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Protecting and preserving nature and biodiversity is a pressing issue across the EU. Safeguarding protected areas, strengthening ecosystem services and facilitating environmentally-friendly territorial development strategies are often met with opposition. The effective involvement and support of stakeholders and citizens for the protection of biodiversity is hampered by user conflicts, opposing economic interests, scarce dialogue among decision-makers & stakeholders, financial constraints and a lack of awareness of the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
CIBioGO partners thus share the need to incorporate participatory methods into biodiversity governance and empower their citizens to participate in public decision-making in their respective policy instruments.
To answer this need, funded by the INTERREG EUROPE 2021- 2027 Programme, CIBioGO will create a multi-stakeholder framework in each region to facilitate sound & widely accepted governance structures for protection of nature & biodiversity.
Besides, the interregional learning will lead to identifying best fitting tools & methods of participatory governance in the fields of stakeholder & citizen involvement, conflict resolution, innovative financing schemes, citizen science & monitoring protocols, tailored to the partner regions’ biodiversity-related challenges.
As a result partner regions will have increased knowledge on participatory governance methods in biodiversity and increased capacities to facilitate effective governance of protected areas.
Six partners representing six EU regions are gathered in CIBioGO. These partners are regional public authorities or other public bodies, each of them aiming to improve a specific policy instrument related to participatory governance for biodiversity, upon the knowledge gained through the project.
The consortia seeks to improve their policies via implementing effective tools and innovative methods covering six topics upon their interests and competences: 1) Stakeholder Consultation; 2) Citizens involvement in decision-making and management; 3) User conflict resolution methods; 4) Innovative financing schemes for biodiversity; 5) Biodiversity data and citizen science; 6) decentralised Monitoring protocols.
Supported by BURST with extensive experience in organising and moderating public engagement processes, partners embark in an interregional learning process towards the collaborative and sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
BURST will facilitate the interregional learning process, support partners in improving policy instruments and provide expertise in multi-stakeholder engagement. Building on its URBACT experience, it will deploy the URBACT methodology to facilitate transnational learning and exchange of good practices.
As a Hub of the European NetworkNature, it will contribute to reaching EU-level dissemination target groups. In the first year, BURST will guide the development of a joint methodology for the comprehensive analysis of PPs biodiversity contexts.
Further, BURST will develop a thematic matrix of the relevant tools and methods of participatory governance and provide a benchmark of good practices existing beyond the partnership. It will also map and assess the competences, interests and the Good Practices of partners and their stakeholders.
BURST will prepare the framework for the interregional learning process, the general script for peer reviews, and modules for organisational capacity-building.
Throughout the project, BURST will support partners in developing and implementing policy improvement. Besides, it will create a digital Practical Guide for establishing policy environments nurturing participatory biodiversity governance practices.