The Nature Restoration Law is expected to be finalised this week after ongoing discussions between the European Commission, the European Parliament and member states.
An agreement on the highly controversial law, which plans to enhance biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems, may be reached after a meeting tomorrow (Thursday, November 9).
Trilogues between the commission, which proposed the law, the parliament and the Council have been taking place over the past months.
Once negotiations have concluded at EU level, the law will go before national governments, including Ireland, which will then start their own stakeholder consultation process.
As part of this process, governments will design their own restoration plan which will be tailored to each country, according to Green Party MEP Grace O’Sullivan.
Nature Restoration Law
The ambition of the Nature Restoration Law has been “tanked massively”, the head of group of biodiversity at the European Environment Agency, Dr. Brian MacSharry said.
Discussions on the law have been “very poor” from a biodiversity perspective and most of the debates were “absolute garbage”, he said criticising the European Peoples’ Party (EPP) in particular.
Speaking about the state of the Nature Restoration Law at the recent Law Society of Ireland Climate Justice Conference, Dr. MacSharry said:
“We are now in a situation where we have a piece of legislation coming in – it is going to be nowhere what we need, nowhere near what was put forward.”
Restoring and rewetting peatlands is one of the best methods in terms of climate change mitigation due to their potential for carbon sequestration, he said.
There are a lot of EU legislations on nature, however they are poorly implemented at national level, including the EU Biodiversity Strategy, a big pillar of which is the Nature Restoration Law, he said.
“We are in this crisis of biodiversity. We know the state, we know the drivers, we know what to do,” he said while stressing that the longer it takes to do those things, the more expensive it will be.