Rights to Over 30,000 Community-Governed Biodiverse Territories Are Threatened in France 

First published on 10/28/2026

By Oxfam Novib and the ICCA Consortium 

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(Yerevan, Armenia, October 26, 2026) As delegates meet in Yerevan to review the world’s progress on the global biodiversity targets, targets that recognize Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Community-managed territories as essential to protecting nature, the contradiction is plain. France recognizes and funds community-managed territories abroad, including in global biodiversity hotspots. At home, on November 3, its Senate is preparing to dismantle more than 30,000 of them, an act that will decrease biodiversity, reduce community resilience, and, as these lands are subsequently privatized, slowly promote unsustainable, short-term exploitation of valuable common natural resources, cherished through generations by Local Communities for balancing social, environmental, and economic local needs.

Since time immemorial, Local Communities in Europe have managed their lands through governance systems that pre-date many states. Every day, the public walks, skis, climbs, and enjoys landscapes managed sustainably long before sustainability was recognized as a concept.

These Local Community traditions are recognized under international instruments, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Policymakers and scientists alike acknowledge that lands governed by Local Communities are among the world’s most biodiverse, and these European Local Community lands are no exception.

While European countries recognize and promote these rights abroad to protect biodiversity, within Europe, the tendency is often the opposite. European countries have repeatedly removed the legal rights of their own Local Communities.

On November 3, the French Senate will again disregard international norms on the protection of Local Communities’ lands by debating a proposal to take control of the lands of more than 30,000 French Local Communities, known as sections de commune. While France has other forms of Local Community land—including consortages, olhak, prud’homies de pêche, écluses à poissons, irrigation canals, and marshes—the sections de commune are the most geographically widespread. Anyone who enjoys the French countryside, such as the St Jacques de Compostelle trails, has likely walked across these lands without knowing it.

The proposed law describes these territories as “outdated systems, the management and very existence of which are no longer appropriate,” offering no evidence to support this claim, while science has shown that this attitude is incorrect. Instead, the law encourages state-led “commons-grabbing”: the transfer of community lands to municipalities. The proposal seeks to impose a tax on each rights-holder, explicitly encouraging them to give up their rights, and to hand new powers to municipal councils to dispossess communities of their lands.

This is not a first attempt. A decade ago, a law stripped most of these communities of their day-to-day governance. Conflicts increased because municipalities lacked community representatives for land management discussions. Many territories were permanently transferred to municipalities, after which the land could be built on, sold, or converted to industrial agriculture and forestry, a fate that will repeat if this law passes.

This proposed law is about more than 30,000 Local Communities, each comprising tens to hundreds of people, being dispossessed of their land. Because they are located in rural areas, this abuse of human rights is being overlooked.

These communities share a deeply interconnected relationship with their landscape, built over centuries of sustainable farming, pastoralism, forestry, hunting, gathering, and water governance. They prioritize local management, giving residents first access to natural resources; in return, they care directly for those resources. These lands provide critical recreational, environmental, and economic services. Their woods include old-growth forests sustainably managed since at least the 1600s, and their extensive pastures are officially recognized as natural areas of ecological interest. The land carries the communities’ history, preserving ancient sacred sites like druid circles. These territories already possess the clean water, biodiversity, and sustainable development that states and the European Union are investing millions of euros to create elsewhere. They have it, and they protect it, through hundreds of annual volunteer hours.

As the biodiversity, water, and climate crises deepen, legislators must be held accountable when they propose removing well-established Local Community land rights. These are the same decisionmakers claiming to champion environmental, climate, and degrowth objectives for France and Europe. Nobody builds a sustainable future by tying their own hands and blindfolding themselves. Yet, this is exactly what happens when countries like France dismantle sustainably managed Local Community lands at home while claiming to pursue sustainability elsewhere.

What We Ask of the French Senate

Before voting, the Senate should assess the socio-environmental impact of transferring more than 30,000 community territories to municipalities and consider what this law means for France’s ability to meet its global biodiversity commitments, for the participatory implementation of European nature restoration policy, and for future generations. Rather than dismantling these territories, the law should be changed to promote them as places of local democracy, social cohesion, intergenerational transmission, and livelihoods, important for biodiversity and a range of services.

What We Ask of the European Union

Just as the European Union does elsewhere, it must put in place measures to protect the Local Community lands of Europe; at a minimum, requiring social and ecological impact assessments to be carried out when such laws are proposed.

Solidarity

Several international rights organizations, including the ICCA Consortium and the International Land Coalition, have launched an expression of solidarity with French Local Community territories, calling on governments, human rights organizations, and the global public to stand with French Local Communities in their struggle for land justice. Community organizations across Europe are responding from Portugal to Montenegro.

Alert issued by the ICCA Consortium: https://www.iccaconsortium.org/2026/10/21/alert-local-communities-france-risk-losing-30000-territories-law-proposal-782/

Organizations and individuals can endorse the call at: https://www.landrightsnow.org/get-involved/in-solidarity-with-french-commons/