(Updated with further details, reaction)

The European Parliament on Wednesday voted to adopt a position on a bill to restore at least 20% of the bloc’s sea and land areas by 2030, rescuing the divisive text after many right-leaning members had fought to kill it outright.

Sitting in Strasbourg, the MEPs voted to approve the revised text of rapporteur Cesar Luena by 336 votes to 300 with 13 abstentions. An earlier vote to reject the proposal outright failed to pass by 312 votes to 324 with 12 abstentions.

All political groups in the 705-strong assembly had been scrambling for a compromise to adopt a position, lacking direction as three interim committees had each failed to adopt a position on the bill that is intended to help meet the EU’s obligation under the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at UN negotiations last year.

For months, the leadership of the centre-right EPP group – the largest in the Parliament with over a fifth of the members – and other right-leaning groups were attempting to get the bill rejected outright, arguing that it would threaten food security by putting undue strain on farmers. 

A rare outright rejection by the Parliament would have effectively put the bill on hold until after elections in Q2 next year, with only a second full Parliament rejection vote capable of killing the bill altogether.

But with left-leaning groups backing a more ambitious position crafted at the environment committee (ENVI) stage, the centrist Renew party crafted a compromise based on the text the Council of member states, which adopted its own united ‘general approach’ in a parallel lawmaking process.

The Council’s position would require nations to revive by 2030 at least 30% of habitats and groups together targets for more flexibility.

The Parliament’s position included a requirement that the law shall only apply once the Commission has provided data on the necessary conditions to guarantee long-term food security and when EU countries have quantified the area that needs to be restored to reach the restoration targets for each habitat type.

Parliament also foresees an ’emergency brake’ provision to make it possible to postpone the targets under exceptional “socioeconomic consequences”, which include whether food prices or production, or renewable energy production, or social housing planning permission are negatively impacted.

The assembly’s position also requires the Commission – within a year of the law coming into force – to assess any any gap between restoration financial needs and available EU funding and look into solutions to bridge such a gap, in particular through a dedicated EU instrument.

IRISH-LED REBELS

Not all EPP members sustained the rejection line suggested by the group’s leader Manfred Weber, with members of Ireland’s Fine Gael party voting in favour.

On Tuesday, the head Fine Gael’s delegation Sean Kelly announced his support for a law “that will reverse biodiversity in a way that encourages, incentivises and enables farmers and fishers”.

With Ireland having one of the most agriculture-reliant economies in the 27-nation bloc, he explained that this was increasingly under threat.

“Ireland is facing a biodiversity crisis. This is experienced first-hand by our farmers and fishers, who are custodians of our land, rivers and seas and who see the everyday impact on their businesses,” he added.

Other Irish members followed Kelly, such as Deirdre Clune, Frances Fitzgerald, Colm Markey, and Maria Walsh – along with Ludek Niedermayer and Tanislav Polcak (both Czechia), Sirpa Pietikainen (Finland), and Maria Spyraki (Greece).

“I cannot support a full-out rejection,” Clune wrote on Twitter. “I want to see new dedicated funding for farmers because we need to restore nature working alongside our rural communities.”

Niedermayer echoed her: “The Commission’s proposal is not an ideal starting point, but the Parliament and the Council can fix the texts”.

“I deeply regret the politicisation of the vote on nature restoration,” he wrote.

“A SOCIAL VICTORY”

Cesar Luena, the Spanish member of the centre-left S&D steering the bill through Parliament, defined today’s result “a huge social victory”, stressing that the legislation does not impose the creation of new protected areas nor block new renewables infrastructure.

“Now we must continue the good work, defend our ground during the negotiations with member states and reach an agreement before the end of this Parliament’s mandate to pass the first regulation on nature restoration in the EU’s history,” he added.

For EPP leader Weber was defiant in a separate press conference and warned that the legislation had not address risks to food security nor on who to pay for the restoration work without hurting the wider economy.

He claimed that the bill “is not giving us an idea about how to finance” nature restoration, that it “is not giving us a real answer about the food production question”.

“It still creates legal uncertainty for local and regional authorities and potentially also hurts our renewable energy transition rather than supporting it,” he said, referring to risks that restoration obligations would hinder the rollout of wind and solar power installations, a notion disputed by wind power association WindEurope, which has strongly supported the law.

On the other hand, NGOs mainly welcomed the vote, and noted that the ballot was held during an unprecedented heat wave.

“It’s clear that to survive climate breakdown and ensure food supplies we’ll need nature on our side,” said Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe biodiversity project manager Spela Bandelj.

Forests and rights NGO Fern called this a “bittersweet outcome for forests”.

For instance, they noted that the text’s definition of “degraded” remains ambiguous and some key indicators that would have ensured better monitoring were deleted.

“Despite Conservative efforts to thwart plans to restore ecosystems”, said Fern forest campaigner Kelsey Perlman, the law “has provided a lifeline for efforts to improve EU forests’ resilience”.

CAN Europe director, Chiara Martinelli, said “this is a significant win for our natural environment, climate, economy and people’s wellbeing, but it is only a starting point”.

Noor Yafai, Europe director at NGO Nature Conservancy, highlighted the importance of the result “not just in Europe, but for the whole world, as other countries look to the EU for continued leadership on delivering the new Global Biodiversity Framework”.

Yet Yafai expressed concerned at some watering down of the Commission’s original proposal, mentioning the deletion text on measures to improve the sustainability of farming.

NEXT STEPS

The bill is now due to move to trilogue negotiations between representatives of the Parliament, Council, and Commission to finalise the text, with talks expected to be relatively straightforward given the closeness of the Parliament’s compromise to the Council’s position.

“Probably there won’t be a lot of negotiations on it,” Jutta Paulus, a German MEP from the Greens that is coordinating her group’s position on the bill, said ahead of the vote.

In a press conference immediately after the results, Luena said he was convinced that “by the end of the year we can get a good law on nature”.

The EPP’s Esther De Lange, for her part, said her party “will keep an eye on whether the Parliament’s negotiating team will, as they are supposed to do, honestly defend the vote that we have today”, including giving an ’emergency break’ for the business sector.

“For the EPP this was never about watering down, but making sure the legislation works on the ground,” she added, noting that the ’emergency brake’ provision had been first promoted by her political group.

Gemma Cranston of nature-focused investment and advisory firm Pollination pleaded with lawmakers not to further impede the passage of the legislation. 

“It is crucial that we remove the obstacles to its progress … Attempting to block it will do nothing but set the path for further destruction of our crucial ecosystems,” she said, noting that the law was good news for those that particularly hit by degraded ecosystems – farming, fishing, and indigenous communities add would increase food security and human wellbeing in the EU and beyond. 

“This motion matches the level of ambition that is needed to enact systems-level change and avoid the worst climate change outcomes. And while it is by no means the only solution, it is crucial that we remove the obstacles to its progress,” she added.

By Emanuela Barbiroglio  – emanuela@carbon-pulse.com