Registration - Talk or Poster-Session

Mankind faces two major threats to the stability and the well-being of our human societies, the climate and the biodiversity crisis. Human activities are predicted to lead to a climate warming of up to 4°C until 2100 under business as usual associated with an increase of the likelihood of experiencing climate extremes; they may also induce a loss of 1 million species by the end of the century. A recent IPBES workshop report emphasizes win-win effects of measures combatting the two crises, i.e. climate protection slowing biodiversity loss and biodiversity protection mitigating climate impacts. However, at the level of individual regional measures tradeoffs between climate and biodiversity protection may emerge – or in other words, the UN sustainable development goals (SDG) 7 (“Clean Energy”) and 13 (“Climate Action”) may compromise SDG 14 and 15 (“life below water” and “life on land”) by rapid expansion of renewable energy sources. Biofuel production and the construction of windfarms, hydropower plants, photovoltaic systems come with significant negative impacts on ecosystems and their biodiversity – sparking intense debates. These impacts can be direct, e.g. collision mortality of birds and bats, barriers to fish migration or deteriorating habitats by intense shading and rain-sheltering, or indirect by causing road sprawl, noise pollution or meso-climate alteration. This session presents and discusses advances in the development of new technologies as well as land-use and planning tools to alleviate the consequences of inevitable tradeoffs between clean energy production and biodiversity protection. Managing these tradeoffs well may help to prevent unnecessary pressures on biodiversity and futile conflicts from slowing us down on our way to reach the SDGs.

Biodiversity is the foundation of human health: humanity depends on healthy ecosystems for food and freshwater, biodiversity provides access to medicinal and genetic resources as to recreational opportunities, and biodiversity is an aesthetic and spiritual asset. Agriculture and food production have so far been faced with the dilemma of either achieving maximum yields through intensive cultivation on a small area, or cultivating in a more biodiversity-friendly way and on large areas with often lower yields. This can only be remedied if cultivation methods, production methods and consumer behavior change. The nexus between biodiversity, nutrition and human health is multi-faceted and requires interdisciplinary research to develop a deeper understanding of the essential connections. Important questions in this context are:

• What exactly do we know about the links between biodiversity, functional processes and human health and what do we not?
• How can biodiversity conservation, health and food supply goals be better integrated, i.e. thought and addressed together? What specific investments, incentives and efforts are needed, e.g. in the areas of technology research, education, voluntary commitment?

With this session, we are pursuing the clear goal of closing gaps in research, but also to provide policy advice, and are aiming for a joint position paper as a result.

Aquatic ecosystems and their biodiversity contribute manifold ecosystem services to people, providing food, materials, drinking water, irrigation; regulating flooding and climate; and contributing recreational and other non-material services. However, marine and freshwater ecosystems are under massive pressure and many of their species are threatened by extinction. Stress from “old” (such as overfishing, excess nutrients, agrochemical cocktails, other pollution, morphological degradation, invasive species and climate change) and “new” threats (including effects of novel pollutants, such as microplastics, pharmaceuticals and their degradation products, as well as their interaction with old and novel pollutants). Global as well as European biodiversity targets have been missed for marine and freshwater decade after decade. This persistent loss of aquatic biodiversity is happening below the surface in a double sense, often unnoticed by society, economy and politics. With this workshop we aim to highlight and discuss challenges, risks, and opportunities for the relationship of aquatic biodiversity and people. In this context new global, European and associated national regulations will be discussed. Crucial questions include how (a) to establish a coherent trans-European Nature Network, (b) to identify priority areas for conservation and restoration, (c) to achieve the objectives of the WFD, (d) how to make the use of aquatic ecosystems sustainable, and (e) to evaluate progress towards goals. We will further look at innovative concepts, options for action and best-practice examples from the European area for system solutions that overcome conflicting goals and allow the protection, promotion, and sustainable use of biodiversity. Moreover, we discuss synergies between marine and freshwater initiatives.

Economy and the private sector, including bioeconomy in its broadest sense, are key factors in the development of human well-being and have played a decisive role in ensuring that the “Historical Index of Human Development” has risen substantially worldwide for more than 100 years: humanity is doing better than ever before! At the same time, economic activities are also the most important factor in the overexploitation of natural resources and natural capital and thus in the progressive destruction of the foundations of human life, including biodiversity. Therefore, economic actors, in particular the private sector, have a key role to play in preserving these livelihoods through a transformation to a sustainable economic model and in enabling the maintenance and further growth of human well-being. In fact, there are different ideas in science, economy and politics how this goal can be achieved, although in the European context there is broad agreement that this requires the transition from a mainly market-based economy to a social-ecologically driven economy. The session will critically discuss various proposals from business and academia on how this transformation could take place.

Our daily life does not necessarily offer apparent consequential impediments due to the loss of biodiversity. It is an obvious issue that the biodiversity crisis is hardly ever recognized and felt despite multiple and ambitious efforts of governmental and non-governmental organizations to change this. We are aware of starving polar bears or extreme droughts but do not draw the connection to our own personal future. Nor do we realize the clear interdependence of climate change, biodiversity crisis and human activities. We have to ask what can be done, in order to promote effective cultural transformations and nourish biodiversity awareness. We do have many grass root initiatives to raise an awareness of the dramatic effects of climate change and the biodiversity crisis on our well being which are contrasted or counteracted by the logic of global political developments. In general, we can recognize a major uncertainty promoting or induced by ongoing cultural transformations. In order to understand and assume an active role in these cultural transformations for the good of biodiversity and our own personal future, it is vitally important to study these cultural transformations and develop clear ways of closing the knowledge action gap. The session will deal with these questions from a transformational stand point and will critically discuss diagnoses and potential solutions.

(IPBES) showcased a high diversity of governance instruments to protect and enhance biodiversity. For the region Europe-Central Asia (ECA), context-specific mixes of governance instruments that include legal and regulatory instruments, economic, financial, social and information-based instruments were considered to be effective to protect biodiversity. Further progress toward improved strategies for implementing subsidies in sectors such as agriculture and fisheries and more emphasis on rights-based instruments for building the capacities of local communities are recommendable. 

Knowledge on BES is not yet available or not broadly perceived by many societal actors. Challenges consist in mainstreaming BES for more biodiversity-friendly policies and biodiversity governance. Grass-root initiatives, cooperatives among primary-producers or producer-consumer-alliances can be operationalized in support of regulative or financial governance instruments. Opportunities to contribute to biodiversity protection and enhancement of key ES by adjusted lifestyles and consumer behaviour are not sufficiently used. Participation in protecting biodiversity through own behaviour, through networking and contributing actively to initiatives, is still limited to few societal actors. 

Coherence between environmental and sectoral policies and their specific governance is key. Biodiversity has multiple spatial dimensions of which only few are taken into account by existing policies. BES are not yet implemented as decision criteria in instruments for assessing the impact of policies, plans, programs or projects. Financial instruments (subsidies) from different sectors such as energy, agriculture or water might act as conflicting stimuli in how to manage natural resources in the most biodiversity-affine way, taking wind-power as example. 

The aim of this workshop is to present and discuss the state and effectiveness of existing governance approaches, added-values from more coherent and smart policy and governance mixes, and open questions considering the future design and operationalization of a holistic biodiversity governance including multiple decision and intervention scales.