Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EuropaBON (Europa Biodiversity Observation Network: integrating data streams to support policy)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-12-01 al 2022-05-31
Balancing human and economic development with biodiversity conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources in Europe requires a concerted strategy to implement efforts at multiple scales and to develop and harmonise capacities to support smart decisions and collaborative action. Member States of the European Union (EU) have invested significant amounts of resources to monitor biodiversity thereby generating large amounts of data at local and national scales. However, the availability at the EU scale of harmonised biodiversity information that feeds into long-term, spatially explicit and regularly updated knowledge products remains a constraint. This in turn seriously hampers the implementation of biodiversity and ecosystem conservation policies, the sustainable management of natural resources and the assessment of the impact of these actions.
To realise the vision of informed decision-making for a more sustainable future across Europe, a coalition of 15 partners from nine EU Member States and the UK have been working for the past 18 months on the Europa Biodiversity Observation Network (EuropaBON). EuropaBON builds on the BON Development Process offered by GEO BON, which focuses on stakeholder participation and knowledge sharing, to identify the most pressing user needs and requirements for biodiversity information that can inform EU public policy at multiple scales. By assessing current monitoring efforts from both in-situ and remote sensing data, we are working to understand information gaps and bottlenecks, and assess monitoring costs to identify opportunities for designing a sustainable and feasible European monitoring scheme that responds directly to users. EuropaBON will demonstrate the operability of these models for policy through a series of showcases related to critical EU environmental policies and investigate the feasibility of creating a European Biodiversity Monitoring Centre to coordinate future biodiversity observation activities.
To realise the vision of informed decision-making for a more sustainable future across Europe, a coalition of 15 partners from nine EU Member States and the UK have been working for the past 18 months on the Europa Biodiversity Observation Network (EuropaBON). EuropaBON builds on the BON Development Process offered by GEO BON, which focuses on stakeholder participation and knowledge sharing, to identify the most pressing user needs and requirements for biodiversity information that can inform EU public policy at multiple scales. By assessing current monitoring efforts from both in-situ and remote sensing data, we are working to understand information gaps and bottlenecks, and assess monitoring costs to identify opportunities for designing a sustainable and feasible European monitoring scheme that responds directly to users. EuropaBON will demonstrate the operability of these models for policy through a series of showcases related to critical EU environmental policies and investigate the feasibility of creating a European Biodiversity Monitoring Centre to coordinate future biodiversity observation activities.
During the first 18 months of the project, EuropaBON has made remarkable progress in achieving its overall objective of designing an EU-wide biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring framework by establishing a comprehensive stakeholder network, comprising over 700 members and representing more than 400 organisations over a wide range of sectors, countries, domains, and scales. We have identified geographic and thematic biases in our network and addressed them by involving stakeholders in Eastern European countries, and partnering with the International Centre for Atlantic Research to launch the MarBioME project to assess the current state of marine biodiversity monitoring in the European Union and adjacent waters.
To date, we produced three key deliverables for the project, including 1) the User & Policy Needs Assessment Report, 2) an Inventory of Past and Current European Biodiversity Monitoring Activities (we made the database publicly available), and by combining the knowledge from (1) and (2), we have produced 3) a list of Essential Biodiversity Variables that includes spatial, temporal and taxonomic specifications, and builds into the backbone for the co-design of this system. These deliverables also form the basis for the identification of monitoring gaps, the analysis of workflow bottlenecks, the cost-effectiveness analysis, and the assessment of the full costs and benefits of the new monitoring scheme for Europe – all to be delivered by the end of the project. We have successfully communicated and discussed our results with representatives of the European Commission and other key stakeholders in quarterly meetings, as well as during meetings of the ad hoc monitoring working group under the auspices of the European Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity, the establishment of which was initiated by our partners from the Joint Research Centre.
To date, we produced three key deliverables for the project, including 1) the User & Policy Needs Assessment Report, 2) an Inventory of Past and Current European Biodiversity Monitoring Activities (we made the database publicly available), and by combining the knowledge from (1) and (2), we have produced 3) a list of Essential Biodiversity Variables that includes spatial, temporal and taxonomic specifications, and builds into the backbone for the co-design of this system. These deliverables also form the basis for the identification of monitoring gaps, the analysis of workflow bottlenecks, the cost-effectiveness analysis, and the assessment of the full costs and benefits of the new monitoring scheme for Europe – all to be delivered by the end of the project. We have successfully communicated and discussed our results with representatives of the European Commission and other key stakeholders in quarterly meetings, as well as during meetings of the ad hoc monitoring working group under the auspices of the European Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity, the establishment of which was initiated by our partners from the Joint Research Centre.
EuropaBON stakeholder network
With 781 members representing more than 400 initiatives, EuropaBON membership has grown substantially during the first 18 months of the project. To put this in perspective, GEO BON, which is the global network created in 2003, currently has 3029 members of which a quarter come from EuropaBON. In addition, we have just received the GEO BON endorsement to become an officially recognised BON.
