François de Rugy, speaker of the French National Assembly, was appointed as the country’s environment minister on 4 September. He replaces Nicolas Hulot, an environmental-activist-turned-minister who resigned his post last week during a dramatic live radio interview.

De Rugy, 44, has been an environmental activist since the early 1990s and a member of parliament (MP) since 2007, when he elected as part of the then-green party. He was re-elected in 2012 as member of a newly formed green party, but in 2015 quit the movement alongside several others — switching his allegiance to then-president François Hollande’s Socialist party. In early 2017, De Rugy lent his support to President Emmanuel Macron’s party La République En Marche, and was re-elected on that ticket in last year’s legislative elections.

“He’s a good choice,” says Yvon Le Maho, a biodiversity researcher at the Hubert Curien Multidisciplinary Institute in Strasbourg, pointing to Rugy’s environmental credentials, political experience and support for Macron.

Macron’s presidency has given the environment ministry renewed power . Its broad remit includes climate change and biodiversity as well as energy, transport and the management of natural resources. Called the ministry of ‘ecological transition’ in French, it is charged with preparing the country’s shift to a low-carbon economy. The environment minister is also one of just two ‘ministers of state’, which by protocol makes the position the third most important after the prime minister and the interior minister.

Compromise and arbitration

Hulot’s resignation on the radio station France Inter on 28 August was unexpected, but not altogether a surprise — he had long said that he would take stock of his position in summer 2018. Hulot, a household name and former producer of TV nature documentaries, became minister last May and had declined offers to join previous governments, saying that he had more influence as an activist.

But a year after taking the job, Hulot expressed frustration with the slow pace of progress in politics, arguing that short-term demands of government often get in the way of addressing long-term challenges such as climate change and the decline of biodiversity and natural resources.

In the interview, he noted that he faced these issues even in a country with a president and government more committed than most to leading on climate-change and other environmental issues. “I don’t regret for a second accepting becoming minister,” he said, “maybe I just didn’t have what it takes.”

Le Maho thinks that de Rugy should bring greater political clout to the negotiations often required to govern and engineer change. “To defend ecology you need to be a politician,” he says. “Hulot lacked that capacity, unfortunately.”

De Rugy’s experience as speaker should have sharpened his negotiating skills in ways that should serve him well as head of the ministry, adds Le Maho — one whose interests are often at odds with those of the agriculture, economy and other ministries.