WP6 Stakeholder engagement and science-policy dialogue

 

Objectives

• To review policy requirements for biodiversity data at European and national  levels
• To carry out regular engagement with relevant political authorities and other stakeholders at European and national levels in support of the delivery of the EU BON project
• To identify and pilot new approaches to overcome barriers to the effective use of biodiversity data in conservation policy at European and national levels
• To build up stakeholder dialogue with exemplar sector-specific user communities
• To refine interactive visualisation and decision support tools

Key messages

• Political commitment and policy instruments to halt biodiversity loss require that biodiversity data are made discoverable, accessible and digestible
• Effective strategies and processes are needed to overcome barriers for data mobilisation and use in conservation policy
• Interactive user interfaces for data visualisation can support decision-making effectively

Credit: Scriberia

Tasks

• Three stakeholder round tables, focusing on ‘Requirements for policy’, "Citizen science", and "Biodiversity data workflow". A final round table is in the planning
• A set of refined visualisation and decision-support tools, using data from the AquaMaps portal. For one of these, an infographic published in the 2015 Green week issue of The Parliament Magazine explains projected impacts of climate change on fish community composition in the North Sea
• An improved user interface for the Geospatial Conservation Assessment Tool (GeoCAT), used by a number of expert groups to assess the conservation status of species
• A peer-reviewed article by Geijzendorffer et al. (2015) looking at how an "Essential Biodiversity Variables" (EBVs) approach could be used to bridge the gap between biodiversity data and policy reporting needs, under seven global and European biodiversity policy instruments 
• A peer-reviewed article by Wetzel et al. (2015) describing what regional Biodiversity Observation Networks ("BONs") can do to help bring down barriers preventing existing data from being discoverable, accessible and digestible
• A Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Technical Series report by Secades et al. (2014) reviewing current approaches and future opportunities for tracking progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, in the context of earth observation. The main findings can be found in a peer-reviewed article by O’Connor et al. (2015)
• A growing cross-work package list of EU BON "products" and associated factsheets (for a subset), to communicate their relevance to various user types, ranging from citizen-scientists, researchers, environmental managers, spatial planners, data managers/curators/creators, policy-level users, and the wider public. This list is under development and will be made public on the European Biodiversity Portal, once live.
• A set of visualisations based on CartoDB, aiming to showcase selected EU BON achievements

 

Contacts

Corinne Martin	Lauren Weatherdon	Katherine Despot-Belmonte
Senior Programme Officer	Programme Officer	Assistant Programme Officer
Marine Programme, UNEP-WCMC	Marine Programme, UNEP-WCMC	Ecosystem Assessment Programme, UNEP-WCMC
WP Leader	Deputy WP Leader	Project contributor