Towards a Green Infrastructure for Europe
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“Natura 2000 preparatory actions, Lot 3: Developing new concepts for integration of Natura 2000 network into a broader countryside”. SUMMARY Aspects related to ecological coherence and connectivity play an important role in ensuring the normal functioning of ecosystems, and this is essential for providing ecosystem services such as food air quality, carbon sequestration, flood management, water treatment, local climate conditions, soil erosion prevention etc… The European Union is experiencing on the one hand enlargement and economic growth and on the other hand several social challenges - aging of society, migration from marginal and economically unfavourable regions. Analyses of all socioeconomic processes lead to the development of a Member States initiative called territorial Agenda for European Union (2007). This process provides an opportunity for planning and implementation of a European Green Infrastructure, especially stressing its role for opportunities for sustainable development. Definition and implementation of Green Infrastructure involves land planning issues and a big number of different stakeholders. This leads to the conclusion that the physical definition of the Green Infrastructure is a political issue that should be tackled at the appropriate political scale . G. Bennett (2009) defines the function of GI as the ensemble of planning approaches that maintain ecological functions at the landscape scale in combination with multi-functional land uses. Because we have no well defined limits for the physical distribution of the Green Infrastructure, it is not possible to render a spatial vision of it; however it is possible to auscultate the status of the Green Infrastructure through measuring the integration of Natura 2000 Network. Green infrastructure is defined by the type of land uses it contains; those land uses are conditioned by socioeconomic factors. In this work, the socioeconomic factors which lead to changes in land uses and the trends and changes in land uses from 1990 to 2000 (CLC), are analysed. On this base, two hypothetic socioeconomic scenarios (rural and urban) have been built to assess the expectable land uses changes and trends in each case. Parallel, a methodology has been developed to measure the integration of the Natura 2000 Network in to a wider countryside by measuring land use similarity and this methodology has been applied to all scenarios available in Corine Land cover (1990, 2000, and hypothetic scenarios). With this data it was possible not only to measure the integration of Natura 2000 into the wider countryside, but also to measure the vulnerability of Natura 2000 to changes in land use promoted by socioeconomic factors (at regional level). In this work, a revision of previous and ongoing approaches to the which are part of Green Infrastructure concept, such as the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS), the Pan-European Ecological Network (PEEN), the European Green Belt etc…The implementation of the Green Infrastructure has a has a physical impact on European land; this means that it implies a lot of sectors: Agriculture, Forestry, Water Management, Linear Infrastructures, Extractive Industry, Urban Environment, Nature Tourism and Recreation, as well as Spatial Planning, and pressures such as Invasive Alien Species and Climatic change. In conclusion, we recommend DG ENV to set up a Task Force among Commission DG to integrate the GI concept in to other sectors, implementation of connectivity assessments for all European countries, the development and implementation of a communications strategy, and a set of recommendations for the sectors involved in the Green Infrastructure implementation. For more information: www.green-infrastructure-europe.org TOWARDS A GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR EUROPE Developing new concepts for integration of Natura 2000 network into a broader countryside EC study ENV.B.2/SER/2007/0076 ATECMA ECOSYSTEMS RIKS TERSYN EEZA-CSIC “Natura 2000 preparatory actions, Lot 3: Developing new concepts for integration of Natura 2000 network into a broader countryside”. iii “Natura 2000 preparatory actions, Lot 3: Developing new concepts for integration of Natura 2000 network into a broader countryside”. Towards a European Green Infrastructure “Natura 2000 preparatory actions, Lot 3: Developing new concepts for integration of Natura 2000 network into a broader countryside”. Acronym: Green Infrastructure. Service Contract Nº 070307/2007/484442/MAR/B2 INDEX Background to this study i Chapter 1. Introduction: The Green Infrastructure Concept....................................3 1.1. Purpose of the document....................................................................................3 1.2. The Green Infrastructure Concept......................................................................4 1.2.1. Components of the Green Infrastructure ......................................................5 1.2.2. The role of Natura 2000 Network in the Green Infrastructure .......................6 1.2.3. Benefits and properties of the Green Infrastructure......................................6 1.2.4. The Ecosystem approach ............................................................................7 1.2.5. References ..................................................................................................8 Chapter 2. Background: Setting the Context..........................................................11 2.1. EC Policy Background and Initiatives ..............................................................11 2.2. EU Research Projects Funded by DG RTD.......................................................13 2.3. EEA Reports.......................................................................................................14 2.4. Ecological Networks Initiatives: CBD, PEBLDS, PEEN AND EECONET.........15 2.5. Examples of Ongoing Transnational Initiatives...............................................18 2.6. Examples of National and Regional Initiatives ................................................20 2.7. Integration into Other Policies ..........................................................................23 2.7.1. Spatial planning .........................................................................................23 2.7.2. Transport ...................................................................................................24 2.7.3. Agriculture..................................................................................................25 2.7.4. Climate change..........................................................................................25 2.8. Other Interesting Documents............................................................................26 iv “Natura 2000 preparatory actions, Lot 3: Developing new concepts for integration of Natura 2000 network into a broader countryside”. Chapter 3: Physical Impacts (land use changes) of Socioeconomic Evolutions .31 3.1. Introduction: From the examination of long-term evolutions towards a conceptual framework..............................................................................................31 3.2. Economic contraction/polarization and dispersal/depopulation processes during the past decade.............................................................................................33 3.2.1. Part I: Main economic processes which shaped the territorial evolution in Europe during the past decade............................................................................34 3.2.2. Part II: Quantitative appraisal of economic contraction/dispersal processes during the past decade ........................................................................................38 3.2.3. Demographic contraction/polarization and dispersal/depopulation processes during the past decade ........................................................................................40 3.2.4. Part I: Main demographic processes which shaped the territorial evolution in Europe during the past decade............................................................................40 3.2.5. Part II: Quantitative appraisal of demographic densification/depopulation processes during the past decade .......................................................................42 3.3. Transport functions and land-use development..............................................45 3.3.1. Part I: Recent and on-going processes related to the transport sector with significant land-use impacts.................................................................................45 3.3.2. Part II: Territorial situation of transport infrastructure..................................47 3.4. The dynamics of urban systems.......................................................................54 3.4.1 Dynamics at global European level .............................................................54 3.4.2. Dynamics at intermediate level ..................................................................55 3.4.3. Dynamics at local/regional level.................................................................57 3.5. The dynamics of rural Europe...........................................................................59 3.5.1. Characteristics of rural Europe...................................................................59 3.5.2. Dynamics of rural regions. Part I: Main processes in rural regions over the past decade.........................................................................................................62 3.5.3. Dynamics