for Nature How to plan

How to plan
for Nature
Skills for local biodiversity
Integrating biodiversity into local plans and actions offers many opportunities for local
sustainable development. As a result of on-going decentralization, local administrations
have increasing responsibilities for the implementation of biodiversity related policies. “BD
SKILLS – Skills for Local Biodiversity” has developed a biodiversity training approach for
local administrations’ staff based on best available practice. Trained staff is able to better
integrate biodiversity into local plans and actions. The training improves their technical
knowledge, skills and personal development and increases their value on the job market
influenced by the greening of the economy. As a result national and regional biodiversity
related policy objectives are better integrated at the local level.
Further information on www.biodiversityskills.eu
This document has been prepared as part of the international Leonardo da Vinci Project
“Skills for Local Biodiversity” carried out by a consortium of seven partners from five
Northwest European countries.
Project partners
Alfred Toepfer Akademie für Naturschutz, Germany
Atelier technique des espaces naturels, France
ECNC-European Centre for Nature Conservation
Gelderse Natuur- en Milieufederatie, the Netherlands
Natureparif, France
Natuurpunt Educatie, Belgium
Yorkshire and Humber Environment Trust (UK)
Project leader and contact
ECNC-European Centre for Nature Conservation
P.O. Box 90154
NL-5000 LG Tilburg
The Netherlands
www.ecnc.org
Disclaimer and copyright
Disclaimer – The BD SKILLS team, led by ECNC, is solely responsible for the contents of this
publication. It does not represent the opinion of the European Community, nor is the EC
responsible for any use that might be made of information appearing herein. The views
expressed in this document do not necessarily constitute ECNC policy and do not necessarily
reflect its views or opinions.
Copyright © ECNC-European Centre for Nature Conservation
Intellectual property rights are vested in ECNC and its project partners. Therefore, no part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
by any means, electronic mechanical, photocopying recording or otherwise without the prior
written permission of ECNC.
Content
Foreword
5
Introduction and overview
7
Understanding biodiversity and ecosystem services
14
Getting to grips with policy and decision-making
32
Biodiversity planning concepts and approaches
48
Information and evidence to plan for nature
70
Valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity
84
Engaging and communicating with stakeholders
96
Foreword
Action planning skills in practice
How to plan for Nature
Foreword
Mainstreaming biodiversity and ecosystem services in local and regional planning is becoming increasingly important in order to help ensure the development of society and economy within environmental limits. However, many interactions between biodiversity, ecosystem services and local
(development) planning remain insufficiently known to many local authorities and planners.
Within the project “BD SKILLS - Skills for Local Biodiversity”, co-financed by the European Leonardo
da Vinci programme, ECNC-European Centre for Nature Conservation and its six project partners
(see colophon) have developed a training package to better reflect and integrate biodiversity and
ecosystem services in local plans and projects. The package was developed for, and in close cooperation with local planners from the five participating countries.
In response to its worldwide rapid and continued decline, biodiversity conservation now features
high on the international political agenda. After having focused for several decades on the protection of sites and species, through awareness raising and designation of protected areas, the
approach since the 1990ies has increasingly shifted towards the mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem goods and services into most of the main policy fields and sectors.
It has been recognised that in order to implement the comprehensive policies and make them work,
new partnerships with a wide range of actors are needed. Local and regional authorities, together
with business enterprises and economic sectors are key players to translate the international and
national biodiversity strategies and action plans into practical results at local and regional level.
Under the aegis of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference of Parties that met
in Nagoya in 2010 “a Plan of Action on Sub-national Governments, Cities, and other Local
Authorities for Biodiversity was endorsed, and decision X/22 including the Plan was adopted by
193 CBD Parties. The Plan calls for capacity building and dissemination of best practices […] and
aims at providing national governments with opportunities to work together with sub-national
governments, cities, and other local authorities on biodiversity strategies and action plans.”
At the same time a major international effort lead by the economist Pavan Sukhdev - The Economics
of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) - made a compelling economic case for the conservation of
ecosystems and biodiversity. Its findings and recommendations are presented in a series of reports
targeted at the major biodiversity stakeholder groups, including regional and local policy makers.
