Project Objectives

Protected areas present complex problems that are dealt by many and different organisations and individuals. Most of these problems have a strong geographical content implying experts from the GIS disciplines working alongside users having many different cultural or technical backgrounds from environmental management and planning, to social and economic issues. However, the enormous potential of GIS technology is often restricted by a gap between the GIS experts and the end users. A key goal of the proposed network is to bridge this gap by bringing together the categories of specialists working in this field. That creates a common framework within which to fertilise knowledge sharing and then to exploit the development of applications in line with the user needs.

In such a multi-faceted context, with many kinds of actors and regional situations, the network will identify the specific needs of public authorities who are in charge on one side to guarantee the protection of the environment and on the other side to develop a concept of multifunctional protected areas. These authorities are often in a difficult position when coping with the equilibrium between spatial planning, rural development and environmental protection and face problems that are similar and independent from the country/region and from the decisional/ operational level in which they are operating.

However there is a lack in this field of European awareness and of consideration of the mutual inter-dependence of the problems. Even where the importance of protected areas problems is duly considered, the approach is frequently only local and the targets of the operators are only at this level, with a difficulty of links both to the overall European policies and to the other operators, in view of a wider scope in essentially supra-national problems.

Upon such a context the Nature-GIS proposal has to be considered for its contribution to improving information for policy making and evaluation, particularly for improving reporting related to the implementation of the EU Nature Protection and Biodiversity policy area.

The need for the introduction of a more coherent and effective system of reporting on the transposition, implementation and effectiveness of the EU policy is clearly emphasized within chapter 8.2 "Measuring progress – Reporting, indicators and evaluation" of the VI Environmental Action Plan. In Article 9 of the latter, reinforcing the development of Geographical Information System in support of policy making and implementation is indeed one objective.

In addition, Nature-GIS is able to contribute to raising awareness regarding the use of GI-GIS for the Nature Protection and Biodiversity issue. Firstly, the new network should be seen in the wider context of its contribution to the Convention of Biodiversity Diversity (UNEP, 92) and the European Community Biodiversity Strategy (CEC, COM(98)) that requires research, identification and exchange of information to ease and promote the conservation of biodiversity through the development and implementation of plans, tools and other management strategies. As outlined in the VI Environmental Action Plan, Nature-GIS also contributes to develop and broaden the dialogue among all levels of responsibility, Community, national, regional, local, i.e. supports public access to data and information, therein including Non-Governmental Organisations and furthermore stakeholders of the new Accession countries. Regarding the latter, Nature-GIS addresses the networking in the context of an Enlarged European Union. This is supported by the fact that the nature protection issue is of key importance in Central and Eastern Europe since most of the countryside remains unspoilt with natural habitats and landscape of a high ecological value and an extensive agriculture. Moreover, ecological networks and protected areas with a diversity of protection status are there in place such as the Areas of Special Conservation Interest (ASCIs) designated under the Bern Convention (Conseil de l’Europe, 79) and currently integrated into the Emerald Network (Bern, resolution 3, 1996) that may be merged in the future together with the Natura 2000 network. As outlined in the VI Environmental Action Plan, the implementation of Community’s environmental standards and transposition of EU directives will be the main tasks for the Candidate Countries to be completed by order of priorities by the time of accession. The Nature-GIS network is intended to contribute also to raising awareness of the complexity of achieving such a goal and in providing tools for facilitating such a task with respect to the issue of Nature protection.

Finally the network proposes to support public access to data and information on protected areas and environmental information through a web access to European protected areas, offering structured information, both for the operators working in this field and for general information.

For this reason the network makes a lot of effort towards a wide European coverage able to represents more and more actors and stakeholders in the field. Based on that, among the objectives of the network there is the establishment of a pan-European "Nature-GIS Group" operating also after the project end to maintain and to diffusely operate towards the local operators a European scope in dealing with such problems

All these objectives are instantiated into a reference product "Technical guidelines for geo-data infrastructures for protected areas.

The Nature-GIS objectives