From Static Protection to Climate-Triggered Biodiversity Security: A Dryland-Informed Framework for France and Western Europe under Compound Climate Extremes

Europe is warming faster than the global average, while France is preparing for a climate pathway approaching +4°C by the end of the century. Existing biodiversity protection systems, however, remain largely based on fixed protected-area boundaries, historical climatic conditions, long planning cycles and intervention after ecological damage has occurred. This article examines how compound and cascading climate hazards—including extreme heat, functional aridification, soil-moisture decline, drought, wildfire, intense precipitation, coastal storms, marine heatwaves and ocean acidification—are reshaping biodiversity risks in France and Western Europe. Drawing on recent evidence from global, European and French meteorological and environmental institutions, and informed by sixteen years of field experience in dryland management, protected-area governance and endangered-species conservation, the article introduces the concept of functional aridification to describe ecological drying that can intensify even where annual precipitation does not decline substantially. The paper proposes a Dynamic Biodiversity Security Grid designed to convert climate and ecological information into legally, financially and operationally triggered action. Its principal components are Ecological Overload Days, climate-triggered refuge contracts, protected areas with fixed legal cores and mobile protective functions, micro-refugia infrastructure, a biodiversity emergency fund, a No Net Loss of Climate Options test for development projects, and ecological forensic audits after climate disasters. The central argument is that the main policy failure is no longer a lack of climate information, but the delay between scientific warning and mandatory field intervention. France and Western Europe must move from static and reactive conservation toward anticipatory, threshold-based and spatially dynamic biodiversity security. This is a non-peer-reviewed preprint published for scientific discussion and policy consideration.