"Zero net artificialization of soils": senators soften the text

The ZAN objective resulting from the Citizen's Climate Convention and the 2021 Climate Law aims to halve, by 2031, the rate of consumption of natural and agricultural spaces compared to the previous decade, i.e. 125.000 hectares, then to stop all "net artificialisation" by 2050. On this date, all the hectares which will be artificialised must equal the volume of the renatured surfaces.

It is therefore a question of slowing down the rate of nibbling of natural soils by the city. But if there is political consensus on these objectives, the implementing decrees issued last spring have sparked a revolt from local elected officials, who denounce an inconsistency with the spirit of the law and fear a gradual death of rural communities.

"The objective of our bill is not to unravel the ZAN but to succeed. We have done everything to stay in the trajectory and not to vote for exemptions ad infinitum", reacted to AFP the rapporteur LR Jean-Baptiste Blanc, for whom the text is "the expression of great anger in the territories".

Among the measures adopted, the text drops the mandate given to the regions to set in a binding manner the envelope of hectares to be artificialized in smaller communities. It also strengthens the presence of municipal elected officials in the bodies responsible for monitoring the application of the ZAN.

To preserve the country's ability "to carry out the major projects of tomorrow", the senators take projects of national scope (prisons, ports, nuclear power stations, etc.) out of the regional envelopes to include them in a "national envelope" of rights to artificialize.

Point of tension of the rural mayors, the "right to build" of the small communes having consumed little land until now is guaranteed for each commune through an envelope of one hectare of "minimal surface of communal development".

"Very clumsy unraveling"

Considered until now as artificial surfaces, gardens, parks or lawns are no longer so in the senatorial text, in order to "encourage builders to preserve plant islands", and to "not penalize renaturation".

Questioned by AFP, the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu recalls that "in 50 years, France has artificialized more than in 500 years".

He also underlines that the government is also in favor of a "guarantee" for a "right to build" for rural municipalities as well as the removal of "major national projects" from the envelope attributable to the regions which host them. For their part, the senators complain that they are not associated with the definition of this list of major projects.

If Mr. Béchu recognizes "positive developments" in the text, such as the possibility given to mayors to suspend building permits which would contravene the objectives of the ZAN, he also mentions "scarlet red" lines such as the exclusion of vegetated surfaces for residential use of the counts.

"This potentially means that you can nibble the campaign disproportionately to what we have done so far", he believes, judging that "the door has been opened too wide to artificialisation with too many exemptions under cover of flexibility".

When questioned, the National Union of Developers (Unam) was concerned about the impact of a law "which strongly blocks the ability to build housing, already strongly undermined by inflation", saying that it fears a "social bomb".

For its part, France nature environment (FNE) strongly criticizes a "very clumsy unraveling of the objectives of the law on behalf of rural mayors". "If the regional objectives are not binding, this law is useless. It is as if we had a national law and that the local authorities had complete freedom to do what they want", estimated Michel Jacod, member of FNE.

The text must still be submitted to the National Assembly, where Renaissance deputies had presented their own bill in mid-February for better support for local elected officials.