Spatial planning for biodiversity in Europe's changing climate

Abstract

Climate change is already having impacts on biodiversity within Europe, with habitats and species needing to change and adapt to rising global temperatures and shifts in bio-climatic zones.Spatial planning represents an important intervention to further European, national and local biodiversity objectives for climate change adaptation. Drawing on casestudies of plans for inland and coastal areas, and involving stakeholder workshops, this paper reports on a trans-national study examining the scope of spatial plans in the Netherlands, England and France in addressing the impact of climate change. It concludes that spatial planning is making provision for biodiversity and dynamic natural processes. However, while good practice in planning for biodiversity under conditions of climate change is developing, systematic use is not being made of available procedures. The paper examines some of the barriers to implementation of this new policy commitment to climate change adaptation. Recommendations are made covering policy development to include climate change impacts upon biodiversity, modifi ed procedures for plan-making and the appraisal of plans and projects. Amongst the specifi c measures recommended are the climate-proofi ng of projects and plans through the use of EIA and SEA; the integration of plans through adoption of common objectives and review of time horizons and boundaries; and an ecosystem-based planning approach.

A working typology of response options to manage environmental change and their scope for complementarity using an Ecosystem Approach

“…Ramsar Convention; EU Natura 2000 areas), together with additional national and/or local designations. Although the network of protected areas should in principle be dynamic to adjust to ecological change (especially from climate change), in practice it has been criticised for being less flexible and slow to adapt to change; this is attributed to the rigid structures inherent in national or regional planning systems (Wilson and Piper, 2008). As a consequence, protected areas are likely to exist as fragmented islands in a wider landscape with significantly less protection, which may be too restrictive to allow genetic diversity or to enable species dispersion (Paloma et al, 2014).…”

Quantifying biodiversity impacts of climate change and bioenergy: the role of integrated global scenarios

“…Moreover, further increases in the coverage of protected areas will be necessary to meet biodiversity targets, especially as the ranges of species are predicted to shift as a response to climate change (Araújo et al 2011;Hannah et al 2007;Hannah et al 2002;Heller and Zavaleta 2009). More generally, several studies recommend mainstreaming biodiversity conservation throughout land-use planning so that the landscape managed for economic purposes would remain biodiversity friendly (Hannah et al 2002;Noss 2001;Wilson and Piper, 2008). Neither conservation value of sites nor future conservation needs are currently included in the IAM-based land-use scenarios.…”

Impact of Abandoned Land on Environmental Protection, Landscape and Economic Benefit in Lithuania

“…The adaptation of the flora and fauna includes the process by which species and habitats move to other locations where their residence would be more convenient and less vulnerable (Wilson et al, 2008).…”