IÎle-de-France has just voted on Wednesday July 12 the main lines of its master plan, a fundamental document which translates into concrete reality the development choices of the capital-region for the next twenty years. However, what might seem to be a purely local event in reality has a much broader scope: the decisions of the assembly chaired by Valérie Pécresse involve the entire territory and set in stone excessive expenditure that compromises our food security.
In effect the obvious deserves to be remembered: you don’t grow wheat in concrete. The preservation of agricultural land around cities is one of the conditions of our food sovereignty: it constitutes the most important working tool for the peasants who feed us on a daily basis. It is no coincidence that Paris, surrounded by a fertile belt, has developed to the point of becoming the capital of our country. It is the high yields of these nourishing lands that have contributed to this. And it is these same lands, which absorb water and harbor soil life, that can ensure our resilience to climate change in the future.
To preserve a heritage now considered vital, the government has logically decided to plan the decline of soil artificialization throughout the territory. As part of the “Zero Net Artificialisation (ZAN)” law, all regions must between 2021 and 2031 destroy half as much land as during the previous decade. All? Not Île-de-France. Its president Valérie Pécresse does not hide it, since she has set in her master plan the goal of a reduction of only 20%.
Destructive and useless infrastructures
The capital region is thus pursuing objectives two and a half times lower than the obligations imposed on the rest of the national territory, while the ecological transition requires an equitable distribution of efforts. The main responsible for this headlong rush is the Grand Paris Express. Launched under the Sarkozy presidency in 2010, this gigantic project to extend the Ile-de-France transport network, which has already led to the death of five workers on its sites, raises many concerns.
The two metro lines 17-North and 18-West, which would go from Le Bourget to the village of Mesnil-Amelot, in the north, passing through the Triangle de Gonesse fields and Roissy airport, and from Saclay to Versailles, in the south, are a real aberration on land reputed to be fertile, with among the highest yields in the world (90 quintals of common wheat per hectare, against 56 on average in Europe).
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