Elements of the EU nature restoration bill need resolving if the provisional legislation is to succeed, the deputy head of the European Commission’s biodiversity unit has said.

National plans for implementing the law, its terminology, and involvement of private capital, need to be sorted out, said Hans Stielstra, deputy head of unit for biodiversity, Directorate-General for the Environment, at the Commission.

“There’s a number of issues that we still need to work out, all together, before this [law] can become successful,” Stielstra said during a Policy Forum for Ireland webinar.

Last November, the European Parliament’s environment committee (ENVI) voted in favour of the law, propelling it to the final stage of Parliamentary endorsement around the end of February.

The agreed text would mean member states will have to restore by 2030 at least 30% of the habitat types established in the bill, prioritising protected sites under the existing Natura 2000 network.

States would also have to restore at least 60% of habitats in poor condition by 2040 and at least 90% by 2050, with some flexibility for very common and widespread habitats.

Stielstra said he hopes the bill will receive approval without any accidents, “but we’re not 100%” sure this will happen “until it’s really done”.

His department is designing a template for nature restoration plans that it hopes member states will approve, before the nations then submit their own drafts for review, he said.

The final plans must offer credible ways of reaching the objectives in the legislation, he said. “This is not going to be a very easy one to implement.”

“One element will be to achieve to try and achieve a common understanding of all the terms that we use in that in that legislation, because something like ‘satisfactory level’ needs to be properly defined.”

All the terms around exemptions also need to be defined, and ultimately tested in courts, he said.

“There’s a lot of additional work that needs to be done by the Commission, together with member states and stakeholders in order to define and agree those terms, which really is a fundamental precondition for properly implementing this legislation.”

Some exemptions to the restoration legislation apply for areas used for the national defence and for renewable energy projects.

Furthermore, money is “crucial”.

“There is public funding, including from the EU, but we will also need to somehow tap into private funding. How do you define what is biodiversity? And what is the return on investment in biodiversity?”

Read the details of the nature restoration law and reactions here.

By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com

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