Urban planning, ZAN, environment: the 12 proposals from French notaries to deal with the climate emergency

The 120th Congress of French Notaries takes place in a context where the ecological emergency is becoming increasingly pressing. More than ever, it is becoming necessary to adapt the current legal framework to environmental challenges.

In the presence of 4000 participants and around sixty speakers, 12 proposals will be debated and submitted to the vote of notaries with the aim of anticipating environmental challenges, convincing stakeholders and carrying out projects adapted to new lifestyles.

Anticipating environmental challenges

1. For a status of the tree in the Civil Code

Trees improve air quality, act as air conditioners, are sound traps and contribute to improving our daily lives. However, in the state of our law, the tree is only addressed in the civil code as a negative element on which action must be taken to preserve land ownership.

However, the 120th Congress of French Notaries considers that it is now essential to recognize a new status for the tree to provide it with different protection, recognition of all its virtues.

2. Develop legislation to address the decline of the maritime coastline

Coastal erosion is a natural phenomenon accentuated by climatic hazards and human factors. This decline threatens property and people to such an extent that by 2100 it is estimated that 450.000 homes will be affected. The 120th Congress of French Notaries proposes to improve the legal information provided during changes on this subject and to anticipate the integration of property into the maritime public domain by offering the possibility of pre-emption or abandonment relating only to the soil and subsoil, leaving the owner a temporary right of use for as long as erosion allows.

3. Adapting wood and forest rights

Like water, woods and forests must now be considered as common goods whose protection and use must be the subject of collective use and protection solutions. In the face of climate change, we must rethink the rights of use of woods and forests, and consider renewing the rules concerning the sharing of resources.

4. Strengthen information on the state of risks and pollution

To rent or sell a property, many real estate diagnostics are mandatory. These diagnostics seem today to be unsuitable for good and clear information. The congress wishes to go further. It is now necessary to inform the future purchaser of the state of risks related to climate change and pollution. This information is intended to anticipate and avoid possible disputes.

Convincing the actors

5. Adapt the law to land transfer operations

To develop the territory, it is necessary to control the land. This is a role that falls to public land institutions, which do not currently have the agility necessary to carry out their missions. The 120th Congress suggests that the regulations be reviewed to adapt to the needs and emergencies that the sector faces by defining land transfer and proto-development operations by submitting them to a specific legal regime, and by securing land transfer by submitting these operations, if they are likely to harm the environment, to a prior diagnosis.

6. Liberalize the basis for planning permission

The land unit, a benchmark taken into account for planning permission applications, no longer seems suitable for complex development operations and today appears to be a brake on transformative urban planning, neither allowing environmental urban planning to be taken into account in projects, nor good acceptability of said projects in the city.

Consequently, the 120th Congress of French Notaries proposes to modify the definition of the basis of a project in order to broaden the possibility of requesting planning permission without being limited to the land unit, today's benchmark.

7. Develop environmental compensation

• Clarify and relax the rules on environmental compensation

Environmental compensation is part of the ERC (Avoid – Reduce – Compensate) sequence. However, the effectiveness of its implementation is limited.

Today, operators have few means at their disposal to make these compensation measures effective.

The 120th Congress of French Notaries proposes, on the one hand, to remove pre-emption rights when land is acquired with a view to carrying out a compensation measure, and, on the other hand, to allow the project owner transferring his real estate project to transfer the land also concerned by the compensation measure.

• Create an environmental emphyteutic lease

Since project owners very often encounter difficulties in acquiring the land necessary for carrying out environmental compensation measures, it is appropriate to offer them other methods enabling them to fulfil their obligations.

The 120th Congress of French Notaries thus proposes to create a new contract constituting real estate rights: the environmental emphyteutic lease.

• Open up financial environmental compensation

In order to overcome the difficulties encountered by project owners in finding land for environmental compensation, the 120th Congress of French Notaries proposes to open up the possibility, as a last resort, of carrying out compensation, in part only, by a financial measure paid into a national equalization fund responsible for financing protected area management measures.

8. Expand and develop the urban partnership project (PUP)

The PUP is a public-private agreement between the project leader and the competent local authority. It allows the pre-financing of a development and the acceptability of the project, guaranteeing an accelerated exit. This tool, insufficiently used, requires a better understanding to move towards planning of developments.

The 120th Congress of French Notaries proposes to extend this system to other operations such as renaturation and de-artificialization operations in preferential renaturation zones as well as the rehabilitation of networks allowing projects to be carried out adapted to new lifestyles.

Carry out projects adapted to new lifestyles

9. Adapt ZAN (Zero Net Artificialization) to the territories

The ZAN, included in the Climate and Resilience Act of 2021, is a concrete response to the approximately 24.000 hectares of natural spaces consumed each year in France, while at the same time there are industrial or professional brownfield sites to be rehabilitated. Intended to revolutionize the act of building, the ZAN must also adapt to the diversity of territories and projects and free itself from the initial context in which it was created. This is the subject of the proposals of the 120th Congress of Notaries.

10. Accelerate the transformation of city entrances

City entrances are monofunctional, concreted, and often poorly integrated urban areas. They are nevertheless perceived as essential for local economies, concentrating almost 72% of household consumption in the cities concerned. Given the consumption of natural space in these areas, they represent a major environmental issue.

In an era of land sobriety, these areas are becoming a formidable source of space that must be seized. The 120th Congress is committed to proposing solutions to promote the transformation of city entrances.

11. Urban planning: from construction to transformation

In light of the ZAN, we must find solutions to build without consuming land. To achieve this, the 120th Congress provides solutions to carry out several joint actions: requalifying degraded habitats, raising cities, requalifying wastelands, transforming offices into housing, while creating cool islands and de-impermeabilizing the soil.

12. Put the environment at the heart of real estate and development projects to provide security to those who lead them

For thirty years, the legislator has sought to secure the petitioner of planning permissions to promote construction, particularly housing construction. However, the environmental issue is increasingly radically compromising the security of planning permissions, with environmental law impacting litigation over permissions both in substance and in form. Consequently, and in order to secure petitioners, the 120th Congress of French Notaries proposes to make the environment the basis of projects by systematizing the requirement for an environmental notice and/or diagnosis for all planning permissions, but also to simplify and secure the situation of project owners by issuing, in particular, a single authorization.

The booklet of proposals from the 120th Congress of Notaries of France is available and freely accessible in digital format in its latest version on the website of congresdesnotaires.fr.

The Association Congrès des Notaires de France strives to carry out its actions while respecting the principles of societal, social and environmental responsibility.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.