This training package aims to contribute to the successful implementation of biodiversity policies
by improving the knowledge and skills of local planners to integrate the findings summarised by the
CBD and TEEB, as well as local examples and approaches, in their daily activities. It shows that the
conservation of biodiversity is not an obstacle to development, but a major and valuable resource
for sustainable livelihoods and communities.
I wish all the participants in this training an inspiring and productive experience and I hope they will
find the interactive role plays and planning exercises entertaining and enjoyable.
Sir Brian Unwin KCB, Chairman of ECNC
6
Introduction
and overview
Introduction and overview
Action planning skills in practice
How to plan for Nature
Background and context
The project grew out of the observation that throughout Europe, a process of further political and
administrative decentralization was devolving ever more responsibilities regarding planning and environmental management to the local levels. At the same time, as internationally recognized, the conservation of biodiversity is considered one of the most important environmental challenges humanity
is facing together with climate change. As a result of these two developments, local administrations
are required to implement ever more biodiversity-related policies as part of their planning activities.
However, in spite of the general increase in awareness about biodiversity, ecosystem services and
working within environmental limits, specific knowledge on how this relates to day-to-day planning
activities remains largely unknown. This calls for an urgent increase in the skills and knowledge of
staff of local administrations to enable them to integrate and reflect biodiversity and ecosystem
services in their local planning efforts. In the current international, and especially European policy
debate, biodiversity conservation is focusing ever more on a utilitarian approach to nature. The
economically very significant ecosystem services which biodiversity underpins are used as a strong
argument for society to conserve nature in its widest form.
On the one hand this allows conservationists to communicate with economists, policy and decision
makers in terms that resonate well with their priorities: the economic value of nature’s (ecosystem)
services to society, expressed in monetary terms. On the other hand it reduces nature’s complexity, beauty and intrinsic value to that of a commodity, to be owned, traded and speculated with at
leisure. This is especially worrying for those rare, special and vulnerable habitats and species that
have little or no (yet known) usefulness or direct economic value to society.
However, even the most distinguished conservation organizations are nowadays following the path
of valuing nature’s services and goods, involving a wide range of businesses in an attempt to help
conservation through a market-based approach, in a way quite similar to what has been developed
for climate change strategies (cap and trade, etc). The challenge of the local planner (and the
stakeholders in the planning process he deals with as part of his work) is to find the right balance
between the socio-economic and the intrinsic approach to nature conservation. Such an approach
needs to take account of many factors including policy, governance and sector integration, technical solutions, valuation and assessment and communication and participation.
Perhaps the most promising avenue for local planning challenges is to realise that local sustainable
development and a wide range socioeconomic issues can be solved in such a way that they provide
each other with mutual benefits.
The case for biodiversity and ecosystem services
in local planning
Taking the value of the services we get from biodiversity into account in planning is not an ‘optional
extra’, it should be central to the local decision making by putting the value of the natural environment at the heart of local spatial planning because:
• Recent compelling evidence suggests that ecosystem services provided and supported by
biodiversity represent a major economic value. The social and economic costs (€ 50 billion
8
Action planning skills in practice
How to plan for Nature
Introduction and overview
each year globally) that are associated with their degradation has been convincingly demonstrated in the international study ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB
2010).
• The services provided by biodiversity help society avoid significant costs and have a pivotal role in a wide range of policy areas relevant to local planning: health, sustainable
business models, culture, adaptation to climate change, agriculture, sustainable regional
development.
• Integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services in local overall planning process helps identifying nature based solutions that provide mutual co-benefits for nature and sectorial activities.
Understanding and managing the impact of planning decisions have on the ability of our natural
systems to function will help the local administrations:
• to increase long–term resilience of planned projects;
• to reduce risks to planning objectives from failing natural systems;
• to reduce public costs from degraded natural services.
Assessing the general environmental impact of policy options has long been a part of the impact
assessment process and it is now possible to make more sophisticated assessments of the, previously less visible, costs to society from damage to our natural assets and economic benefits from
managing them well.
Taking the value of biodiversity into account
in planning proposals
Considering and valuing biodiversity and ecosystem services in decision-making is known as taking
an ‘ecosystems approach’. This training can be considered as a practical introduction to using an
ecosystems approach in local planning. It gives a general introduction on key knowledge and skills
and by sign-posting to a range of detailed resources, case-studies and further reading on specific
topics such as communication, valuation and systematic thinking. Applying the knowledge and
skills will differ according to the local situation, but the following aspects will almost always be part
of the activities:
• Looking for opportunities to work with biodiversity to deliver planning objectives;
• Assessing the positive and negative impacts of the planning options on the services we get
from biodiversity;
• Thinking long-term and large-scale;
• Thinking outside traditional planning boundaries;
• Carrying out some sort of valuation of the biodiversity and ecosystem services involved;
• Involving both the producers and beneficiaries of ecosystem services in the planning process.
The purpose of this training
This training has been developed to give planners the basic understanding of the mutual relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services and sustainable local planning. As such this training goes beyond ‘protecting nature’. It rather focuses on working with nature in a positive way, by
taking the services nature provides into account into local planning. After completing the self-study,
assisting to the lectures, studying the cases, taking part in the excursion and participating in the
9
Action planning skills in practice
How to plan for Nature
Introduction and overview
working groups, participants will have acquired a broad understanding of what biodiversity and
ecosystem services can do for local planning activities. Some participants, for example those working at larger local authorities, are specialist environmental scientists with a good understanding of
ecology and spatial planning technologies, while other must address such a wide range of issues
that they are rather more generalists. Therefore this training consists of a series of modules that
mutually reinforce each other and focus on learning, experiencing and integrating (skills).
The training should provide a basic understanding of key concepts of biodiversity and ecosystem services, conservation principles and approaches, the policy framework, valuation techniques and communication skills and how they interact with other sectors of society, data needs and interpretation, and
the mutual co-benefits between conservation and achieving other important socio-economic goals in
the field of public health, climate change mitigation and adaptation, tourism and recreation etc.
Objectives of the training
In many countries the management of biodiversity and the implementation of biodiversity
related policies is a statutory obligation of local authorities. However, working with biodiversity can also bring benefits to local communities, and local planners are well placed to signal
these opportunities and integrate them in their planning proposals.
This training has been primarily developed for local planners, but is made widely available
for all stakeholders in the local planning process. The objectives of the training are to:
• Increase awareness, knowledge and understanding of the links between biodiversity, ecosystem services and local planning;
• Equip local planners with the skills to better manage the biodiversity and ecosystems they impact and depend on;
• Demonstrate the opportunities for using the many co-benefits between biodiversity conservation and other societal needs at the local level.
It is not within the scope of this training to dig deep into all of these subjects, but rather to provide
you with the knowledge and skills needed to explore some essential relations that are often overlooked in traditional planning approaches.
Throughout the training, the ecosystem approach will be the central concept we follow. It is a
mechanism developed and promoted by the Convention on Biological Diversity and it is a broad
framework applicable to a wide range of planning situations, although it gives some clear rules.
Within the broad framework of the ecosystem approach at local level there is much room for more
specific approaches better reflecting local situations. Those specific to our area of interest (North
West Europe) are also explained.
The target audience
The primary target audience for this training is the planners at small to medium local authorities in
North-West Europe. However, planners do not work in a vacuum and typically interact with a wide range
of stakeholders in the spatial planning process. These include the staff and heads of other departments
10
Action planning skills in practice
How to plan for Nature
Introduction and overview
within the administration, but also the representatives of many sectors affected by spatial decisions:
housing, infrastructure, agriculture, forestry etc. As biodiversity and ecosystem services are presented as
a cross-cutting theme, needing to be reflected in most sectors, key actors in these sectors should also
have a basic level of understanding, and could thus benefit from participating in (parts of) this training.
Use of acquired skills and knowledge in work activities
Depending on one’s position inside the administration, there are several ways to take up the integration of biodiversity and ecosystems services into local planning by using the ecosystems approach. Equipped with an enhanced understanding of biodiversity and ecosystems services for local planning and the skills for applying the ecosystems approach, participants in this training can
start in a number of ways. Communicating within the department, between departments and with
stakeholders and enthusing partners to adopt the ecosystems approach is a key to success. It therefore receives quite some attention in the course.
slides
handbook
knowledge
job
workshop
Training materials
Assimilation
plan policy /
development
decision /
conversation /
precentation
Application
Senior planners or Heads of planning department can consider the natural services the local authority’s strategic priorities rely most upon, the value of these to the community, and the impacts
on the assets providing these services. They could:
• Add an agenda item to the management team or board meeting about natural services
and natural capital
• Ask an adviser or economist to provide you with some advice or a presentation on this agenda
• Invite a regional or national agency to make a presentation on the subject
• Commission a short scoping project which will use the approach set out in this training and
highlight key implications for your policy areas
• Ask a planner to read the manual and take the training and highlight the key implications
and options for applying this to the planning process
• Ask the analysts to consider implications for the planning strategy and economic valuation
work.
Spatial planners could consider the implications of the training for their specific activities:
• Listing the natural services the community relies on using the list of ecosystem services.
• Read the training manual.
• Work through the municipal performance assessment to see how the local administration is already doing and find out what else could be done to minimise costs and risks associated with natural services and maximise opportunities from them.
• Discuss this agenda with analysts and delivery partners.
11
Introduction and overview
Action planning skills in practice
How to plan for Nature
Structure of the training
This training consists of a number of modules:
• Self-study
• Lecture
• Excursion
• Working group
• Evaluation
Self-study: Prior to the course, the participants are invited to read through the handbook, which
gives a detailed description of the six main subjects of the training outlined below.
Lecture: The subject matter is further developed during the lectures, in which the trainers teach
about the six subjects in an interactive manner, highlighting the main messages from the handbook mainly through the use of practical examples and question and answer sessions.
Excursion: An excursion is organised as part of the full version of the course. Depending on the
venue where the training is being held and the time available, cases included in the handbook or on
the website may be visited. Otherwise, the trainer organises an excursion to an interesting site nearby. Guidelines
are provided to make the programme of the excursion as
relevant as possible to the training (e.g. by using the site
as one of the cases in the working group.
Prepare
Learn
Experience Integrate
Prepare
Handouts
Field visit
Exercise
Website
Presentations
Case studies
Discussions
Working group: The working group brings together in a
planning exercise the theoretical knowledge of the selfstudy and lectures and the practical experience gained during the excursion. A planning challenge involving biodiversity and ecosystem services is being addressed by the trainees
in an interactive and participative way by working in small
groups. Results are presented in plenary and discussed.
Evaluation: Is an essential part of the course when the
results of the training are assessed, in group (through a
discussion moderated by the trainer) and individually (by
filling out an evaluation form).
The modules can be used in different combinations to accommodate to the needs, interests and time availability
of the target audience.
Training materials
The full training package consists of the following resources and materials; all available on the website for downloading (the Handbook is also available in printed format):
• Handbook: six thematic chapters
• Trainer’s manual: it gives detailed instructions about how to prepare and deliver the training, including excursion and working groups.
12
Action planning skills in practice
How to plan for Nature
Introduction and overview
• Lecture notes: these help the trainer prepare the lectures. Prompting the right questions
and giving the information corresponding to each slide of the power point presentations
in clear bullet points.
• Power points: are visual aids to be used as a support for the lectures. They contain little text,
but mostly photographs and graphs.
• Hand outs: pdfs of the power point presentations can be downloaded for distribution.
However, if the power points are adapted, hand outs should be made of these.
• Evaluation form: to be distributed to the trainees at the end of the course
• Web site: offers all the information online and for downloading, plus many links to relevant
sites and detailed case study descriptions.
For all training materials: www.biodiversityskills.eu
13