The transboundary governance of biodiversity protection in Europe: preliminary evidence from four case studies

Abstract

Presenters: Federica Cittadino Nienke van der Burgt The current biodiversity crisis demonstrates that biodiversity protection must go beyond national boundaries to embrace a more holistic vision of ecosystems and nature protection. Within this framework, the transboundary protection of biodiversity is proposed as a way to potentially overcome the current limits of biodiversity policies in Europe. In order to verify this hypothesis, this presentation aims to compare four cases of transboundary biodiversity protection in Europe with the aim to highlight the institutional characteristics of these cooperation mechanisms. These cases are: (1) the cooperation between subnational authorities and local communities in the framework of the EGTC ZASNET concerning the Meseta Ibérica located at the border between Spain and Portugal; (2) the increasingly more formalized collaboration between the regional park Prealpi Giulie and the national Triglav park at the borders between Italy and Slovenia; (3) the treaty-based cooperation in the Scheldt Estuary between the Netherlands and Belgium explicitly balancing biodiversity-related and economic concerns; and (4) the different cooperation schemes implemented in an area of Lapland going from the Baltic to the Barents (Finland/Sweden/Norway), involving multilateral parks and indigenous peoples. The presentation will focus on the main formal and informal cooperation mechanisms in place in these case studies to ensure transboundary biodiversity protection. It will also discuss what are the main obstacles to transboundary biodiversity cooperation in the case studies and identify possible solutions to overcome them. Finally, it will address the issue on how to evaluate the effectiveness of these transboundary mechanisms in reinforcing cooperation in the field of biodiversity protection.