Juliane Albrecht

Managing protected areas under climate change: challenges and priorities.

The implementation of adaptation actions in local conservation management is a new and complex task with multiple facets, influenced by factors differing from site to site. A transdisciplinary perspective is therefore required to identify and implement effective solutions. To address this, the International Conference on Managing Protected Areas under Climate Change brought together international scientists, conservation managers, and decision-makers to discuss current experiences with local adaptation of conservation management. This paper summarizes the main issues for implementing adaptation that emerged from the conference. These include a series of conclusions and recommendations on monitoring, sensitivity assessment, current and future management practices, and legal and policy aspects. A range of spatial and temporal scales must be considered in the implementation of climate-adapted management. The adaptation process must be area-specific and consider the ecosystem and the social and economic conditions within and beyond protected area boundaries. However, a strategic overview is also needed: management at each site should be informed by conservation priorities and likely impacts of climate change at regional or even wider scales. Acting across these levels will be a long and continuous process, requiring coordination with actors outside the “traditional” conservation sector. To achieve this, a range of research, communication, and policy/legal actions is required. We identify a series of important actions that need to be taken at different scales to enable managers of protected sites to adapt successfully to a changing climate.

Ecosystem Services in Energy Crop Production - A Concept for Regulatory Measures in Spatial Planning?

Ecosystem Services in Energy Crop Production - A Concept for Regulatory Measures in Spatial Planning? Land management faces huge challenges to fulfill increasing demands for limited natural resources and to safeguard sustainable land use. The CBD stresses the necessity to minimize land use conflicts and to improve the management of landscapes. Therefore favourable strategies and methods have to be developed. According to European and German energy policies, the proportion of renewable resources for energy is to be increased significantly in the coming years. The extended cultivation of energy crops can lead to conflicts, e.g. severe impacts on various ecosystem services based on groundwater, soils, biodiversity and the overall appearance of the landscape scenery. Energy crops compete in space with food production, and they have various ecological, economic and social effects. There is a need for suitable spatial planning instruments to regulate energy crop cultivation and to reduce the impact on ecosystems and landscapes. As it includes all levels of sustainability with economic, ecological and social aspects, the concept of Ecosystem Services can be a stimulus and a suitable tool to find appropriate solutions. On the one hand, it will be shown that ecosystem services are suited to assess the consequences of energy crops. On the other hand, it is discussed whether and how regulatory measures and methods in spatial planning consider ecosystem services and if they contribute to govern land use management.

Synergies and Conflicts Between Water Framework Directive and Natura 2000: Legal Requirements, Technical Guidance and Experiences from Practice

The EU water framework directive (WFD) is intensively connected with other European legal regulations and supporting documents. This close interrelationship calls for deeper considerations when WFD is implemented in locations of high conservation value, e.g. Natura 2000 sites. A comprehensive, but specific comparison of the goals of WFD with the aims of habitats directive (HD) and birds directive (BD) provides a sensitive overview on their peculiarities, with an outlook on potential synergies and conflicts. The sometimes complex guidance for solving complicated situations in the practical application of these differing legal provisions is also described. The representation of requirements for Natura 2000 sites as part of river basin management plans, and related up-to-date experience are given special attention. Finally recommendations and conclusions provide the reader with a complete view of this challenging chapter in European Policy. In the end, considerably more synergies than conflicts are identified between the objectives of WFD, HD and BD. Whenever conflicts should arise these directives prevent derogating from their requirements by cross-references. Therefore, firm and timely coordination between water and nature conservation authorities is necessary.

