In what NGOs called “historic” decision, the French state was ordered on Thursday to repair within a year the “ecological damage” linked to the massive use of pesticides in agriculture that is said to have caused a biodiversity collapse .
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The Administrative Court of Paris has given the state a deadline of June 30, 2024 at the latest to better meet its goals of reducing the use of pesticides and protecting water bodies. This case follows other cases in which France has been convicted of its climate action and air pollution.
“The state has committed two errors, on the one hand disregarding the targets it had set in terms of reducing the use of herbal medicines and on the other hand disregarding the obligation to protect groundwater,” estimates the court , of several NGOs confiscated. “Ecological damage is directly and definitely related to these errors,” he believes.
The court “requests the government to take all useful measures to remedy the ecological damage and prevent the damage from worsening, restoring the rate of reduction in the use of plant protection products with the course envisaged and possible in the Ecophyto” recovery and protection of groundwater from the effects of plant protection products”.
In 2007, the French state set a target of reducing the use of synthetic pesticides by 50% within ten years, but two consecutive plans to reach this target failed.
In its statement of defense, the state argued that these plans “had programmatic value and could not be binding,” but the court ruled against them.
“We think it’s a real victory, a historic decision,” said AFP on Thursday, welcoming Cécile Barbière from the NGO Pollinis, who along with other associations had appealed to the court.
According to studies cited by NGOs, the population of flying insects in Europe has declined by 75% in the last 30 years, and in France the population of farmland birds by 30%.