The coalitional politics of the European Union's environmental forest policy: Biodiversity conservation, timber legality, and climate protection.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Sotirov M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8563925 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundCOVID-19 has highlighted the importance of preparedness and response systems when faced with a pandemic. The rapid spread of the disease throughout Europe raised questions about the capacity of the European Union (EU) and its Member States to combat serious cross-border threats to health. This article provides an overview of institutional arrangements for pandemic preparedness before the COVID-19 pandemic and outlines the changes proposed by the European Health Union (EHU) framework.MethodsA systematic review of relevant EU law, EU policy documents and the scientific literature was conducted. EUR-lex, PubMed, Web of Science core collection and Google Scholar databases were searched for relevant records published after the year 2000. The proposed new regulatory framework was extracted from the EHU legislative package. The results were organized according to the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Logic Model.ResultsThe main EU bodies involved in preparedness and response are the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the European Commission and the Health Security Committee (HSC). The proposed changes of the EHU focus on strengthening the auditing capabilities of the ECDC, increasing the scope of EU action in managing medical countermeasures, and further formalizing the HSC.ConclusionsThe proposal takes bold steps to address technical and political issues of preparedness and response; whereas, on the latter point, it is likely that amendments to the proposal will not address long-standing challenges in preparing for and coordinating national responses to a future EU-wide pandemic.
| S-EPMC9898003 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Over 20% of the world's tropical forests have been selectively logged, and large expanses are allocated for future timber extraction. Reduced-impact logging (RIL) is being promoted as best practice forestry that increases sustainability and lowers CO2 emissions from logging, by reducing collateral damage associated with timber extraction. RIL is also expected to minimize the impacts of selective logging on biodiversity, although this is yet to be thoroughly tested.We undertake the most comprehensive study to date to investigate the biodiversity impacts of RIL across multiple taxonomic groups. We quantified birds, bats and large mammal assemblage structures, using a before-after control-impact (BACI) design across 20 sample sites over a 5-year period. Faunal surveys utilized point counts, mist nets and line transects and yielded >250 species. We examined assemblage responses to logging, as well as partitions of feeding guild and strata (understorey vs. canopy), and then tested for relationships with logging intensity to assess the primary determinants of community composition.Community analysis revealed little effect of RIL on overall assemblages, as structure and composition were similar before and after logging, and between logging and control sites. Variation in bird assemblages was explained by natural rates of change over time, and not logging intensity. However, when partitioned by feeding guild and strata, the frugivorous and canopy bird ensembles changed as a result of RIL, although the latter was also associated with change over time. Bats exhibited variable changes post-logging that were not related to logging, whereas large mammals showed no change at all.Indicator species analysis and correlations with logging intensities revealed that some species exhibited idiosyncratic responses to RIL, whilst abundance change of most others was associated with time.Synthesis and applications. Our study demonstrates the relatively benign effect of reduced-impact logging (RIL) on birds, bats and large mammals in a neotropical forest context, and therefore, we propose that forest managers should improve timber extraction techniques more widely. If RIL is extensively adopted, forestry concessions could represent sizeable and important additions to the global conservation estate - over 4 million km2.
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Project description:Natural disasters impose huge uncertainty and loss to human lives and economic activities. Landslides are one disaster that has become more prevalent because of anthropogenic disturbances, such as land-cover changes, land degradation, and expansion of infrastructure. These are further exacerbated by more extreme precipitation due to climate change, which is predicted to trigger more landslides and threaten sustainable development in vulnerable regions. Although biodiversity conservation and development are often regarded as having a trade-off relationship, here we present a global analysis of the area with co-benefits, where conservation through expanding protection and reducing deforestation can not only benefit biodiversity but also reduce landslide risks to human society. High overlap exists between landslide susceptibility and areas of endemism for mammals, birds, and amphibians, which are mostly concentrated in mountain regions. We identified 247 mountain ranges as areas with high vulnerability, having both exceptional biodiversity and landslide risks, accounting for 25.8% of the global mountainous areas. Another 31 biodiverse mountains are classified as future vulnerable mountains as they face increasing landslide risks because of predicted climate change and deforestation. None of these 278 mountains reach the Aichi Target 11 of 17% coverage by protected areas. Of the 278 mountains, 52 need immediate actions because of high vulnerability, severe threats from future deforestation and precipitation extremes, low protection, and high-population density and anthropogenic activities. These actions include protected area expansion, forest conservation, and restoration where it could be a cost-effective way to reduce the risks of landslides.
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Project description:Forest loss is one of the most pervasive land surface transformations on Earth, with drastic effects on global climate, ecosystems, and human well-being. As part of biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation efforts, many countries, including China, have been implementing large-scale policies to conserve and restore forests. However, little is known about the effectiveness of these policies, and information on China's forest dynamics at the national level has mainly relied on official statistics. In response to international calls for improved reliability and transparency of information on biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation efforts, it is crucial to independently verify government statistics. Furthermore, if forest recovery is verified, it is essential to assess the degree to which this recovery is attributable to policy, within the context of other relevant factors. We assess the dynamics of forest cover in China between 2000 and 2010 and evaluate the effectiveness of one of the largest forest conservation programs in the world-the Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP). Results indicate that forest cover has significantly increased in around 1.6% of China's territory and that the areas exhibiting forest gain experienced a combined increase in net primary productivity (ca. 0.9 Tg of carbon). Among the variables evaluated at county level, the NFCP exhibited a significantly positive relation with forest gain, whereas reduction in rural labor showed a negative relationship with both forest loss and gain. Findings such as these have global implications for forest conservation and climate change mitigation efforts.
