On 12 July, the European Parliament voted in favor of backing the Nature Restoration Law and the EU Green Deal. The NRL will put forward recovery measures across 20% of the EU’s land and sea by 2030, aiming to cover all degraded ecosystems by 2050. Nonetheless, this win has come at a very high cost. In order to reach a final compromise, European MEPs sacrificed many critical obligations and targets, including those relating to wetlands.
In fact, the text voted by the Parliament deletes the entire paragraph on nature restoration on agricultural land – a worrisome development both for farmland biodiversity threatened by intensive agricultural practices and the achievement of the EU’s climate objectives. Dropping the rewetting of at least a part of agricultural land on drained organic soil means abandoning the proposal’s most effective means of sequestering carbon, as well as important means to improve water cycles. MEPs also voted to restrict the restoration of habitats to Natura 2000 sites and deleted the time-bound targets, which significantly reduces the scope of the proposal.
Spanish MEP Mr César Luena, who was in charge of this proposal declared “It’s a huge social victory,” “This is a law on behalf of nature. It’s not a law against any person whatsoever.”
The vote followed strong public mobilization to defend the law and the integrity of the EU Green Deal, with over a million signatures and messages from citizens, as well as calls from 6,000 scientists, 100+ businesses, and civil society from across numerous sectors to support the Nature Restoration Law.
In this joint statement, NGO coallition #RestoreNature (200 civil society organisations) calls upon all EU Member States, Members of the European Parliament and the European Commission to ensure several key elements are included in the final text of the law. The negotiations are now set to be concluded in the week of the 6-12th November.
Learn more – last entries on NRL by MAW partners:
- https://europe.wetlands.org/news/eu-nature-restoration-law-survives-key-parliament-committee-vote/
- https://www.birdlife.org/news/2023/06/15/press-release-nature-restoration-law-lives-to-fight-another-day/
- https://www.wwfcee.org/news/member-states-to-european-parliament-europe-needs-a-nature-restoration-law-now
