The challenge of implementing the European network of protected areas Natura 2000

Established under the European Union (EU) Birds and Habitats Directives, Natura 2000 is one of the largest international networks of protected areas. With the spatial designation of sites by the EU member states almost finalized, the biggest challenge still lying ahead is the appropriate management of the sites. To evaluate the cross‐scale functioning of Natura 2000 implementation, we analyzed 242 questionnaires completed by conservation scientists involved in the implementation of Natura 2000 in 24 EU member states. Respondents identified 7 key drivers of the quality of Natura 2000 implementation. Ordered in decreasing evaluation score, these drivers included: network design, use of external resources, legal frame, scientific input, procedural frame, social input, and national or local policy. Overall, conservation scientists were moderately satisfied with the implementation of Natura 2000. Tree modeling revealed that poor application of results of environmental impact assessments (EIA) was considered a major constraint. The main strengths of the network included the substantial increase of scientific knowledge of the sites, the contribution of nongovernmental organizations, the adequate network design in terms of area and representativeness, and the adequacy of the EU legal frame. The main weaknesses of Natura 2000 were the lack of political will from local and national governments toward effective implementation; the negative attitude of local stakeholders; the lack of background knowledge of local stakeholders, which prevented well‐informed policy decisions; and the understaffing of Natura 2000 management authorities. Top suggestions to improve Natura 2000 implementation were increase public awareness, provide environmental education to local communities, involve high‐quality conservation experts, strengthen quality control of EIA studies, and establish a specific Natura 2000 fund. El Reto de Implementar la Red Europea de Áreas Protegidas Natura 2000     

First Trimester Prenatal Diagnosis of Metabolic Diseases: A survey in countries from the European Community

This paper presents the collected data concerning First Trimester Prenatal Diagnosis of Metabolic Diseases performed in different countries of the European Community by enzymatic methods using chorionic villi. In all, 258 diagnoses were made for 38 different metabolic diseases and 56 (22 per cent) affected fetuses have been detected. Several difficulties were encountered with regard to chorionic villus material or enzyme expression in this tissue. We stress the conditions necessary for avoiding errors in diagnosis.     

Left to interest groups? On the prospects for enforcing environmental law in the European Union

ABSTRACT

There have been important changes in the enforcement of European Union environmental law over the last 25 years. Environmental law has traditionally been reliant on the European Commission, but the Commission has started to withdraw from enforcement. Instead, it is undertaking efforts to ‘outsource’ enforcement to environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by systematically promoting access for such groups to national courts. While the Commission has indicated that it sees centralised and private enforcement as substitutes, the advantages and drawbacks of each mechanism are evaluated and it is concluded that both mechanisms have an important role to play. In particular, the private enforcement of EU environmental law is dependent on national opportunity structures that are unlikely to ever be fully liberalised and harmonised by EU procedural law. Private enforcement is therefore not a panacea for compliance problems, and the growing absence of a central enforcing authority is a cause for concern.     

Conserving international coastal habitat networks on migratory waterfowl flyways

Migratory waterfowl depend on habitat networks at local, national and international scales for their survival. Coastal habitats are key areas for many waterfowl. Different species use different biotopes and in different places, so overall many parts of the coastal resource are important. As well as national conservation efforts, waterfowl conservation is increasingly focussed worldwide on collaborative international conservation, catalysed by several measures e.g. the Ramsar Convention, the EC Conservation of Wild Birds Directive, and the Bonn Convention Agreement on the Conservation of African/Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds. Several international conservation plans are under development for single species, but a more effective approach may be to develop plans, for assemblages of migratory birds with similar habitat requirements. All such plans must incorporate future sustainable use of the habitats on which the birds depend. Yet migratory bird and coastal habitat conservation is still often approached separately, despite the two being now closely linked to the development of the Natura 2000 site network in the European Community. Implementing the 1992 EC Habitats Directive requires the selection of coastal habitat sites for designation, set in national and international contexts of resource distribution. International coastal habitat inventories are needed to underpin this process. Combining such inventories with assessment of the flyway habitat requirements of waterfowl species and assemblages offers great potential for identifying international coastal habitat networks that meet the objectives of both habitat and migratory waterfowl conservation.     

