Reflecting environmental land use needs into EU policy

The recent Communication by the European Commission on the EU Biodiversity Action Plan reveals that the EU will fail to meet its target of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010 unless there is significant additional effort over the next two years. Furthermore there is growing evidence that the impacts of climate change, climate mitigation measures and other changes in land use will increase substantially over the next few decades. Therefore our current environmental problems in Europe problems are likely to be exacerbated by unprecedented challenges ahead.

To help address this issue IEEP, in collaboration with Alterra, are carrying out a new study for DG Environment, which will identify the major challenges resulting from likely changes in land use in Europe over the next 25 years and then develop appropriate policy responses.

The study will focus on the four following issues, which are likely to influence the provision of four major land services over the next 25 years:

One part of the project will include an assessment of the implementation of initiatives that aim to counter habitat fragmentation through the development of ecological networks and corridors. The study will therefore critically examine the practical implementation of such initiatives and their actual impacts on land use. On the 2nd of July, IEEP hosted a workshop with invited experts to review the practical implementation of corridor and ecological networks in their countries which identified factors that led to successes and failures. The presentations from the workshop are available below.

Finally, new policy options will be developed to address the range of major impacts that could potentially arise from the projected long-term European land use changes. This may require the development of radically new types of environmental policy instrument to effectively tackle the increasing pace and magnitude of land use change and climate change.