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Project description:Europe has the world's most extensive network of conservation areas. Conservation areas are selected without taking into account the effects of climate change. How effectively would such areas conserve biodiversity under climate change? We assess the effectiveness of protected areas and the Natura 2000 network in conserving a large proportion of European plant and terrestrial vertebrate species under climate change. We found that by 2080, 58?±?2.6% of the species would lose suitable climate in protected areas, whereas losses affected 63?±?2.1% of the species of European concern occurring in Natura 2000 areas. Protected areas are expected to retain climatic suitability for species better than unprotected areas (P?<?0.001), but Natura 2000 areas retain climate suitability for species no better and sometimes less effectively than unprotected areas. The risk is high that ongoing efforts to conserve Europe's biodiversity are jeopardized by climate change. New policies are required to avert this risk.
| S-EPMC3116148 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Conservation and sustainable management of lineages providing non-timber forest products are imperative under the current global biodiversity loss. Most non-timber forest species, however, lack genomic studies that characterize their intraspecific variation and evolutionary history, which inform species' conservation practices. Contrary to many lineages in the Andean biodiversity hotspot that exhibit high diversification, the genus Parajubaea (Arecaceae) has only three species despite the genus' origin 22 million years ago. Two of the three palm species, P. torallyi and P. sunkha, are non-timber forest species endemic to the Andes of Bolivia and are listed as IUCN endangered. The third species, P. cocoides, is a vulnerable species with unknown wild populations. We investigated the evolutionary relationships of Parajubaea species and the genetic diversity and structure of wild Bolivian populations. Sequencing of five low-copy nuclear genes (3753 bp) challenged the hypothesis that P. cocoides is a cultigen that originated from the wild Bolivian species. We further obtained up to 15,134 de novo single-nucleotide polymorphism markers by genotyping-by-sequencing of 194 wild Parajubaea individuals. Our total DNA sequencing effort rejected the taxonomic separation of the two Bolivian species. As expected for narrow endemic species, we observed low genetic diversity, but no inbreeding signal. We found three genetic clusters shaped by geographic distance, which we use to propose three management units. Different percentages of missing genotypic data did not impact the genetic structure of populations. We use the management units to recommend in situ conservation by creating new protected areas, and ex situ conservation through seed collection.
| S-EPMC11291087 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Protecting aboveground carbon stocks in tropical forests is essential for mitigating global climate change and is assumed to simultaneously conserve biodiversity. Although the relationship between tree diversity and carbon stocks is generally positive, the relationship remains unclear for consumers or decomposers. We assessed this relationship for multiple trophic levels across the tree of life (10 organismal groups, 3 kingdoms) in lowland rainforests of the Congo Basin. Comparisons across regrowth and old-growth forests evinced the expected positive relationship for trees, but not for other organismal groups. Moreover, differences in species composition between forests increased with difference in carbon stock. These variable associations across the tree of life contradict the implicit assumption that maximum co-benefits to biodiversity are associated with conservation of forests with the highest carbon storage. Initiatives targeting climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation should include both old-growth and regenerating forests to optimally benefit biodiversity and carbon storage.
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Project description:The impacts of climate change and the socioecological challenges they present are ubiquitous and increasingly severe. Practical efforts to operationalize climate-responsive design and management in the global network of marine protected areas (MPAs) are required to ensure long-term effectiveness for safeguarding marine biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here, we review progress in integrating climate change adaptation into MPA design and management and provide eight recommendations to expedite this process. Climate-smart management objectives should become the default for all protected areas, and made into an explicit international policy target. Furthermore, incentives to use more dynamic management tools would increase the climate change responsiveness of the MPA network as a whole. Given ongoing negotiations on international conservation targets, now is the ideal time to proactively reform management of the global seascape for the dynamic climate-biodiversity reality.
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Project description:The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the largest budget item in the European Union, but varied data reporting hampers holistic analysis. Here we have assembled the first dataset to our knowledge to report individual CAP payments by standardized CAP funding measures and geolocation. We created this dataset by translating, geolocating to the county or province (NUTS3) level, and consistently harmonizing payment measures for over 16 million payments from 2015, originally reported by EU member states and compiled by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. This dataset and code allow in-depth analysis of over €60 billion in public spending by purpose and location for the first time, which enables both individual payment tracing and analysis by aggregation. These data are representative of the distribution of annual CAP payments from 2014 to 2020 and are of interest to researchers, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and journalists for evaluating the distribution and impacts of CAP spending.
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Project description: Not available
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