Environmental Capacity Building in France

Abstract

Compared with densely populated countries like Germany, the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, France has an environment that has remained relatively undamaged. The average population density in France is around 100 inhabitants per square kilometre, but with an extremely unequal distribution throughout the country. The population is concentrated within cities (eighty per cent of the population is urban) and mainly within the capital region, which accounts for approximately twenty per cent of the population and roughly thirty per cent of national GDP in less than seven per cent of the national territory. In contrast, some rural areas have been severely depopulated, some now having less than fifty inhabitants per square kilometre.

I would like to thank Christiane Julien for the English editing of the text.