Biodiversity

Our Work

IEEP has a long track record of assessing and advising on the effectiveness of the EU Birds and Habitats Directives and other measures within the EU Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP).

The EU has a relatively well-established biodiversity conservation policy framework (Birds Directive and Habitats Directive). Where this legislation has been well designed and enforced, it has provided major biodiversity conservation benefits.

The EU BAP supports the implementation of these Directives and identified a comprehensive set of actions necessary to achieve the EU target of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010. Now that it is clear that this target will not be achieved a revised BAP is to be put in place in relation to the 2020 target. The failure to meet the 2010 target appears to be primarily related to implementation of existing policy instruments, rather than gaps in measures.

Key implementation problems include:

  • Slow development of some important policy instruments (e.g. the Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive)
  • Slow or incomplete implementation of existing policy instruments, such as the designation of Natura 2000 sites (particularly in the marine environment) and implementation of the Nitrates and Urban Waste Water Treatment Directives
  • Ineffective implementation of some existing measures, including some agri-environment schemes, for example through inappropriate practical management, and insufficient advice and training
  • Insufficient and incomplete monitoring of the status of biodiversity, including many threatened habitats and species, inadequate monitoring of the impacts of developments and effectiveness of mitigation and compensation measures, and inadequate monitoring of the effectiveness of conservation management measures (e.g. agri-environment schemes)

 

Such implementation problems are often the result of inadequate funding for practical biodiversity measures, such as the appropriate management of Natura sites, and the limited capacities of government’s environmental agencies and other conservation organisations to support and monitor actions.

Problems arise from the low priority often given to biodiversity conservation, because policy makers often overlook or underestimate the full socioeconomic value of biodiversity. The problem is exacerbated by perverse subsidies that often provide stronger economic incentives for activities that damage biodiversity than for conservation activities.

Recent work in this area includes:

Assessing Member States’ progress in implementing the EU BAP as support for the European Commission’s mid-term assessment, together with the development of a knowledge base system to monitor future progress.

Ongoing work to produce guidance for the Commission on the assessment and mitigation of developments that have impacts on the overall coherence of the Natura 2000 network.

More about our work in this area...

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