Biodiversity
Objectives:
- Supporting the work of the ENI East countries in improving the coverage of Emerald Network sites in the ENI East countries as response to the Aichi Strategic Goal C Target 11 and SDG Goal 15.
- Improving the capacity of the countries in reporting the data on species and habitats to the Central Data Repository of the European Environment Agency
- Production of regionally comparable biodiversity indicators in accordance with EEA and UNECE implementations
BRIEFING:
The EEA’s briefing “Protected areas in the Eastern Partnership countries,” (LINK) found that between 2000 and 2019 coverage of nationally protected areas were expanded in all six partnership countries which includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.
Thanks to the European Commission’s financial and Council of Europe’s technical support, 561 so-called Emerald Network sites (under the Bern Convention) have been created covering just over 12% of the Eastern Partnership countries’ territories. These sites aim to support species and habitats targeted for protection under the convention. This work has been supported by the EU under the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI) regional project on Implementing the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) principles and practices . The EEA supported capacity building to improve reporting on protected areas under international obligations and indicator development for knowledge-based policymaking. The EEA also provided expertise on sufficiency assessments of species and habitats in the countries proposed for inclusion in the Emerald Network.
Protected areas in the Eastern Partnership countries EN
Особо охраняемые природные территории в странах «Восточного партнерства» RU
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Set up of the Emerald Network under the Bern Convention in ENI East countries between 2009-2016 was supported by the Council of Europe by two consecutive joint programmes co-financed with the European Union. During the latest years, a significant increase in the number of designated areas (Map 1) in the six ENI East countries (579 sites in 2017 against 219 sites in 2012) resulted with an average coverage of protected sites of 12.27 % of the territories of these countries. Despite this encouraging positive trend in safeguarding ecosystems, species and genetic diversity of the region, it is still far from achieving the Aichi Strategic Goal C Target 11 and SDG Goal 15.
The ENI-SEIS II East project provides support in organizing jointly with the Council of Europe regional seminars focusing on evaluating the sufficiency of the candidate sites and delivers regional workshops on reporting conservation status of habitats and species targeted respectively by Resolution of 4 and Resolution 6 of the Bern Convention. Helpdesk support to the ENI East countries in using the SDF tool for reporting the data was available in 2017 and 2018. Available data for biodiversity is used to develop UNECE regional environmental indicators to improve knowledge-based policy implementation. |
Map 1: Emerald and Natura 2000 networks Source: CoE, 2016
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