The State announced the elimination of 95 positions within the ONF. Elected officials from the association of forest municipalities and communities of Gard are opposed to it. The forestry and climate challenges of tomorrow require an awareness that the State does not seem to want to take on!
The ONF is a public and commercial establishment which has several missions: a public service mission to manage public forests and a competitive mission as a private company. This double entry has been denounced for a long time by the elected representatives of the forestry communes. Climate issues are now perceptible in our daily lives (fires, Cévennes episodes, etc.). The forest is a carbon sink which can reduce these effects if it is managed. Municipalities benefit from the expertise of the ONF for this management, as well as for fire prevention. The State provides resources to the ONF to provide this public service to communities. These resources represent 0.02% of the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Sovereignty and Forestry (the name forest has recently been added…) on which the forest depends, while the public forest represents 11%. of the surface of France. We will also note that the budget of this ministry is increasing by 1.6 billion this year 2024, going from 6 to 7.6 billion!
Added to this are the government’s announcements asking communities to make 5 billion in operating savings.
For elected officials, it’s a double penalty!
“It is unacceptable for the preservation of forests and it is unacceptable for the budgets of
communes.
As a reminder, this announcement comes less than a month after the release of a report from the Court of
accounts. He criticizes the policies which dismantle the ONF, recommends increasing
financing and payroll, to take care of biodiversity and requires real decision-making
awareness of the State on the need to be concerned about the French forest which is in real danger.
And the exact opposite is proposed! The French public forest is going straight into the wall even though it is
a solution to the fight against climate change”.
For Cédric Clémente, president of the association of forest municipalities and communities of
Gard, this job elimination was predictable:
“We announced it in 2022 during the last discussions with the State! They seek by all means to reduce forest management. They only have an economic vision when the issue is climate and of general interest! Today, we refuse the State’s proposal to eliminate positions at the ONF. Elected officials are attached to field technicians who advise elected officials on a daily basis in the management of their municipal forest or who help them in preventing fire risks.
The reflections of their Parisian hierarchies on the savings to be made are not relevant if we want a public service which defends all the issues of the Mediterranean forest.
In this same logic, we also ask for the separation of the competitive services of the ONF in another structure which has nothing to do with the ONF, to avoid confusion of genres! »
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