The mitigation hierarchy, a tool to preserve natural habitats — article by the French ministry of the environment

The French min­istry of the envi­ron­ment (Min­istère de l’Écologie, du Développe­ment durable et de l’Énergie) has recently issued an arti­cle on the appli­ca­tion of the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy (called séquence Eviter-Reduire-Compenser — ERC) in France. It is enti­tled “The mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy, a tool to pre­serve nat­ural habi­tats” and was pub­lished in “le point sur”. Thanks to Anne-Laure Wittmann for point­ing to this. For more infor­ma­tion you can also refer to my pre­vi­ous post: Doc­trine ERC (Eviter-Reduire-Compenser) – Appli­ca­tion of the Mit­i­ga­tion Hier­ar­chy in France.

Here’s the link to the Eng­lish ver­sion: http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/LPS184_cle4ecbf7.pdf and the French ver­sion can be found here: http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/LPS184-2.pdf

The mitigation hierarchy France

For a brief overview, please have a look at the abstract:

Built devel­op­ments can have adverse impacts on nat­ural habi­tats. The mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy, known in French law as the “séquence éviter, réduire et com­penser” (or séquence ERC), means that such impacts must be avoided, then min­i­mized and as a last resort, off­set or com­pen­sated for. The objec­tive is to pre­serve the envi­ron­men­tal qual­ity of ecosys­tems. The imple­men­ta­tion of the séquence ERC has required method­olog­i­cal guide­lines that were pub­lished in Octo­ber 2013 after the national doc­trine was pub­lished in May 2012. These doc­u­ments were devel­oped by a multi-stakeholder work­ing group led by the min­istry of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion, local author­i­ties, the pri­vate sec­tor and civil soci­ety. Among other issues, they address bio­di­ver­sity off­sets, which have been rein­forced as an oblig­a­tion by the Grenelle Law II in cases where there are impacts on major envi­ron­men­tal issues. Both doc­u­ments cover ter­res­trial, aquatic and marine ecosys­tems. They will be updated accord­ing to lessons learned from their imple­men­ta­tion, evo­lu­tions in the legal frame­work, sci­en­tific and tech­ni­cal progress.

Just in case the link will be changed in the future, I have uploaded the Eng­lish and the French ver­sion here:

The mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy — a tool to pre­serve nat­ural habi­tats France

La sequence eviter reduire et com­penser France


Comments

The mitigation hierarchy, a tool to preserve natural habitats — article by the French ministry of the environment — 1 Comment

  1. Hello
    We are seek­ing an inter­na­tional con­sul­tant with MAB/UNESCO recent or ongo­ing ref­er­ences in order to intro­duce a new sys­tem of eco-certification in the Argan Bios­phere Reserve. Our aim is to guar­an­tee sus­tain­able and respon­si­ble envi­ron­men­tal prac­tices, through review­ing pro­to­col seci­fi­ac­tions of exist­ing IGP labels (argan oil and honey), and attribute a BR label. Could you recom­mand any con­tacts of inter­est ?
    thanks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>