Financial Inspector General’s Report: a slap in the face for biodiversity subsidies
In November 2022, an extremely interesting report from the Inspector General of Finance found that most public aid has a detrimental effect on biodiversity and aids are rare who has positive effects on biodiversity.
Craftily released, this new report doesn’t beat around the bush points to government greenwashing “in favor” of biodiversity in this funding.
The report points to a demonstrable decline in biodiversity.
The preamble of the report mentions that Results of IPBES about the decline of life. Indeed, IPBES shows that globally, factors important for monitoring the status of biodiversity show an average decline of 47% compared to the natural baseline. anthropogenic pressures impact on biodiversity:
- land use change (harmful agricultural practicesartificialization of lands) and seas;
- exploitation of organisms (including overfishing);
- contamination ;
- invasive alien species (IAS);
- possible climate change
is the main reason for the loss of biodiversity in the coming decades.
However, biodiversity is a source of many ecosystem services:
- supply of resources (water, energy, food);
- socio-cultural and tourism services,
- regulatory solutions, including climate change mitigation and adaptation.
At the national level, 44% of gross value added will be strongly or very strongly dependent on natural capital. Despite this disturbing finding, the inspectors general conclude that current levels, as well as new needs for funding for biodiversity, remain well below the amount of harmful subsidies.
Biodiversity: Subsidies far from responding to problems
Although the report states, ” As of 2018, in favor of public spending at the scale maintained by the mission biodiversity has increased (+57.7% between 2018 and 2021), especially under the influence of the recovery plan (€331.8 million additional costs in 2021)” and also emphasizes affordable costs for biodiversity outside the recovery plan increased by 13.4% between 2018 and 2022, i.e. by 3.2%. year”, inspectors highlight above all the lack of significant resources. Indeed, this observation, presented in the pages of the report, condemns the lack of measures put in place by the government to protect wildlife and ensure a sustainable future for future generations.
Worse, the report notes that “ “affordable costs” amount to 2.3 billion euros 1of public expenditure directly beneficial to biodiversity and €2.4 billion 2additional costs (works related to biodiversity and pressure reduction), “disadvantaged” reached 10.2 billion euros, I mean 4.4 times more ». He also notes that most of them “ inconvenient costs » care agricultural aid (6.7 billion euros), is in second place help in the artificialization of lands (more than 2.9 billion euros), then those who prefer overexploitation of resources natural resources (530 billion euros).
A “wrong” five-year period resulting in a reduced workforce
The inspectors also note that in the area of biodiversity policy A reduction in the workforce of the state and its operators since 2018. This indicates a decrease 7% for the Ministry of Ecology, 6% for decentralized services and 2.4% for operators involved in biodiversity-related programmes.
It is very important to emphasize this point in a context where French citizens, civil society and various economic players are involved to beg to transform the protection of the environment, biodiversity and living things into full-fledged activities.
Less harmful actions than green financing.
The report summarizes the problematic financing options: mission believes more than real lever i live general direction of funding true less harmful activities for biodiversity, rather than direct funding stocks protection and restoration. »
In other words, to effectively act in favor of biodiversity, we need to stop supporting unsustainable predatory models like chemical-intensive agriculture…
The result
Générations Futures hopes that this report will lift the veil on the French government’s lack of ambition to protect life. The means are too weak and do not allow for a real transition today that will ensure a sustainable future for future generations. The future tools and framework provided in the context of the National Biodiversity Strategy will have to respond to the height of the challenge.
1 Government spending directly on biodiversity results in protected areas, species conservation, ecological restoration, marine environment protection, knowledge, environmental protection.
2 Additional costs become the adoption of practices
favorable agricultural practices, combating soil compaction, basic water cycle policies.