European scenarios for EUSES regional distribution model

The regional multimedia distribution model incorporated into EUSES 1.0 is used for the estimation of regionally predicted environmental concentrations in different European scenarios: a scenario representing a typical region in the north of Europe (high fraction connected to sewer systems, lower environmental temperature, high fractions of surface water and natural soil and a low fraction for agricultural soil) and another scenario representing a typical region in the south of Europe (low fraction connected to sewer systems, higher environmental temperature, low fractions for surface water and natural soil, and a high fraction for agricultural soil). The two scenarios are based on average data of countries in Northern and Southern Europe, but are not realistic for any specific country located in these regions. Scenario calculations were carried out using these two scenarios in addition to the generic standard region, given in EUSES 1.0 as a default scenario, and the North-Rhine Westphalian region. The substance properties, including emissions, were left unchanged for all scenarios. For a number of substances, the calculated concentrations in both the North and the South of Europe turned out to be higher than those calculated with the standard generic scenario. Thus, the standard scenario cannot be considered as a 'worst case' scenario per se. Uncertainties due to the regional heterogeneity within Europe are high. It is recommended to use these two additional scenarios for an improved estimation of possible concentration ranges in Europe.     

Uncertainty analysis of emission estimates in the RAINS integrated assessment model

Uncertainty is a critical issue for all models that attempt to quantify the necessary emission reductions that are required to meet environmental quality targets. This paper discusses a methodology specifically developed to analyse the uncertainties in the emission estimates with the regional air pollution information and simulation (RAINS) integrated assessment model, considering the uncertainties in the model parameters themselves. Overall, it was found that a typical range of uncertainties for modeled national emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and ammonia in Europe lies between 10 and 30%. In general, the uncertainties are strongly dependent on the potential for error compensation. This compensation potential is larger (and uncertainties are smaller) if calculated emissions are composed of a larger number of equal-sized source categories, where the errors in input parameters are not correlated with each other. Thus, estimates of the national total emissions are generally more certain than estimates of sectoral emissions. A sensitivity analysis with respect to the uncertainty in input parameters showed that the actual uncertainties are critically influenced by the specific situation (pollutant, year, country). However, the emission factor is an important contributor to the uncertainty in estimates of historical emissions, while uncertainty in the activity data dominates the future estimates.     

Nitrate leaching in agriculture to upper groundwater in the sandy regions of the Netherlands during the 1992–1995 period

The Dutch National Monitoring Programme for Effectiveness of the Minerals Policy (LMM) was initiated to allow detection of a statutory reduction in nitrate leaching caused by a decreasing N load. The starting point, or baseline, was taken as the nitrate concentration of the upper metre of groundwater sampled on 99 farms in the 1992–1995 period in the sandy areas of the Netherlands, where predominantly grass and maize grow. We found here that a reduction in nitrate leaching of more than 20% in future would almost certainly be detected with the LMM. Detecting downward trends due to decreasing N load will require nitrate concentrations to also be related to soil drainage, precipitation excess leading to groundwater recharge and to location. Furthermore, we found that about 16% of the N load in the Dutch sandy regions was being leached to the upper metre of groundwater in the 1992–1995 period. The critical N load in approximately 1990 for exceeding the EC limit value for nitrate, NO₃, (50 mg L^–1) in the upper metre of groundwater for the mean situation for grassland, maize and arable land in the sandy area was found to be 210 kg ha^–1 a^–1. Because manure management has been altered, the critical load found will be lower than the current critical load .     

