement, n° 54, 4 p.   

·         IFEN, 2002. "Le patrimoine naturel" (Natural heritage) in Environment in France. Paris, Orleans, La Découverte, IFEN, pp. 115-136.   

·         IFEN, 2006. "La biodiversité " (Biodiversity) in Environment in France. Orléans, IFEN, pp. 273- 296.    

·         J.-M. Thiollay, V. Bretagnolle, 2004. "Rapaces nicheurs de France" (Nesting birds of prey in France) . Collection: La bibliothèque du naturaliste (The naturalist’s library), Éditions Delachaux et Niestlé, Paris, 175 p.

·         Léonard Y., Moris P., 2008.  “Bilan du suivi hivernal 2007/2008” (Status report on winter survival), Quoi de neuf ? Bulletin d’information du Réseau Loup (What’s new? Information Bulletin of the Wolf Network), n° 19, June 2008. pp. 12-17.

·         Marboutin E., Duchamp C., Boyer J., Moris P., Léonard Y., Catusse M., Briaudet P.E., Migot P., 2008. “Le suivi du statut de conservation de la population de Lynx en France : bilan pour la période triennale 2005-2007”, (Monitoring the conservation status of the lynx population in France: situation during the three-year period 2005-2007), Bulletin d’information du Réseau Lynx (Information Bulletin of the Lynx Network), ONCFS, n° 14. pp. 20-27.

·         CGDD-SOeS, 2010. Données de synthèse sur la biodiversité (Survey data on biodiversity). Orléans : SOeS. 88 p. (collection: Références).

·         Réserves naturelles de France, 2004. "Les réserves naturelles au cœur de la politique du patrimoine naturel" (dossier) (Nature reserves at the heart of national heritage policy), La lettre des Réserves Naturelles, Special Edition 77. 35 p.

·         Saint-Andrieux C., Klein F., Leduc D., Landry P., Guibert B., 2004. “La progression du Cerf élaphe en France depuis 1985” (The development of the red deer in France since 1985), Faune sauvage, ONCFS, n° 264. pp. 19-26.

Websites:

·         Data bank on Ramsar sites: http://ramsar.wetlands.org

·         French Committee for IUCN: http://www.uicn.fr

·         Inventaire national du patrimoine naturel (INPN) (National Inventory for Natural Patrimony): http://inpn.mnhn.fr

·         Porta; of the Natura 2000 network: http://www.natura2000.fr

·         Service de l’observation et des statistiques (SOeS) : http://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr
Keywords: ‘Environnement’ > ‘Observation et statistiques de l’environnement’ > ‘Données essentielles’ > ‘Nature et biodiversité’.

·         Vigie-Nature : http://www2.mnhn.fr/vigie-nature