Preliminary report on the extraction of hydrocarbons in Epirus

Η περιοχή της Ηπείρου έχει έρθει στο προσκήνιο της επικαιρότητας τόσο στην Ελλάδα όσο και πανευρωπαϊκά τον τελευταίο καιρό λόγω της έναρξης ερευνών για υδρογονάνθρακες στο πλαίσιο συμβάσεων έρευνας και εξόρυξης που υπέγραψε το ελληνικό δημόσιο με ιδιωτικές εταιρείες εξόρυξης υδρογονανθράκων. Μεγάλο μέρος των κατοίκων διαμαρτύρεται και δραστηριοποιείται ενάντια στις εξορύξεις (βλ. πορεία διαμαρτυρίας 2.000 ατόμων στις 3 Ιουνίου του 2018 άλλα και την ανάλογη πορεία διαμαρτυρίας του Μάιου του 2019 στα Ιωάννινα καθώς και μια σειρά πρωτοβουλιών ενάντια στις εξορύξεις τόσο τοπικά όσο και πανελλαδικά). Από την άλλη πλευρά, μεγάλο κομμάτι επίσημων φορέων (Περιφέρεια Ηπείρου, κεντρική κυβέρνηση, Ακαδημία Αθηνών κ.λπ.) καθώς και μια ομολογουμένως μικρή μερίδα κατοίκων προτείνουν την εξόρυξη ως αναπτυξιακή λύση στη χρόνια οικονομική υποανάπτυξη της Ηπείρου όπως διαγράφεται με βάση το κατά κεφαλήν ΑΕΠ. Ακολουθώντας αυτήν τη μέτρηση, η ιστοσελίδα της Περιφέρειας Ηπείρου περιγράφοντας τη φυσιογνωμία της περιφέρειας αναφέρει ότι είναι η φτωχότερη της Ελλάδας. Στο πλαίσιο όλης αυτής της συζήτησης, στο παρόν κείμενο έχουμε δύο στόχους: Α) Να κατανοήσουμε κατά πόσο οι ανησυχίες των κατοίκων για τις εξορύξεις είναι βάσιμες˙ και Β) Να προβούμε σε μια πρώτη απόπειρα κατανόησης του αναπτυξιακού πολιτικού πλαισίου όπως λαμβάνει χώρα στην Ήπειρο σε σχέση με την εξόρυξη υδρογονανθράκων μέσα από τις μεταβολές στη διεθνή θεωρία και πρακτική της ανάπτυξης. Για να απαντήσουμε στο πρώτο ερώτημα θα εξετάσουμε εν συντομία τη διεθνή βιβλιογραφία σχετικά με τις εξορυκτική οικονομία, το υπάρχον μητρώο μίας εκ των εμπλεκομένων εταιρειών εξόρυξης κτλ. Για να απαντήσουμε στο δεύτερο ερώτημα θα παρουσιάσουμε μια σειρά σύγχρονων προσεγγίσεων που επικρατούν σήμερα στην επιστήμη της ανάπτυξης και στην πρακτική της εφαρμογή και θα τις συγκρίνουμε με τις επίσημες πολιτικές απόψεις περί υποανάπτυξης της Ηπείρου

D2.3 EuropaBON Proposal for an EU Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC)

Observations are key to understanding the state of nature, the drivers of biodiversity loss and the impacts on ecosystem services and ultimately on people. Many EU policies and initiatives call for unbiased, integrated and regularly updated data on biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, biodiversity monitoring efforts are spatially and temporally fragmented, taxonomically biased and not integrated across Europe. EuropaBON has addressed this gap by developing an EU-wide framework for biodiversity monitoring. With this deliverable, EuropaBON proposes the terms of reference for an EU Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC), a permanent infrastructure that could coordinate and foster the generation and use of high quality data to underpin the biodiversity knowledge-base used across EU policies, providing guidance and trainings when necessary. Such a centre represents one of the key solutions to overcome the critical challenges of biodiversity monitoring in Europe. Having this integrated and continuous monitoring capacity would allow more timely and efficient interventions that would optimise our capacity to revert biodiversity loss and prevent environmental degradation. It would also increase the value-added to the data flows, reaching high-value outputs with some existing low-value inputs. This deliverable offers a critical analysis of the existing monitoring landscape in Europe, extracting key messages about the main challenges, lessons learned and possible solutions. Based on a comprehensive analysis of needs and, most importantly, on an inclusive consultation process, the deliverable designs an EBOCC that tackles the key biodiversity monitoring challenges. The proposal specifies the mission, the tasks, the most urgent topics, the main policies and the key stakeholders that the EBOCC should serve and focus on during the first stage of its implementation. It also includes detailed analyses about governance models and potential costs. With this proposal, EuropaBON fosters the setting up and testing an operational EBOCC that could address the urgent need for coordination, integration, harmonisation and strengthening of biodiversity data collection and analysis, in order to inform policy-making at local, national, European and international level

