Three letters sow discord in the French countryside: Zan for “zero net artificialization”. An objective set by the State for 2050 in order to stop the destruction of biodiversity linked to the spread of towns and villages. But this policy meets the opposition of some of the local elected officials who must apply it and the right wants to continue to unravel it with a bill expected in the Senate on March 12.
A soil is artificialized when the occupation or use that human beings make permanently alter its ecological functions (its water, climatic, agronomic functions in particular).
Total artificialization is the city. The earth was waterproofed by covering it with concrete or bitumen to build buildings, roads. An agricultural field is also an artificial area – less, but all the same – because we use chemicals, plowing, let the earth bare. Finally, less intense artificialization is our gardens. Even if they host animals and plants, the vegetation cannot be developed freely since the grass is cut, the dead wood is removed, etc.
Why is it a problem to artificialize soils?
The problem is that our consumption of natural, agricultural and forest soil is too greedy. Each year in France, we take around 20,000 hectares to nature.
It is first harmful for biodiversity. By building roads, cities or shopping centers, we destroy species – we cut trees, we kill life in the soils, we dry up wetlands – and we fragme the playground of animals, which contributes to their disappearance.
By urbanizing, we also reduce the capacity of agricultural land to feed us, indicates the French government portal on the artificialization of soils. And then by spreading our cities, we increase the distances traveled by car – this contributes to climate change – and we reduce the capacity of the soil to absorb water, which promotes floods.
Reuse already artificialized land
The idea of Zero net artificialization (Zan) by 2050 is therefore to be more sober. It is a question of pushing the municipalities to reuse already artificialized spaces: reuse the brownfields, recover vacant housing, densify habitat, and restore nature when you have destroyed next to it. “” To stop the collapse of biodiversity, we have to learn to make room for him ”says Brian Padilla, ecologist at the National Museum of Natural History and specialist in the artificialization of soils. Basically, it is to share space with the rest of the living world.
The climate and resilience law of 2021 which establishes the Zan provides an intermediate step: minus 50 % artificialization by 2031. But some local elected officials creak from the teeth, as this questions the current development model.
Until now, town planning rules to avoid spreading cities required elected officials only for means obligations, now “There is an obligation of results and sanctions”indicates Maylis Desrousseaux, lecture teacher at the Paris Urban Planning School and specializing in the fields of environmental law and town planning. “” Until now, environmental impact studies have contained very little qualitative data on soils, she continues, We were content to explain that a concerted development zone would use so many hectares, we did not realize the impact of the project on the functionalities and health health. The Zan is therefore fundamental to initiating a more general public policy on soil degradation ».
Surprise effect, property right and maintenance of schools
The mayors who criticize the Zan consider that the ten -year period to reach the first step in a 50 % reduction in artificialization is too short.
Even if France is rather a pioneer in Europe with the application of zero net artificialization, this policy stems “From a 2011 European Union roadmap which already pushed the Member States to put themselves on a trajectory of ‘Zero Land Take’ or zero change in soil use”, Recalls Maylis Desrousseaux. The change in soil use is when you take natural, agricultural or forestry soils to urbanize them or install infrastructure or gardens.
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As is often the case when rules take care of protecting the soils, some local elected officials denounce an attack on property rights. “In reality, limitations to property rights to preserve biodiversity or water have existed for many years, for water, it is from the civil code of 1804”, specifies the lawyer.
The detractors of the Zan also criticize him for coming from above, from the State, from Europe, in a context of conflicts between local authorities and the central level.
Faced with the argument of certain city councilors who accuse the Zan of blocking them to build housing and thus maintain the classes in the schools of their villages, the ecologist Brian Padilla relativizes and indicates that 25% of the consumption of natural, agricultural or forest land is done in municipalities that still lose inhabitants.
If we sell the developments built, the children are not at the village school “What for ten years”, acquiesce Maylis Desrousseaux. “For example in rural towns, a recent study has shown that housing policies are oriented towards young people, but those who occupy new housing are seniors who come to settle for their retirement”adds Pierre Chassé, a political scientist at Aix-Marseille University and specialist in public biodiversity conservation policies.
Political instrumentalization
There is a real challenge of support for communities to find the right solutions to implement the Zan on their territory, but these criticisms have been pins by certain political parties such as the LR right which tries, with its opposition to the Zan, to maintain a rural electorate which slides it between his fingers.
Under pressure from the right in particular, a simplification law has already softened the Zan in 2023 with a hectare of consumption guaranteed for each municipality over the decade 2021-2031. There is also an exception for a list of so -called national or European scale projects, such as highways or railway lines.
The bill currently brought by the centrist-LR majority to the Senate, which is to be examined on March 12, goes even further and constitutes a real regression, worries the ecologist Brian Padilla. “It deletes the definition of artificialization so we would no longer speak of alteration of the ecological functions of the soil, it removes the intermediate objective of 2031 when there are already lots of local authorities which work to integrate it into their urban planning documents and it provides for example that major development projects are no longer counted in artificialization therefore that the State is out.
Conversely, in different places in France, citizens take on the call of scientists to preserve the quality of the soil and organize themselves to block major artificial projects. The most emblematic: the construction of the A69 motorway in the southwest of the country.
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