Can Natura 2000 Sites Benefit from River Basin Management Planning Under a Changing Climate? Lessons from Germany

Goals for nature conservation and development are set for several rivers and lakes which are situated within protected areas. Concurrently these areas have to meet the requirements of the Water Framework Directive. Between the goals of both scopes there are often synergies but partially conflicts. In addition, climate change, which touches both water management and nature conservation at the same time, has to be taken into account during the river basin management planning, too. Against this background it is discussed in consideration of climate change, how the goals of nature conservation and of the Water Framework Directive can be achieved in such a way that conflicts are avoided to a large extent and synergies used. The following discussion and its results are based on an evaluation of the river basin management plans and programmes of measures in the ten river catchment areas of Germany. Altogether, it can be noticed that potential synergies are already put to good use. However, there are even more unused possibilities for the improvement of the interplay of nature conservation and Water Framework Directive as well as for the consideration of climate change effects.

Guidelines for SEA in Marine Spatial Planning for the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) — with Special Consideration of Tiering Procedure for SEA and EIA

The economic use of the oceans for marine mining, for extracting gravel and sand, laying cables and pipelines and, more recently, installing wind energy plants is increasing. The call to implement spatial structure plans for marine areas has therefore become louder (Molitor 2005 p.66 et seq.). In taking account of various economic, social and ecological interests, such plans aim to identify and resolve potential conflicts at an early stage. Spatial planning is needed not only within the 12 nautical mile zone in the North and Baltic Seas (i.e. in territorial waters), but also within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), where, for example, most German offshore windfarms are planned (BSH 2006). For this reason, a legal basis for spatial planning in the EEZ (Section 18a Federal Spatial Planning Act, Raumordnungsgesetz, ROG) was established in Germany in July 2004. The applicability of the ROG has been extended to the EEZ, and the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs (Bundesministerium fur Verkehr, Bau- und Stadtentwicklung, BMVBS) has been empowered to set targets and principles for the German EEZ in the Baltic and North Seas. According to Sections 18a, (7) and 5 ROG, spatial structure planning in the EEZ includes strategic environmental assessment (SEA) as an important component. SEA is an integral part of official procedures implemented by public authorities, governments, and legislative bodies for establishing and changing plans and programmes. It is the purpose of the SEA to ensure that the implications of the plan or programme are comprehensively determined, described and evaluated by means of standardized principles at an early stage and that the results of the evaluation are taken into consideration in establishing and changing plans.

The Czech Republic

Despite its relatively small landmass of 78,866 km2, the Czech Republic has a diverse physical geography with numerous valuable plant and animal species. Czech law provides for various instruments to protect nature and biodiversity. Some of these are based on European law, introduced at the time of the Czech Republic’s accession to the European Union in 2004. However, Czech environmental law does not provide for any instrument of compensation covering the entire country, e.g. one corresponding to Germany’s Eingriffsregelung (Impact Mitigation regulation). At the same time, duties of compensation are determined for individual sectors such as within the Law on Nature and Landscape Conservation (ZOPK 1992) as well as other laws.

Legal Aspects of Climate Change Adaptation

The adaptation of nature protection areas to the impacts of climate change has several implications for European and member states’ environmental law. The Natura 2000 system constitutes a ‘coherent European ecological network of special areas of conservation’, consisting of protected areas for birds and habitat types. These protected areas are designated and maintained at the member state level. To strengthen resilience, European policies for biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation require enforcement and enhancement of the existing legal framework. We have compiled the relevant policies and examined the adaptive capacity of the Natura 2000 system (Birds and Habitats Directive) and the Water Framework Directive. On this basis, the general requirements of adaptation to the impacts of climate change in environmental law were identified. The European directives for nature conservation and water management were then tested with respect to the realisation of these principles. In a second step, differences in implementation in seven Central European member states were compared. This led to the evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of the existing legal framework, and to suggestions concerning future policy making and legislation in the field of climate adaptation.

The Subsidiarity Principle – Does it Impede Equal Ecological Living Conditions in Europe?

As European integration has transmuted the European Economic Community (EEC) into the European Union (EU), vesting steadily more competences in European institutions, the idea of subsidiarity has become more and more important. In this sense, the 1986/ 87 Single European Act (SEA)1 not only expanded competences to strengthen the Common Market, but also explicitly codified the subsidiarity principle for the first time. Article 130r (4) of the EEC Treaty reads as follows: