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EU member states are obliged to spend at least 37% of the money from the post-Covid Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF, totalling €750 billion in 2018 prices) on climate measures. But so far the amounts devoted to nature protection are looking small.
The NGOs EuroNature and CEE Bankwatch Network have analysed the recovery plans of Central and Eastern European EU countries. They found that no new measures have been proposed to increase the area of protected land and sea, or to restore rivers, and less than 0.3% of spending from the 10 plans assessed will be invested in biodiversity. Too little money for the “green veins” of Europe
One in every 100 euros
“Our research has shown that there is a lack of quantity and quality in the funding of biodiversity protection,” said Pippa Gallop, specialist in finance and biodiversity at CEE Bankwatch Network.
“The other issue is quality. Much of the money available for conservation and restoration is going to measures that look more likely to intensify the logging of high-quality forests, or to flood prevention projects that will damage important habitats.”
In June 2021, Vivid Economics found less than 1% of funds being allocated to restoration and conservation activities such as reforestation, agroforestry, wetland restoration and urban greening.
Meanwhile, the researchers estimated that €3.7 billion of investment in nature-based solutions across just four countries – Bulgaria, France, Italy and Poland – could create 172,000 jobs and €7 billion of economic activity over 15 years.
The funding gap and the G word
While European Union money is available, “member states are not prioritising restoration and conservation,” Gallop said.
On top of the RRF fund, the flow of cohesion money through the European structural and investment funds (ESIF) is continuing as usual. The 2014-2020 programme (resulting from the multiyear EU budget) is not closed yet, while the new one for 2021-2027 has already started.
This overlapping of an unprecedented amount of money is a “challenge” according to EU Cohesion Commissioner Elisa Ferreira. Different funding sources have different objectives, different degrees of flexibility, and different deadlines.
According to numbers collected by the Cohesion data platform, total planned allocations under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Cohesion Fund under the EU budget was more than €10 billion during the period 2014-2020, with implementation continuing until the end of 2023.
The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 sets several targets for biodiversity financing, including the need to earmark €20 billion annually.
A study from the Institute for European Environmental policy finds that at least €48 billion is required annually between 2021 and 2030 to deliver the objectives of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. Given estimated annual averages of €15 billion from the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and €14 billion of spending by member states, there is a funding gap of nearly €19 billion a year from 2021 to 2030 (€187 billion in total).
Moreover, Gallop added that “there are no real criteria to identify what is ‘green’ and what is not, it is just a label like ‘environmentally friendly’ that anyone can apply to anything they like”.
“It’s easy to call something ‘green’. But often the label is meaningless and is used for products, activities or infrastructure that appear to tackle one environmental problem but in fact worsen others.”
For instance, “planting trees is not necessarily a good measure, and the framing of such measures has been blurred in the [recovery] plans,” EuroNatur’s report read. “Most measures in the plans do not differentiate between productive forests and unproductive ones. In most situations, the intention behind measures for planting trees is for the economic use of forests, and not for their protection or for afforestation to reconstitute natural habitats. The lack of detail and information in the plans raises questions about the true nature of such proposals.”
The Interinstitutional Agreement for the 2021-2027 MFF set the ambition to provide a minimum of EU annual spending for biodiversity objectives, starting with 7.5% in 2024 and at least 10% in 2026 and 2027. From 2022, the Commission must report annually on spending for the biodiversity objective.
Eco-corridors
According to the last barometer published by the European Environment Agency (EEA), there were almost 27,852 protected sites covering about 438 million hectares in 2019.
They make up Natura 2000, a network of protected areas hosting the most valuable and threatened species and habitats. It is the largest such coordinated effort in the world, extending across all 28 EU countries, on land and at sea.
Then there is the LIFE programme, which was created by the Habitats Directive in 1992. It has co-financed conservation work on more than 5,400 Natura 2000 sites – roughly 20% of the network.
Ecological (eco-) corridors should be on this list. They are defined as “a thin strip of vegetation used by wildlife and potentially allowing movement of biotic factors between two areas”.
Such land is considered as “buffer zones”. It is often shared between countries and in some cases competes with human activities like agriculture and herding.
Even when the law does protect these zones, this does not necessarily mean the sites are safe or will remain so.
The Habitats Directive: it’s complicated
Data from the EU Commission shows that environment was the main policy area for infringement cases open at end-2021, with 356 cases. 52 of them were new.
Some argue that, while EU member states may intend to respect the law, they keep violating it because of the way their economies work.
During the 1980s and 90s, EU law was confronted with a fundamental choice between protecting only core habitats, or all wilderness areas in a more holistic approach.
At the beginning of the negotiations, the EU Commission proposed a list of eco-corridors to protect. The request did not come by chance: it had strong support from the Netherlands, which was working on its own nature network by that time.
The Habitats Directive was finalised in 1992. “As usual, member states reached a compromise,” says Lorenzo Squintani, professor of energy law at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). They decided to give only “marginal legal value, if any” to sites that straddle different countries.
“Specific legislation is still missing,” he adds. “Important features of the landscapes are treated vaguely.”
The story of the Habitats Directive “is a history of failure”, he says. But “nobody dares to touch it, not because we all agree that it is fine, but rather because everybody fears that doing so now would mean reducing its scope”.
“Any results would depend on the political ‘colour’ of the EU Council and the left has been losing ground in many countries”, said Squintani. “Huge interests are at stake.”
The directive was “revolutionary” at the time. “Now it is time to reconsider the exclusion of the buffer zones.”
Kassandra Nikoleit and Alex Kemman contributed to this story
This story is part of “The Green Veins of Europe: eco corridors and the European Green Deal” series, supported by Journalismfund.eu through the Investigation Grants for Environmental Journalism.
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