Modelling environmental DNA data; Bayesian variable selection accounting for false positive and false negative errors

Environmental DNA is a survey tool with rapidly expanding applications for assessing the presence of a species at surveyed sites. Environmental DNA methodology is known to be prone to false negative and false positive errors at the data collection and laboratory analysis stages. Existing models for environmental DNA data require augmentation with additional sources of information to overcome identifiability issues of the likelihood function and do not account for environmental covariates that predict the probability of species presence or the probabilities of error. We present a novel Bayesian model for analysing environmental DNA data by proposing informative prior distributions for logistic regression coefficients that enable us to overcome parameter identifiability, while performing efficient Bayesian variable selection. Our methodology does not require the use of transdimensional algorithms and provides a general framework for performing Bayesian variable selection under informative prior distributions in logistic regression models

Biodiversity and Green Infrastructure in Europe: Boundary object or ecological trap?

The concept of green infrastructure is widely used in environmental planning, but so far it has no standard definition. Planners, conservationists and scientists tend to welcome the term because it can serve as a boundary object, providing links among policy makers, developers and different academic disciplines. However, the concept of green infrastructure creates risks for biodiversity conservation in its adoption. It can be used to water down biodiversity conservation aims and objectives as easily as it can be used to further them because of the different ideas associated with it and the multiple interests pursued. In this paper, we address such risks by looking, among others, at the European Union’s Green Infrastructure Strategy and we suggest how planners and conservationists might deal with its growing importance in environmental policy and planning to enhance its value for biodiversity conservation.EG acknowledges the Basque government’s postdoctoral research grant and support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through CAUSE project under the 2012 National Plan. EA acknowledges the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship within FP7 (PIEF-GA-2013-622631, Conservation and Ecosystem Services in the New biodiversity Economy—CESINE). DB acknowledges the SCALES project, an EU Large-scale Integrating Project within FP 7 (226 852).This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.04.00

The need for the implementation of an Ecosystem Services assessment in Greece: Drafting the national agenda

This paper presents the establishment and the first outcomes of the Hellenic Ecosystem Services Partnership (HESP), a scientific-technical committee aiming at the guidance and coordination of the Ecosystem Services (ES) assessment in Greece. HESP consists of experts from different disciplines (ecology, marine biology, socio-ecological system science) and aims to: i) coordinate ES assessment efforts under a shared framework; ii) promote the ES approach in Greece; iii) support the European implementation of ES at the national level (Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem and their Services initiative), and iv) fulfill priority actions regarding the ES implementation and the obligations derived from the National Biodiversity Strategy. In this paper, we present the first drafting of the National Agenda including short- and long-term objectives towards the national implementation of MAES, we outline the HESP Action Plan to 2020, as well as the timeline of the basic steps to be taken, to achieve decision making on the basis of ES maintenance and enhancement. It will also serve as a call for action to encourage more ES assessments at the national level, but also as a primer for the inclusion of protected areas and other areas of special importance for ES assessments at the EU level. © Dimopoulos P et al

Governance rescaling and the neoliberalization of nature: the case of biodiversity conservation in four EU countries

In this paper, we investigate how processes of rescaling biodiversity governance downwards, upwards and outwards are interlinked with the increased global and European trends toward the neoliberalization of nature conservation. We furthermore explore who wins and who loses from this interrelationship. We focus on the European Union and specifically on England, Finland, Greece, and Poland, and we pay particular attention to the effects of the ongoing economic crisis. We draw on Marxist-influenced political ecology and geography literatures and use primary empirical data obtained through focus groups and interviews as well as analysis of legal and policy documents. Our analysis shows that EU states have mobilized a range of political strategies intended to expand and intensify the alignment of conservation with capitalist interests within a distinctively neoliberal framework. However, the variation in governmental strategies in the case study countries reveals that variegated neoliberalizations are intertwined with variegated rescaling processes. Thus despite the increasing homogenization of conservation, the historical evolution of governance forms and their legacy as well as differing socioeconomic and political contexts play a pivotal role in current dynamics. We argue that unraveling the different roles of the rescaling of biodiversity governance is crucial in exposing the contradictions inherent in the relationship between conservation and capitalism and in showing that the consensus-driven neoliberal rhetoric is increasingly lapsing into authoritarian governance in the era of one of the most severe capitalist crises