EuropaBON aims to become the primary observation network serving the wider EU biodiversity and ecosystem community. We will continue to strive to reach out to new members during the project and demonstrate the wide impact and breadth of the European biodiversity community by raising awareness of our members' area of expertise and facilitating communication and collaboration between them.
Assessment of EuropaBON User & Policy Needs
While the assessment of user needs and policies for biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring in Europe followed a very comprehensive and phased methodological approach based on a series of workshops, surveys and interviews, as well as an open review process of the draft report; the results of this report have provided the first preliminary list of key biodiversity and ecosystem service variables to be monitored for the new EU-wide monitoring system. We are not stopping here and are working diligently to integrate the new restoration-focused law proposal into our assessment.
The results of the assessment attracted a great deal of interest: we received more than 400 comments from stakeholders and officially launched the release of the report with an open webinar that was attended by almost 150 participants. Hard-copies of this document were distributed at various events (e.g. Biodiversity Spring Market in Brussels, World Biodiversity Forum in Davos) and sent by mail to more than 200 stakeholders across Europe. The report was also published in the open access EuropaBON RIO collection, together with other project related documents.
List and specifications of EBVs for EuropaBON
Following a comprehensive multi-step methodology including a series of workshops and surveys and involvement of biodiversity researchers and practitioners, we have defined a list of 72 essential biodiversity and ecosystem services variables. In a next step, we will derive a refined list of 20-30 EBVs with exact details on their spatial, temporal and taxonomic specifications that will be used as the building blocks to design the European Biodiversity Observation Network for which workflows will be established.
This list provides the backbone for EuropaBON and has received much interest from the European Commission as well as the scientific community. We therefore plan a public review process, similar to the one used during the User & Policy Needs Assessment, to ensure a balanced set of essential variables that serve the needs of the users from all relevant sectors.
Finally, through our outreach and engagement efforts, we continue to facilitate discussion among key stakeholders to develop and refine the design framework and blueprint for a monitoring system for biodiversity and ecosystem services at the European level. Through our direct participation in >120 communication and dissemination events, we have been able to reach over four thousand scientists and almost three thousand representatives of public policy and private industry. In addition, we have reached almost ten thousand people through social media. Our goal is to maintain our outreach activities at the same pace, or even higher, during the second half of the project.
With 781 members representing more than 400 initiatives, EuropaBON membership has grown substantially during the first 18 months of the project. To put this in perspective, GEO BON, which is the global network created in 2003, currently has 3029 members of which a quarter come from EuropaBON. In addition, we have just received the GEO BON endorsement to become an officially recognised BON.
EuropaBON aims to become the primary observation network serving the wider EU biodiversity and ecosystem community. We will continue to strive to reach out to new members during the project and demonstrate the wide impact and breadth of the European biodiversity community by raising awareness of our members' area of expertise and facilitating communication and collaboration between them.
Assessment of EuropaBON User & Policy Needs
While the assessment of user needs and policies for biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring in Europe followed a very comprehensive and phased methodological approach based on a series of workshops, surveys and interviews, as well as an open review process of the draft report; the results of this report have provided the first preliminary list of key biodiversity and ecosystem service variables to be monitored for the new EU-wide monitoring system. We are not stopping here and are working diligently to integrate the new restoration-focused law proposal into our assessment.
The results of the assessment attracted a great deal of interest: we received more than 400 comments from stakeholders and officially launched the release of the report with an open webinar that was attended by almost 150 participants. Hard-copies of this document were distributed at various events (e.g. Biodiversity Spring Market in Brussels, World Biodiversity Forum in Davos) and sent by mail to more than 200 stakeholders across Europe. The report was also published in the open access EuropaBON RIO collection, together with other project related documents.
List and specifications of EBVs for EuropaBON
Following a comprehensive multi-step methodology including a series of workshops and surveys and involvement of biodiversity researchers and practitioners, we have defined a list of 72 essential biodiversity and ecosystem services variables. In a next step, we will derive a refined list of 20-30 EBVs with exact details on their spatial, temporal and taxonomic specifications that will be used as the building blocks to design the European Biodiversity Observation Network for which workflows will be established.
This list provides the backbone for EuropaBON and has received much interest from the European Commission as well as the scientific community. We therefore plan a public review process, similar to the one used during the User & Policy Needs Assessment, to ensure a balanced set of essential variables that serve the needs of the users from all relevant sectors.
Finally, through our outreach and engagement efforts, we continue to facilitate discussion among key stakeholders to develop and refine the design framework and blueprint for a monitoring system for biodiversity and ecosystem services at the European level. Through our direct participation in >120 communication and dissemination events, we have been able to reach over four thousand scientists and almost three thousand representatives of public policy and private industry. In addition, we have reached almost ten thousand people through social media. Our goal is to maintain our outreach activities at the same pace, or even higher, during the second half of the project.