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Conservation planning in Europe : ecological, financial, and political challenges

Conservation of biodiversity and sustainable resource use are central aims within ecology. This thesis focuses on the current data and environmental frameworks used to support these aims across different states in Europe. In particular, it examines the impact of geo-political boundaries on data-use, funding and planning for temporal movement of species in response to climate change. It also examines the current environmental framework agreements in Europe and their capacity to deal with trans-boundary aspects of biodiversity change. Through examination of European biodiversity datasets, undertaking species distribution modelling of forest taxa, examining economic data, palaeo-ecological data, and assessing international environmental framework agreements, this thesis identifies a number of important knowledge gaps. Probably unsurprisingly, the distribution of biodiversity in Europe mostly does not match political entities, all of which have individual aims, financial resources, and biodiversity management regimes in place. All have a significant impact on biodiversity conservation planning because i) the use of geo-politically truncated data influences modelling predictions, ii) financial commitment to biodiversity conservation varies between countries influencing success outcomes, iii) biodiversity persistence in current and future climate change does not recognise geo-political boundaries, and iv) many of the key environmental frameworks are implemented within countries and do not considering trans-boundary issues. Overall these findings significantly improve the understanding of conservation and resource management in Europe and fill a number of important knowledge gaps. They highlight the importance of appropriate trans-boundary ecological datasets and the need for more consistency across Europe in financial resources for biodiversity conservation. They also highlight the need for appreciation of areas of high-persistent biodiversity regardless of geo-political boundaries and environmental framework agreements that support cross-border conservation measures.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:748785
Date January 2017
CreatorsHannemann, Henrik Jonathan Nicolai
ContributorsWillis, Katherine J. ; Macias-Fauria, Marc ; Teuffel, Konstantin von ; Bennett, Keith
PublisherUniversity of Oxford
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6180deed-8bab-4932-8a7c-e5bd54f765ed

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