Local land-use and conservation management practices are key drivers of biodiversity change. However, the integration of biodiversity data into local-scale conservation management decisions is hampered by the limited taxonomic and ecological scope of existing data, insufficient spatio-temporal coverage for the local context, or restrictions on the availability and accessibility of data products despite their relevance for local decision-making. At the same time, biodiversity data that exist at the local level among practitioners and authorities in nature conservation rarely feed into biodiversity data infrastructures to inform broader research on management practices and policy. Therefore, bridging these gaps between biodiversity data collection efforts and data infrastructures for policy-recommendations at the national or transnational levels and practical decision-making on land-use and conservation management at local scales is of utmost importance.
The project ENABLElocal follows three research objectives: 1. Identify needs and questions related to local land-use and conservation management decision-making that can be informed by biodiversity data, and describe social challenges of a data integration. 2. Match biodiversity data demands with existing data, such as species and habitat data across spatio-temporal scales, and identify gaps and assess capacities to fill gaps via remote sensing. 3. Enable data integration across scales by providing instruments and build up capacities among local conservation practitioners.
Overall, the project aims to enable data flows among conservation management actors, biodiversity monitoring schemes and national, European and global data infrastructures, and to evaluate data usefulness for supporting decision-making in local land-use and conservation management contexts.
To address these objectives, we employ a transdisciplinary research approach with stakeholder participation in all phases of the research process. A series of workshops and interviews with local practitioners in land-use and conservation management, as well as researchers and decision-makers, will identify practice-relevant research questions, develop a mutual exchange of knowledge and generate policy recommendations, products and tools for application and outreach. These “living labs” will be conducted in three case studies located in the partner countries, focusing on conservation and land-use practices in a) a biosphere reserve (CZ), b) wild bee hotspot areas on sandy grasslands (SE) and c) extensive apple orchard meadows (DE). The participatory research aims at immediate transformative effects in the local case study settings and develops generalised recommendations for policy and research at national and international level.
The individual local case study outcomes will be synthesised into openly accessible knowledge products (a practitioner handbook, a report on the outcomes of the local workshops in local languages) and presented in an international practitioner workshop (free online event) to support capacity building beyond the participating case study practitioners.
This research was funded by Biodiversa+, the European Biodiversity Partnership, in the context of the ENABLElocal project under the 2022–2023 BiodivMon joint call. It was co-funded by the European Commission (GA No. 101052342) and the following funding organisations: German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.