The Marine Action Plans of the first cycle of implementation of the MSFD included M003-NAT1b, aimed at “complementing the network of marine protected areas with strong protections on outstanding marine biodiversity sectors”. This measure was the subject of a national framework, sent to the services in summer 2018, clarifying the concept of strong protection and detailing the stages of implementation of this measure. According to this framework, a strong protection zone must meet all of the following five characteristics: to address the priority environmental issues defined in the fronting strategic documents, to be located primarily in a marine protected area, to have regulation of activities in order to reduce significantly or remove the main pressures, to rely on a management document, and to benefit from operational monitoring of activities. Therefore, a strong protection area can accept human activities as long as they do not jeopardise the conservation of the ecological challenges of this area. The objective of this action is to extend M003 by developing the network of strong protections in place at the end of the first cycle of implementation of the MSFD. This cross-cutting action contributes to the government’s ambition of 30 % of protected areas throughout the national territory (metropolitan and overseas), including a third in strong protection, as set out in the National Strategy for Protected Areas 2020-2030 (SNAP) and enshrined in Article 227 of the Climate and Resilience Law of 22 August 2021. It thus contributes to the implementation of the national strategy and its territorialisation. This action will be based on the definition and detailed rules for the recognition of the strong protection zones specified in the Decree implementing Article 227 referred to above. It will be implemented under the conditions set out in a new background note.

A ‘Marine Educational Area (AME)’ is a small coastal sea area which is managed in a participatory manner by students in 3 and 4 according to principles defined by a charter. It is a pedagogical and eco-citizen project of knowledge and protection of the marine environment by young audiences. The class is thus placed within a territorial dynamic involving the expertise of the school and the municipality concerned, as well as associations of users or environmental protection. The development of AMEs has been ensured since 2016 in metropolitan France and the overseas seas by the French Biodiversity Office (OFB) with an inter-ministerial steering committee (COPIL) (Ministry of Ecological and Inclusive Transition, Ministry of National Education and Ministry of Overseas Affairs). Educational areas are also developing in the terrestrial environment (so-called educational terrestrial areas, ETA). The implementation of the AME and ATE approach results in the award of a label issued by the three ministries mentioned above. There are 200 AMEs for the school year 2020-2021 and 143 ETA, bringing the number of pupils affected since 2016 to more than 20 000. In June 2019, a feedback seminar took stock of the year of experimentation of the ATE scheme and of the deployment of ATE-AME in the 6th. In total, almost 210 schools and colleges are involved in the Aires Educational initiative for the school year 2019-2020 (around 12000 pupils in that year and more than 20000 students who have passed through the scheme since 2016). The development of the network of MEAs and ETA is one of the flagship actions of the Biodiversity Plan, which foresees the deployment of 500 AME and ATE by 2022. It is also one of the flagship actions mentioned in the framework agreement linking the OFB) and the Ministry of National Education. The main challenge identified in order to ensure the development of the project while maintaining the quality of the label is the establishment of place-based governance and training of the stakeholders concerned. This territorialisation requires the commitment of all actors in the state and the territories, but should not be at the expense of other environmental education schemes. The OFB and the inter-ministerial COPIL will retain national governance and remain the guarantors of the concept. The OFB will continue its tasks of general coordination and support for newly invested or reinforced territorial actors, produce supporting documents and animate the community. Finally, in 2021, it was envisaged that cooperation would be carried out with Polynesia, UNESCO, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the French Development Agency in order to enable the international spin-offs of marine educational areas and terrestrial educational areas. One of the challenges is to strengthen the links between a marine protected area and a marine educational area in order to ensure that their objectives are taken into account in each other. The approach should also be tested with older students.

For a sea user, the information is abundant. They can be regulated (professional fishing, recreational fishing, navigation, maritime safety, etc.), affect the particularity and challenges of the area (marine protected areas, ASPIM, parks, Pelagos sanctuary, etc.) and do not all appear on a marine map. Not all of them are easily accessible to a user either. The aim of this action is to make all regulations and spatial information available to sea users in a simple, simultaneous and geo-referenced manner, in order also to steer their practice towards greater respect for the marine environment. This action is implemented in conjunction with the action DE-OSE-VII-II AF2 “Developing tools to facilitate sustainable nauticism” and it gives impetus to action DE-OSE-V-2-AF1 “Supporting fronting ports in the digital transition”.

Each façade has a marine environment monitoring and monitoring plan (PCSEM). The challenge is now to update and consolidate these plans in order to best meet the new objectives of the RSD and the strategy for managing marine protected areas 2020-2030, in particular through enhanced coordination of all the services involved in their implementation.

L'action de l'Etat contre les collisions avec les mammifères marins en métropole s'est à ce jour concentrée en Méditerranée. Cette action contribue à la réalisation de l’action 2.4 du plan d’actions pour la protection des cétacés.