Working Group on (Green Infrastructure) and the Restoration Prioritization Framework (RPF)

Summary Record

Working Group on (Green Infrastructure) and the Restoration Prioritization Framework (RPF).

Date: 2nd October 2013.

Place: Meeting Room BU5/0/C-DG ENV, Brussels

Participants: See Annex

Draft Summary Record

1.Summary record of the meeting of 2nd October 2013.

The draft summary record of the previous meeting was approved.

2. Feedback from the CGBN meeting of 19/20 September

The CGBN meeting of 19/20 September received a report of the progress in relation to Target 2 of the EU biodiversity Strategy and its associated actions including a report of the work of the RPF WG. The CGBN took note that the Commission adopted a Communication on Green Infrastructure in May 2013. The CGBN also recognized the strong linkages between restoration and the deployment of GI as well as the linkages between the future work of the MAES WG and the use of the results of the MAES activities for shaping restoration priorities. In the light of the discussions in the GCBN, the Commission would prepare a proposal for integrating future discussions on restoration into the mandate of a re-activated GI WG and the MAES WG. However, before preparing its proposals the Commission would await the outcome of the discussions in the 4th meeting of the RPF WG.

In response to requests from a number of participants the Commission clarified that the documents being developed by the contractor (see item 3 below) would have the character of technical guidance to be made available through the DG ENV web-site and provided to the Member States as tools and approaches that they may wish to use in developing their sub-national and national frameworks for identifying priorities for restoration as foreseen in Action 6a of the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The Member States would not be required to comply with the technical guidance and the documents would not be described as being an output of the working group or as being agreed by the working group.

In the light of the clarifications provided by the Commission, many of the participants indicated that while the reflections in the WG and the work of the contractor had been helpful and productive it was now up to the Member States to do develop their own restoration prioritization frameworks as foreseen in Action 6a. It would be useful to have a forum within which the national experiences on restoration could be shared and the MAES WG and the re-activated GI WG could provide such opportunities. The reflections on restoration should continue but this was not dependent upon the existence of the dedicated RPF WG.

3) The Outputs from the Support Contract 1 Representatives of the consortium led by ARCADIS presented different components of the work they had carried out – the 4-level approach to restoration incorporating considerations at the level of the landscape; a guide to the development of a restoration prioritization framework at national and sub- national level; the need for and character of possible support mechanisms; and opportunities for innovative sources of financing in support of restoration.

The WG took note of these presentations and a number of questions and comments were raised with the contractor.

4-level concept

In general the Member States acknowledged the added value of the 4-level concept and the thinking process that has been gone through. It is considered as a useful concept which helps Member States in their further restoration planning. The representative from ES proposed a complementary approach based on the landscape and land-use planning scopes, regardless 4 level model, to widen options for the MS implementation. The NGOs expressed their appreciation in relation to the documents developed by the contractor. The representative of Euromines expressed general support for the 4-level concept but indicated that ‘human activities’ should not be used as criterion for characterizing ecosystem condition (‘even quarries can be level 1’).

It was discussed if there was a demand/ need for further elaborating the details of the 4-level concept, i.e. further identification of descriptors, threshold values for descriptors, weighting of descriptors etc. The majority of the representatives from Member States were not in favour of spending more time on this preferring instead to move forward to developing prioritization frameworks and carrying out restoration work at the sub-national and national level. The representative from Hungary was of the opinion that further elaboration of the 4-level concept would not be difficult. The representative of Finland considered that application of the 4-level concept would be feasible as they have many data available. However, he considered that real problem would be securing funding for the 15% restoration target. The representative of France was also in favour of operationalizing the concept now, but considered that more work would be necessary on the details of the descriptors. The SER representative stated that the priority was to start carrying our restoration actions on the ground. On the other hand progress should be measurable, which requires a measuring system. Member States were, however, not supportive of establishing common monitoring and reporting mechanisms.

Guidance to implement the RPF

Several representatives from the Member States underlined that the guide on the development of RPFs at the national/sub-national level could not be applied directly in their Member States due to the federal structure. An acknowledgement that the approaches may need to be adapted to the administrative arrangements in each country should therefore be included.

The SER representative emphasized the importance of involving other sectors in the restoration work and avoiding contradictory ambition levels in Natura 2000 areas where the focus should be on achieving a favourable conservation status for protected habitats and species. This should be highlighted in the guidance. The IMCG representative wanted the guidance to take account of situations where the majority of stakeholders would not be in favour of restoration.

2 Support mechanism including opportunities for innovative sources of financing

SER will include the EU restoration policy on its agenda. Most probably the next edition of the SER Conference (August 2014, Finland) will dedicate a plenary session on the 15% target, and during the SER bi-annual events communication can be organised on progress with regard to the target. The SER representative added that the support mechanism should build links across policy areas.

The Commission noted that the current version of the document had a predominance of UK examples with regard to innovative financing of restoration. More examples from other MSs should be included if possible.

Way forward

Participants were invited to provide written comments on the documents prepared by the contractor by 16th October (2 weeks). The contractor would take these comments into account in finalizing the documents which would subsequently be up-loaded on the DG ENV web-site.

4) Financing Needs Associated with Target 2 of the EU biodiversity Strategy

The chairperson gave a short presentation summarizing the results of the study carried out by IEEP concerning the costs associated with Target 2 of the EU biodiversity Strategy. The full study was available on CIRCA and contained detailed information on restoration costs broken down by ecosystem type and Member State.

Within a few weeks the study report would be uploaded on the DG ENV website. The chair signalled a note of caution pointing out that the study was focussed on the costs of achieving target 2 and that the benefits were not assessed. Therefore, in presenting the results care should be taken to try and put the cost figures into a wider context.

5) Closure of the Meeting

The chair thanked the participants for their attendance and recognizing that this may be the last meeting of the RPF WG he expressed his appreciation for the work that had been done over the preceding 12 months.

NB: All the documents discussed during the meeting as well as the power-point presentations made during the meeting are available on the RPF WG CIRCA site.

3 Annex 1; Participants

Commission

Patrick Murphy -chair, Anne Teller, Marco Fritz (DG ENV) ; Celia Garcia-Feced (JRC), Sophie Vandewoestijne (RTD)

European Environment Agency

Frank Larsen

Contractor/Expert

Johan Lammerant (ARCADIS), Ben Delbaere(ECNC), Ian Dickie (EFTEC)

Member States

Georgina Alvarez Jimenez (ES), Taimo Aasma (EST) Guéhanne Beaufaron (FR), Christel Fiorina (FR), Richard Ferris (UK), Peter Finck (DE), Henk Groenewoud (NL), Lauri Klein (EST), Jussi Paivinen (Fin), Monika Paar (OST), Ulrike Nyenhuis (DE), Lars Rudfeld (DK), Margit Tennokene (EST), Katalin Torok (HU); Duncan Williams (UK); Raffaelle Zammit (MT); Anna Lindhagen (S).

Business

Hagen Trott (EUROMINES)

Vera Coelho (Wetlands International); Rudy Van Diggelen (IMCG); Wouter Langhout (BirdLife Europe), Kris Decleer (SER)