Bruxelles, 27 September 2018
ECOPOTENTIAL has been presented at the EUROPEAN Parliament during the event "Science for Post 2020 Environmental Targets - Insights from Earth Observation of Protected Areas", on Sept 27th.
The event has been chaired by MEPs Ricardo Serrão Santos and Sirpa Pietikäinen and has been organized in collaboration with the NGO EBCD, which serves as the secretariat of the Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development of the European Parliament.
The event brought to the attention of Parliament the findings and recommendations on the conservation of natural ecosystems and the management of European protected areas that emerged in the ECOPOTENTIAL project, with the aim of contributing to providing the scientific knowledge needed to define the future EU policy framework on the conservation of biodiversity and natural ecosystems.
The project coordinator, Antonello Provenzale, and Fiona Danks, Senior Programme Officer for Science of UN Environment/WCMC, presented the project and recommendations to update the European legislation on the management of natural ecosystems based on the results of research activities.
In the discussion following the presentation, the sustainability and effectiveness of European research on biodiversity has been discussed: Possible actions may be the application of the ECOPOTENTIAL methodologies to other protected areas and in particular to the network of NATURA 2000 sites, the need of the COPs on biodiversity and climate to work together and the need of improving the knowledge transfer to policy makers, to protected areas managers and to the wider society, also delivering training and improving the integration of data bases and the link to other networks.
Also, the importance of the contribution of ECOPOTENTIAL to the EUROGEOSS Initiative has been highlighted.