Prescribed compensatory measures for damage to biodiversity - France as a whole

Land take is the main cause of degradation of natural environments and biodiversity. In France, the regulatory framework aimed at avoiding environmental damage, reducing damage that could not be sufficiently avoided and compensating for effects that could not be avoided or sufficiently reduced is known as the ERC sequence (‘avoid, reduce, compensate’).

When biodiversity is degraded by a development project, and if the measures to reduce or avoid the impacts of that project are insufficient, compensatory measures must be implemented.

A compensatory measure for damage to biodiversity intervenes on the residual impact of a development project, when all possible measures have been implemented to avoid and reduce negative impacts on biodiversity. It aims to offer a positive counterpart to a non-reducible harmful impact caused by a project, so as to maintain biodiversity in an equivalent or better state compared to that observed before its implementation.

Compensatory measures take the form of rehabilitation, restoration or creation of environments. They must be supplemented by precautionary management measures (e.g.: extensive grazing, maintenance of hedgerows, etc.) to ensure that the environmental quality of the environment is maintained.

This provision of compensatory measures for biodiversity damage provides access to the location of around 3 000 measures prescribed in administrative acts. The information characterising each measure is described in the award data. Only environmental compensatory measures (within the meaning of L.122-1-III of the Environmental Code) are represented (e.g. collective agricultural compensation or forest compensation are not concerned). Mapping refers to the measures prescribed in administrative acts.

The absence of measurements on the map does not mean the absence of measurements on the ground. Some measures prescribed before the publication of the law of August 8, 2016 for the recovery of biodiversity may not be present. Some decrees drafted before 2016 do not provide information on the geolocation of measurements and can therefore not be precisely mapped but only at the level of the municipality.

Regular updating (former administrative acts or addition of newly prescribed measures) is foreseen.