BioValue: Transformative change in spatial planning can enhance biodiversity

The EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 calls for an integrated and whole-of-society approach to ensure co-responsibility and co-ownership by all relevant actors in meeting the EU’s biodiversity commitments. As biodiversity is impacted by many different sectors, the main challenge consists in balancing a wide range of interests and value systems across different political levels, negotiating different interests while ultimately seeking to improve, or at least maintain, biodiversity. This challenge is hard to achieve and there is increasing agreement on the need for transformative change.

Transformative change is a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic, and social factors, including paradigms, goals, and values, as defined by the 2020 report of the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
The EU-funded project BioValue takes this definition as a point of departure to explore the transformative potential of spatial planning to invert current trends of biodiversity loss, enhancing the recognition of biodiversity value while setting trajectories toward meeting sustainable development goals. BioValue leverages transformative change by articulating a research framework based on three instrumental perspectives – spatial planning, environmental assessment, and economic and financing instruments. BioValue framework is also tested in three case studies, that are defined as “Arenas for transformation”: Rewetting Peatlands and reforestation under the climate initiative in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany); Municipal spatial planning in Mafra (Portugal); and Urban planning in Trento (Italy).

“ICONS activities in conducting targeted, effective and high-impact dissemination, exploitation and communication activities will be crucial to the project’s success. The aim is to enable the sharing of experiences within and beyond project actors to inspire transformative actions for biodiversity and to increase the project impact by ensuring the sustainability and uptake of results after the end of the project”.

Chiara Bartolacci, ICONS’ Project Manager responsible for BioValue

The project started in July 2022 under the coordination of Instituto Superior Técnico – University of Lisbon and developed in cooperation with 7 other partners. After the Kick-off meeting in Lisbon, the consortium has started the journey towards transformative change in spatial policymaking to improve biodiversity outcomes.

For further information on BioValue, contact Chiara Bartolacci – Project Manager