Eco-design and ecological engineering

One million plant and animal species are currently threatened with extinction. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) met in Paris in April 2019 for its 7th plenary session. The message that emerged was that, all over the world, biodiversity is continuing to decline, "significantly reducing nature's ability to contribute to human well-being". Not only are we jeopardizing the planet's future, but also our current way of life.

There are many threats to biodiversity, the main ones being, in descending order:

• land and sea use change ;

• species exploitation ;

• climate change ;

• pollution ;

• invasive alien species.

The resulting loss of biodiversity has, among other things, serious consequences for the production of ecosystems and agricultural land. This leads to social and economic consequences, with food security at risk on the one hand, and the annual cost of degradation representing 10% of global GDP on the other.

Land degradation accelerates climate change, which in turn weakens ecosystems. This state of affairs makes restoration solutions more difficult and costly. However, if preventive solutions are put in place to preserve and avoid the degradation of ecosystems, then these solutions are far more cost-effective than solutions put in place at a later date.

Unveiled on July 4, 2018, the biodiversity plan aims to strengthen France's action to preserve biodiversity and mobilize levers to restore it where it has been degraded. The law for the reconquest of biodiversity, nature and landscapes has enshrined the goal of reducing net biodiversity loss to zero. The Biodiversity Plan aims to implement this objective. Structured around six strategic priorities, 24 objectives and 90 actions, the biodiversity plan takes a comprehensive approach to the preservation and restoration of biodiversity.

The French Biodiversity Office (OFB) is a public body dedicated to the protection and restoration of biodiversity in mainland France and its overseas territories, under the supervision of the French Ministries of Ecological Transition and Agriculture and Food.

The 2016 law on the reconquest of biodiversity, nature and landscapes (known as the "RBNP law") entrusted the French Agency for Biodiversity, which has since become the French Office for Biodiversity, to carry out "a national inventory to identify natural areas with a high potential for ecological gain belonging to legal entities under public law and abandoned plots of land, likely to be mobilized to...