France has made considerable progress on biodiversity policy in the last 15 years. However, the literature on French environmental politics remains unclear as to how effective this progress has been and what kind of political context has conditioned this progress. To answer these questions, I present here four discourses that characterize French biodiversity politics, discourses that have emerged from documentary analysis, stakeholder interviews, and participatory event observations. I show that progress is conditioned by three discursive factors: the dominance of ecological modernization discourse, which only goes so far in enabling progress and transition; the continuing importance of economic development discourse, which is reluctant to further biodiversity conservation; and the limited prominence of two more radical discourses, ecological solidarity and ecological collapse, which are not taken up by the government but benefit from significant support in civil society.
