5 hours ago
8
A million petition signatures in 10 days? That should tell a government something: that a huge number of citizens aren’t happy with what it has just done, but also that they still believe in their democracy and its ability to course-correct.
In response to pressure from farmers’ unions and the agricultural lobby, on 8 July, the French legislature passed a bill named the loi Duplomb, which contained numerous measures to boost large-scale industrial agriculture – among them, the reauthorisation of a previously banned insecticide, acetamiprid. Beet farmers in particular say they have no alternative to fighting pests. However, there is a growing scientific consensus around acetamiprid (enough, it should be pointed out, for use of the substance to have been banned in France since 2018): it is linked to highly negative effects on bee populations, and, according to the European Food Safety Authority, may adversely impact learning and memory in humans. Studies also show that the whole class of chemicals to which acetamiprid belongs, neonicotinoids, could cause birth defects and reduce male fertility.
When the law passed, the cancer survivor and activist Fleur Breteau couldn’t contain herself. “You’re on the side of cancer and we’ll make sure everyone knows it!” she yelled at the legislature from a balcony. Well, the word is certainly out. By Sunday evening, a petition posted by a 23-year-old student calling for the government to reconsider the contentious law had crossed the 1m signature mark and shows no sign of slowing down. At the time of writing it’s at 1.3m – well beyond the 500,000 signatures that enables parliament to bring the petition to debate, and by far the most signatures since the introduction of the official petition site in 2019.
There are large, macro reasons why the loi Duplomb should never have been passed. At a time when Europe could be vaunting the superiority of its agriculture and accelerating a transition towards sustainable, regenerative farming, the law is, generally speaking, an enormous step in the wrong direction. It’s not that farmers don’t need assistance, it’s that they need assistance in transitioning to regenerative agriculture. That means a series of practices (less tilling, reduced use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, cover crops, and rotational grazing and natural fertilisers) that can increase biodiversity and restore soil health, and in turn help soils to retain more water and become carbon sinks. According to Rattan Lal, the director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, regenerative agriculture globally could enable soils to draw down between 1bn and 3bn tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. In other words, changing the way we farm could negate up to 8% of annual emissions globally (almost three times the impact of eliminating aviation altogether).
Then there is the specific cause of the backlash against the loi Duplomb: acetamiprid. I find it curious which issues seem to catch alight, and it’s not surprising that food and health would be prime terrain for that to happen. Both are tangible in an everyday sort of way, rather than having the problem of being almost too big to wrap one’s head around. Perhaps our brains are simply more able to deal with the threat posed by introducing a dangerous chemical into the food system, than with systemic threats and cascading impacts through the climate and ecosystems. And that’s what is instructive about the reaction to the loi Duplomb, and what it means outside France.
It’s no secret that faith in democracy has been tumbling almost everywhere. But France has experienced a particularly acute decline, with French voters expressing far more disaffection than their neighbours in Germany and Italy. In the midst of that, the research institute Destin Commun proposes that the environment may actually be a unifying issue for French voters – a generational, civilisational type of project that can provide a sense of national purpose. In its most recent report, Destin Commun found that 87% of the French are concerned about the climate crisis and environmental degradation, and French voters rank the environment as a more political issue than they do insecurity, retirements, immigration or inequality.
The French government has an opportunity here. Not just to do the right thing, but to show voters that democracy works, that activism produces results, that the youngest voices can be among the loudest. It could seize the moment to turn around and say, as Charles de Gaulle once did, Je vous ai compris!
-
Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
