French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country, as the EU presidency early next year, will push for further restrictions on pesticides in agriculture. At the year-long IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, which ended on Friday, Macron emphasized that biodiversity and climate change must be tackled together. “There is no vaccine for a sick planet.”
France holds the rotating presidency of the EU in the first half of 2022. The fight for reducing pesticides must be waged at the European level to prevent unfair competition with French farmers. “We are in an internal market,” explained French Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie.
The French president and minister emphasized that the same environmental standards should also apply to products imported into the EU. The CO2 levy is a good start in this regard.
France wants to better anchor environmental and climate standards in international agricultural trade. The import of agricultural products must also be subject to the same environmental and climate requirements as domestic products, demands Denormandie.
Earlier this year, France adopted a comprehensive agricultural climate plan. Besides an insurance against weather risks, programs are being set up to make agriculture and horticulture more climate resilient. To make crops more sustainable, the French plan to advance in the area of new genetic techniques such as Crispr-Cas.
This was until recently still a taboo, but circumstances are changing rapidly. By making agriculture and horticulture more resilient to the effects of climate fluctuations, the country can continue to provide for its own food supply. According to the French government, this is of significant strategic importance.
At the international biodiversity conference last week in Marseille, politicians, researchers, and representatives from civil society discussed the still globally worsening biodiversity.
The congress is part of a series of climate-related events scheduled for the autumn, including the UN Food Summit on September 23 in New York, the UN Biodiversity Conference COP15 in the Chinese megacity Kunming, as well as the COP26 summit starting in November in Glasgow.