Nature Restoration Act for 2050 Climate Goals
The Nature Restoration Act, which aims to achieve the EU’s climate targets and climate neutrality by 2050, has finally been adopted. The goal is to preserve nature intact in the long term and on a sustainable, circular basis. The new regulation obliges member state governments to take measures to restore 30 percent of the EU’s land and marine areas by 2030 and all ecosystems by 2050. Over the next two years, Member States will have to draw up national recovery plans that concretely indicate how they intend to achieve the targets submitted to the European Commission.
Revitalize Ecosystems and Urban Green Spaces
The new rules will help to restore degraded ecosystems in marine and freshwater, but also in terrestrial, forest, agricultural and urban ecosystems. Specific measures include protection for pollinators and grassland butterflies, bird monitoring, protecting urban green spaces and planting at least three billion additional trees by 2030 at the EU level.
Member States will have to restore at least 25,000 km of rivers by transforming them into free-flowing rivers and will have to ensure that there is no net loss of either the total national area of urban green spaces or urban tree cover.
Sustainable balance
The law also allows, in exceptional circumstances, the suspension of agricultural ecosystem targets if they reduce the cultivated area to such an extent that food production is jeopardized and becomes inadequate for EU consumption.This sustainable balance requires targeted and protracted interventions in Italy as well, managing to abandon the “logic” of continuous emergency, which is becoming an increasingly frequent and devastating phenomenon in the current climate change referring to prolonged droughts, floods and seismic and hydrogeological warnings. What is needed, therefore, is a change of course: a detailed planning of regulated interventions.Si tratta di trovare il giusto equilibrio tra il bisogno di cibo e la tutela dell’ambiente, che mirano entrambi alla salute degli ecosistemi.
What is the state of nature in the EU?
Consilium (europa.eu)“Today we also agreed on three key EU directives for circular economy and soil health in the EU: we showed our commitment to a green transition, by protecting our consumers from greenwashing, targeting food and textile waste and protecting our soils from degradation.” Emphasizes Alain Maron, Minister for Climate Transition, Environment, Energy and Participatory Democracy of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region
“The PNRR-MER (Marine Ecosystem Restoration) mission, which already includes 37 large-scale interventions for the restoration and protection of the seabed and marine habitats, the improvement of the national observation system for marine and coastal ecosystems, and the mapping of the seabed and coastal and marine habitats of conservation interest needs continuity” added the Italian Minister for the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto.