Conserving biodiversity with informed policies
This week is dedicated to exploring the results of projects working on environment and resource efficiency. Today, let’s have a look at the BID-REX project.
BID-REX seeks to link biodiversity information and conservation decision-making. The project partners from Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and the UK work together to make data and information available for evidence-based policy making. By doing so, they pave the way to conserving our natural heritage and biodiversity.
What have they achieved?
The natural heritage and biodiversity strategy of Catalonia was being developed in the region in parallel with the BID-REX project. The lessons learned from the project were transferred directly into the new strategy. One of the key actions includes building a multi-source biodiversity information database in Catalonia (Spain).
BID-REX results were also on the agenda of the 2019 ‘Europe, let’s cooperate! interregional cooperation forum’ earlier this year. Watch the video below to see what kind of experience the lead partner from Spain had to share:
How?
The Catalans were inspired by their peers from the UK, and the Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service and the National Biodiversity Network Atlas in particular. These examples showed them how to gather data and information from multiple sources and make it available for policy making in an easy-to-use format.
Other good practices stemming from BID-REX include:
- a cartography of habitats from Catalonia: The SITXell project transforms expert information into knowledge that can be used by public bodies in land planning. It helps authorities for instance in regional and spatial planning processes and identification of areas of special protection.
- a nature information system from the Basque Country: a tool that integrates scientific and technical knowledge from many different sources and databases to an open access platform.
More results
Read more about BID-REX in the European Commission’s regional policy project database. Learn more about project achievements on our results page.
Or have a look at how other projects contribute to preserving the environment and enhancing resource efficiency:
Dive deeper in the topic and browse:
- A
on the use of technologies for better protection and management of nature and biodiversityDocument
- The conclusions and materials from a Policy Learning Platform thematic workshop on protection and management of natural heritage in European regions