Suchergebnisse

The European Union (EU) has committed to an ambitious biodiversity recovery plan in its Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Green Deal. These policies aim to halt biodiversity loss and move towards sustainable development, focusing on restoring degraded habitats, extending the network of protected areas (PAs), and improving the effectiveness of management, governance, and funding. The achievement of conservation goals must be founded on understanding past successes and failures. Here, we summarise the strengths and weaknesses of past EU biodiversity conservation policies and practices and explore future opportunities and challenges. We focus on four main aspects: i) coordination among and within the EU Member States, ii) integration of biodiversity conservation into socio-economic sectors, iii) adequacy and sufficiency of funds, and iv) governance and stakeholder participation.Whilst past conservation efforts have benefitted from common rules across the EU and funding mechanisms, they have failed at operationalizing coordination within and across the Member States, integrating biodiversity conservation into other sectoral policies, adequately funding and effectively enforcing management, and facilitating stakeholder participation in decision-making. Future biodiversity conservation would benefit from an extended and better-managed network of PAs, additional novel funding opportunities, including the private sector, and enhanced co-governance. However, it will be critical to find sustainable solutions to potential conflicts between conservation goals and other socio-economic objectives and to resolve inconsistencies across sectoral policies.

Within the southern North Sea, several EU Member States are developing or have already implemented marine spatial plans for their EEZs. However, marine spatial p lanning (MSP) is usually carried out at the national level and largely ignores the possible mutual benefits of crossborder cooperation. The MASPNOSE project has facilitated two concrete, cross‐border MSP initiatives:  the Thornton Bank area on the border between Belgium and the Netherlands where crossborder coordination could used to address wind energy development, shipping and fisheries management  the Dogger Bank international fisheries management plan developed by the North Sea Regional Advisory Council (NSRAC). Here, cross‐border MSP was used to develop a stakeholder perspective on spatial management measures. The two case studies were in different stages of the cross‐border MSP process. In this paper we focus on the role of knowledge and research in these two planning initiatives. We describe the knowledge requirements that have been articulated (e.g. on ecosystem components, spatial‐temporal patterns, current and future human use, institutional setting) and how these requirements have been addressed through data workshops with stakeholders, analysis of policy documents and interviews. In the Thornton Bank case study the knowledge requirements focused on the institutional and administrative settings and the identification of policy priorities. In the Dogger Bank case study, stakeholder knowledge was combined with research knowledge to assess zoning options for the Dogger Bank area