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External policy news - New EU Biodiversity Strategy
Author: Davy McCracken, LEERG
Biodiversity loss is an enormous challenge in the EU, with around one in four species currently threatened with extinction and 88% of fish stocks over-exploited or significantly depleted.
To address such concerns, the European Commission has adopted a new Strategy to halt, by 2020, the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the EU. The Strategy includes six main targets, together with 20 associated actions, focusing on:
- Full implementation of EU nature legislation to protect biodiversity
- Better protection for ecosystems, and more use of green infrastructure
- More sustainable agriculture and forestry
- Better management of fish stocks
- Tighter controls on invasive alien species
- A bigger EU contribution to averting global biodiversity loss
This new strategy aims to ensure that "by 2050, European Union biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides - its natural capital - are protected, valued and appropriately restored for biodiversity's intrinsic value and for their essential contribution to human wellbeing and economic prosperity, and so that catastrophic changes caused by the loss of biodiversity are avoided."
The Communication itself (Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU biodiversity strategy to 2020) and associated press release are available on the European Commission Nature & Biodiversity website.