Implementing an EU-wide biodiversity monitoring platform could cost up to €40 billion over the next decade, with each euro invested estimated to pay off up to 10 times, a researcher involved in the project said Wednesday.
Ramping up funding towards aligning monitoring efforts is critical to enable data comparability, according to Henrique Pereira, coordinator of the Europa Biodiversity Observation Network (EuropaBON) project, which has recently spearheaded efforts to establish the EU Biodiversity Observation Centre (EBOC).
EBOC is being designed to enhance monitoring of biodiversity status and trends across the EU, and integrate data streams to support the bloc’s policies on nature and ecosystem conservation.
After the European Parliament embraced the initiative, an initial budget of €5 mln was allocated at the end of last year.
“The budget will have to be increased to support data collection, as well as analysis and reporting functions,” Pereira said during a webinar organised by the European Biodiversity Partnership, Biodiversa+.
“Around €20 mln a year will be needed just for coordination functions. We estimate that the implementation of the monitoring would cost between €6 bln and €40 bln over 10 years.”
However, the benefits can be one order of magnitude greater, according to Pereira.
“For each euro invested, we can get 10 euros back into the economy. We will have a publication soon demonstrating this.”
FLAWED MONITORING
In November, a remark to the EBOC initiative, included in the EU budget for 2024, pointed out that major data gaps hamper an effective biodiversity information collection and analysis within the bloc’s borders.
Furthermore, the use and integration of existing data is not yet maximised due to the lack of advanced statistical and modelling technical skills.
“Only half of the monitoring programmes evaluated by the EuropaBON project have a (partial) automatisation and harmonisation of the data streams, and only half of them have sufficient data available to derive essential biodiversity variables,” the remark said.
“The robust policy monitoring will critically depend on the regular and frequent provision of high quality data and information, underpinned by a systematic field observation of biodiversity over a long time frame. This is not currently the case in the EU.”
Recent studies have warned that flawed monitoring could lead to misguided conservation efforts and hamper the target of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030, as set out by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Researchers at Canada’s University of McGill proposed in February creating a global biodiversity observing system (GBiOS) fostering collaboration between national, sub-national, and regional biodiversity observation networks (BONs), including EuropaBON.
By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com
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