What is the main focus of your Expert Group?
This group aims to address the challenges facing biodiversity, promote sustainable water management practices that conserve biodiversity and ecosystem integrity, and facilitate collaboration between water and biodiversity stakeholders. We look at the different dimensions of biodiversity including genetic diversity, species and ecosystems.
What are the opportunities and challenges in your field that the Expert group is addressing?
The challenge we face is how to best enhance the capacity of key actors in the water sector to actively combat ecosystem degradation and biodiversity decline. Water sector actors – water utilities and companies, water-intensive industries and water authorities – deal with water quality and quantity issues, including spatial planning concerns, and are thus in a unique position to drive positive change for the protection and restoration of biodiversity in aquatic and linked terrestrial ecosystems . We focus on some key issues:
- Promotion of using new monitoring techniques to improve our understanding of biodiversity development.
- Implementation of new monitoring techniques in EU legislation, to allow the best possible monitoring of ecological/biodiversity goals in new water framework legislation.
- Gathering and developing examples that seduce public and private organisations to address water-related biodiversity and create positive impact where possible.
How does your Expert Group plan to achieve its goals, and how will it contribute to Water Europe’s Vision of a Water-Smart Society?
We are convinced that a broad systemic change is needed to reach our goals. Therefore, we link to the core values, objectives and innovation concepts outlined in Water Europe’s vision for a Water-Smart Society. Our aim is to operationally translate this overarching strategy in the context of biodiversity challenges linked to water systems. Intact, biodiverse ecosystems support both the long-term sustainability of water systems and services, as well as the achievement of biodiversity and ecosystem restoration targets in European legislation.
To this extent we will write papers and organize webinars with other EG’s to enhance understanding on the impact of climate, BWN and pollution on biodiversity in water and on ways to make positive impact on these issues.
