France is being badly hit by climate change, is not prepared for its effects and is failing to sufficiently reduce its emissions, an independent climate body has warned.
The record heat and exceptional drought seen last year have had "serious impacts in France" and are more than the current prevention and crisis management systems can cope with, the French High Council for the Climate (HCC) said in its annual report, released Wednesday evening.
"We're lagging behind," the council's president and climatologist Corine Le Quéré told French news agency AFP, calling on the government to come up with a pre-emptive and "transformative" adaptation strategy.
France recorded temperatures at 2.9 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, according to the report.
Agriculture has been badly hit, with crop yields down 10-30 percent, while the drought conditions have meant "virtually no reproduction" of some amphibians and "low or abnormal reproduction" of waterfowl.
Drinking water shortages have affected more than 2,000 municipalities, while 8,000 others have requested recognition of "natural disasters" due to the drought, which is causing cracks in buildings as a result of the shrinking and swelling of clay soils, the report said.
Meanwhile the health system recorded 2,816 excess deaths in 2022, the HCC said.
Europe is fastest-warming continent
The report also said France was poorly prepared to fight forest fires and has been forced to call in reinforcements from abroad.
And these effects are just set to intensify as climate change progresses.
Last week a report by the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, said that Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent, some 2.3 degrees Celsius hotter last year than in pre-industrial times.
France has committed to reducing its emissions by 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.
This goal needs be strengthened to take account of new European targets of 55 percent, said Le Quéré.
Far-reaching policy
The HCC is calling for a "far-reaching economic policy" requiring public and private funding of "the order of 30 billion euros per year between now and 2030" to decarbonise France's economy, focusing on transport, the largest emitting sector.
"This means that all the tax loopholes that finance fossil fuels must be abolished, with a fixed timetable," Le Quéré said.
The French Minister for Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu told France Info radio on Thursday that it was necessary to "double the pace" at which France is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He said a detailed plan would be presented to lawmakers on 5 July.
"Our goal is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 140 million tonnes by 2030," Béchu said.
"We will explain how to go from 404 million tonnes to 270 and how this will work, sector by sector," he promised.
(with AFP)
