Article 15 Substantial contribution to the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems

(a)

nature and biodiversity conservation, including achieving favourable conservation status of natural and semi-natural habitats and species, or preventing their deterioration where they already have favourable conservation status, and protecting and restoring terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems in order to improve their condition and enhance their capacity to provide ecosystem services;

(b)

sustainable land use and management, including adequate protection of soil biodiversity, land degradation neutrality and the remediation of contaminated sites;

(c)

sustainable agricultural practices, including those that contribute to enhancing biodiversity or to halting or preventing the degradation of soils and other ecosystems, deforestation and habitat loss;

(d)

sustainable forest management, including practices and uses of forests and forest land that contribute to enhancing biodiversity or to halting or preventing degradation of ecosystems, deforestation and habitat loss; or

(e)

enabling any of the activities listed in points (a) to (d) of this paragraph in accordance with Article 16.

(a)

supplement paragraph 1 of this Article by establishing technical screening criteria for determining the conditions under which a specific economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems; and

(b)

supplement Article 17 by establishing, for each relevant environmental objective, technical screening criteria for determining whether an economic activity in respect of which technical screening criteria have been established pursuant to point (a) of this paragraph causes significant harm to one or more of those objectives.