RELEVANT ASPECTS OF AIR QUALITY IN OPORTO (PORTUGAL): PM10 AND O3

The air quality Framework Directive (FWD) and the correspondent Daughter Directives defined the new strategy for air quality management in Europe. In general, the new standards are more restrictive than those established by the previous legislation. In Portugal, some difficulties can be previewed to achieve those new standards. Thus, this paper aims at evaluating the impact of application of the FWD to Oporto Metropolitan Area in what concerns to the most critical air pollutants in the area (PM₁₀ and O₃). The specific objectives were: i) to analyse the concentration exceedances between 1999 and 2001; ii) to identify the main emission sources; iii) to evaluate the possibility of a new redistribution of the existing monitoring sites; iv) to contribute to the definition of a new strategy for air quality management. The results showed that; i) the standard values for PM₁₀ and O₃ were largely surpassed, possibly concluding that the FWD application implies a strong impact on the air quality management strategies; ii) the main emission sources (road traffic and the neighbour stationary sources localised upwind) affect all the Metropolitan area through intra-region pollutant transport; iii) it is safer maintaining the site localisation to avoid previewing exceedances through mathematical correlations; iv) the reduction of PM₁₀ and of ozone precursors must be performed considering new technologies for cleaner production and gaseous depuration, a rigorous urban and territory planning, the creation of an efficient public transport network and the definition of strict measures for car maintenance.     

The relationship between economic and carbon footprint changes in EU: The achievements of the EU sustainable consumption and production policy implementation

The Sustainable Consumption and Production policy is a key objective in the renewed European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS). EU countries implement the targets of Sustainable Consumption and Production policy at different a level. Nevertheless, SDS targets are concerned more with production than consumption side. In addition, analysis of the carbon footprint data, which was supplied by the Global Footprint Network, showed that in all EU countries consumption-based carbon footprint caught-up and exceeded the level of production-based carbon (except Denmark and Estonia) during 1993–2010 period. The significant absolute decoupling in terms of carbon footprint from production-based perspective was observed in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Slovakia, Poland, United Kingdom and Germany, meanwhile from consumption-based perspective only in Denmark, Estonia and Germany. Moreover in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Croatia the consumption-based carbon footprint grew faster than economy in general. Results imply that EU should put more focus on consumption side in terms of Sustainable Consumption and Production policy and measures taken. A commitment to reduce the environmental impact from consumption-based perspective should be more addressed covering values and lifestyles.     

Inverse modeling for effective dispersal: Do we need tree size to estimate fecundity?

The estimation of the dispersal kernel for the seedling and sapling stages of the recruitment process was made possible through the application of inverse modeling to dispersal data. This method uses the spatial coordinates of adult trees and the counts of seedlings (or saplings) in small quadrats to estimate the dispersal kernel. The unknown number of recruits produced by an adult tree (the fecundity) is estimated - simultaneously with the dispersal kernel - via an allometric linear model relating the unknown quantity with a (easily) measured characteristic of the adult tree (usually the basal area). However, the allometric relation between tree size and reproductive success in the sapling (or seedling) stage may not be strong enough when numerous, well-documented, post-dispersal processes (such as safe-site limitation for recruitment) cause large post-dispersal seedling mortality, which is usually unrelated to the size of the tree that dispersed them. In this paper we hypothesize that when tree size and reproductive success in the seedling/sapling stage are not well correlated then the use of allometry in inverse modeling is counter-productive and may lead to poor model fits. For these special cases we suggest using a new model for effective dispersal that we term the unrestricted fecundity (UF) model that, contrary to allometric models, makes no assumptions on the fecundities; instead they are allowed to vary freely from one tree to another and even to be zero for trees that are reproductively inactive. Based on this model, we examine the hypothesis that when tree size and reproductive success are weakly correlated and the fecundities are estimated independently of tree size the goodness-of-fit and the ecological meaning of dispersal models (in the seedling or sapling stage) may be enhanced. Parameters of the UF model are estimated through the EM algorithm and their standard errors are approximated via the observed information matrix. We fit the UF model to a dataset from an expanding European beech population of central Spain as well as to a set of simulated dispersal data were the correlation between reproductive success and tree size was moderate. In comparisons with a simple allometric model, the UF model fitted the data better and the parameter estimates were less biased. We suggest using this new approach for modeling dispersal in the seedling and sapling stages when tree size (or other adult-specific covariates) is not deemed to be in strong relation to the reproductive success of adults. Models that use covariates for modeling the fecundity of adults should be preferred when reproductive success and tree size guard a strong relationship.