Suchergebnisse

1. Conservation of biodiversity involves dealing with problems caused by humans, by applying solutions that comprise actions by humans. Understanding human attitudes, knowledge and behaviour are thus central to conservation research and practice. 2. The special feature brings together authors from a range of disciplines (ecology, human geography, political science, land economy, management) to examine a set of qualitative techniques used in conservation research: Interviews, Focus group discussion, The Nominal Group Technique and multi-criteria decision analysis. 3. These techniques can be used for a range of purposes—most notably to understand people's perspectives, values and attitudes and to gather information about approaches to management of species, ecosystems or natural resources. 4. Incorporating human values, perceptions, judgements and knowledge into conservation decision making is an important role for qualitative techniques; they provide robust means for submitting this information or knowledge as evidence. 5. The articles in this special feature highlight a worrying extent of poor justification and inadequate reporting of qualitative methods in the conservation literature. 6. To improve and encourage greater use of these techniques in conservation science, we urge improved reporting of rationales and methods, along with innovation, adaptation and further testing of the methods themselves.

Background: This systematic map protocol responds to an urgent policy need to evaluate key environmental benefits of new compulsory greening measures in the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with the aim of building a policy better linked to environmental performance. The systematic map will focus on Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs), in which larger arable farmers must dedicate 5% of their arable land to ecologically beneficial habitats, landscape features and land uses. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has used a software tool called the 'EFA calculator' to inform the European Commission about environmental benefits of EFA implementation. However, there are gaps in the EFA calculator's coverage of ecosystem services, especially 'global climate regulation', and an opportunity to use systematic mapping methods to enhance its capture of evidence, in advance of forthcoming CAP reforms. We describe a method for assembling a database of relevant, peer-reviewed research conducted in all agricultural landscapes in Europe and neighbouring countries with similar biogeography, addressing the primary question: what are the impacts of selected EFA features in agricultural land on two policy-relevant ecosystem service outcomes—global climate regulation and pollination? The method is streamlined to allow results in good time for the current, time-limited opportunity to influence reforms of the CAP greening measures at European and Member State level. Methods: We will search four bibliographic databases in English, using a predefined and tested search string that focuses on a subset of EFA options and ecosystem service outcomes. The options and outcomes are selected as those with particular policy relevance and traction. Only articles in English will be included. We will screen search results at title, abstract and full text levels, recording the number of studies deemed non-relevant (with reasons at full text). A systematic map database that displays the meta-data (i.e. descriptive summary information about settings and methods) of relevant studies will be produced following full text assessment. The systematic map database will be published as a MS-Excel database. The nature and extent of the evidence base will be discussed, and the applicability of methods to convert the available evidence into EFA calculator scores will be assessed.

Abstract Ecological restoration is key to counteracting anthropogenic degradation of biodiversity and to reducing disaster risk. However, there is limited knowledge of barriers hindering the wider implementation of restoration practices, despite high-level political priority to halt the loss of biodiversity. In Europe, progress on ecological restoration has been slow and insufficient to meet international agreements and comply with European Union Nature Directives. We assessed European restoration experts' perceptions on barriers to restoration in Europe, and their relative importance, through a multiple expert consultation using a Delphi process. We found that experts share a common multi-dimensional concept of ecological restoration. Experts identified a large number of barriers (33) to the advancement of ecological restoration in Europe. Major barriers pertained to the socio-economic, not the environmental, domain. The three most important being insufficient funding, conflicting interests among different stakeholders, and low political priority given to restoration. Our results emphasize the need to increase political commitment at all levels, comply with existing nature laws, and optimize the use of financial resources by increasing funds for ecological restoration and eradicate environmentally harmful subsidies. The experts also call for the integration of ecological restoration into land-use planning and facilitating stakeholders' collaboration. Our study identifies key barriers, discusses ways to overcome the main barriers to ER in Europe, and contributes knowledge to support the implementation of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the EU 2030 Restoration Plan in particular.