BIONEXT’s goal is a sustainable society where links between biodiversity, water, food, energy, transport, climate, and health are acknowledged, and nature and biodiversity are a part of everyday choices and policymaking. The recently adopted European Union (EU) Nature Restoration Regulation (‘ EU Nature Restoration Law’/ ‘the Restoration Law’) is a new legislative development in this space. It represents the first time that legally binding EU-wide restoration targets and objectives have been set. The Regulation explicitly pursues EU objectives for biodiversity, climate change, and food security (Article 1) while recognizing the implications for additional areas such as the human health impacts of zoonotic diseases.
Nature restoration’s relevance to transformative change and the biodiversity nexus
Within the EU, a central ambition of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 is to enable transformative change, described as a drastic change to ‘how we do things at the level of individuals and organisations to make our society more sustainable’. The new EU Nature Restoration Law pursues a movement away from business-as-usual sustainability, making biodiversity central, rather than peripheral, to transformative change, introducing a new regulatory approach to nature conservation.
Restoring nature on a significant scale has been identified as a crucial intervention if we are to ‘bend the curve’ in biodiversity loss and to respond to issues at the biodiversity nexus. The widespread implementation of nature restoration laws has the potential to create transformative change because the regulatory shift from a narrower focus on conservation to a wider focus on restoring degraded landscapes and ecosystems has in turn multiple implications including for climate mitigation and adaptation, food production and security and human health and wellbeing as well as directly for biodiversity.
What does the Nature Restoration Law do?
The Europen Commission has described the Nature Restoration Law as the ‘the first continent-wide, comprehensive law of its kind’. First and foremost, the Nature Restoration Law sets legally binding restoration targets. While existing legal instruments, particularly the Habitats Directive, include broad requirements to restore and maintain habitats at ‘favourable conservation status’, they do not include binding targets or deadlines. This is particularly relevant because, according to the European Environment Agency, only 15% of habitat assessments at the EU level have a good conservation status, with 81% having poor or bad conservation status.
The overarching requirement set out in the Nature Restoration Law is for Member States to put in place effective and area-based restoration measures with the aim to jointly cover, as a Union target, throughout the areas and ecosystems within the scope of this Regulation, at least 20 % of land areas and at least 20 % of sea areas by 2030, and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050 (Article 1(2)). As a Regulation, the new Nature Restoration Law is legally binding and directly applicable in all EU Member States as it stands.
A central obligation for member states is the preparation of a national restoration plan (Article 14). These plans are the key mechanism for the identification of habitats, setting targets and quantification of whether targets have been met at the member state level. Within the broader headline commitment, specific restoration targets and obligations are established for:
- Terrestrial, coastal, and freshwater ecosystems:
- This includes headline restoration targets for regulated habitats of 30% by 2030, 60% by 2040, and 90% by 2050 (Article 4). Member states are required to put in place restoration measures to improve the status of listed habitats to ‘good condition’. Until 2030, priority should be given to restoring the condition of Natura 2000 sites. By way of derogation, reduced targets apply for very common and widespread habitat types that cover more than 3 % of their European territory.
- Marine ecosystems:
- This comprises headline restoration targets for applicable habitats of 30% by 2030, 60% by 2040, and 90% by 2050 (Article 5). Member states are required to put in place restoration measures to improve the status of listed habitats to ‘good condition’. The targets are measured against the total area for habitat types as quantified by national restoration plans. Article 5 also sets minimum area targets for member states requiring that they have knowledge of the condition of listed habitat types.
- Urban ecosystems:
- By 2030, Member States are to ensure that there is no net loss in the total national area of urban green space and of urban tree canopy cover in urban ecosystem areas, as determined under the national restoration plan, and then an increasing trend in the total national area of urban green space (Article 8).
Specific measures are required by member states to support restoration action pursuant to Article 4. These include:
- The natural connectivity of rivers and natural functions of the related floodplains:
- This includes an obligation on member states to make an inventory of the artificial barriers to the connectivity of surface waters and to identify remove artificial barriers as necessary to achieve the targets in Article 4 and to fulfil the objective of restoring at least 25 000 km of rivers into free-flowing rivers in the Union by 2030.
- Pollinator populations:
- Pollinator populations are specifically addressed in the Regulation (Article 10). Member States are to improve pollinator diversity and reverse the decline of pollinator populations at the latest by 2030, and, thereafter, achieve an increasing trend of pollinator populations until satisfactory levels are met, as designated under the national restoration plan.
- Agricultural ecosystems:
- Member States are to put in place restoration measures necessary to enhance biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems including to secure improving trends based on listed indicators (Article 11). Specific targets are also set for peatland restoration and farmland bird populations.
- Forest ecosystems:
- Member States are to enhance the biodiversity of forest ecosystems, achieve an increasing trend at the national level of the common forest bird index, and achieve an increasing trend at national level for specified indicators (Article 12).
Like several other pieces of EU nature legislation, the Restoration Law applies broad quality descriptors in its definitions and scope: restoration measures are to be effective (and area-based) and restoration includes (among others) improving an area of a habitat type to good condition and re-establishing favourable reference area.
Implications for science and policy
As the recitals to the Restoration Law make clear, the Regulation intersects with numerous areas of policy including agriculture, fisheries, planning, including urban planning, energy, and the environment, with corollary implications for policy and decision-makers within and across national governments and bodies including at the sub-national level.
For the scientific and technical community, the Nature Restoration Law brings with it significant needs in terms of scientific data and evidence. The Restoration Law explicitly recognises the need to fulfil knowledge gaps in order to support robust and science-based national restoration plans and to facilitate proper implementation and monitoring. The preparation by Member States of national restoration plans and their subsequent monitoring, reporting and review and the assessment of restoration plans and coordination of restoration measures in marine ecosystems (articles 17 and 18) by the European Commission all imply extensive data needs. The provision of further guidance by the Commission, including the establishment of harmonised methods and indicators, is foreseen under article 20.
Projects such as BIONEXT can play a role in filling some of the existing knowledge gaps and contributing to the evidence base needed for decision-making, particularly by increasing the understanding of how different nexus elements influence each other and how action is taken in the context of other sectors can contribute to nature restoration efforts in Europe.
Opi Outhwaite has over 15 years of experience in international and EU environmental law. Her work focuses especially on the intersections of environmental law and policy with trade, agriculture and human rights. Opi is currently a Senior Environmental Law Specialist at UNEP-WCMC.