Deliverable D1.1 – Policy Landscape and Needs

This report provides a review of the biodiversity policy landscape at the European Union (EU) level and identifies a set of priority Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) to support policy needs. Policy needs were determined based on the European 'Union's Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 (EU BDS 2030), which serves as the overarching framework for biodiversity-related policies and legislation at the EU level in response to the requirement for countries to have a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) as Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The analysis focuses on the actions from the EU BDS 2030 as the key articulation of policy needs, and indicators to evaluate monitoring requirements. Actions were categorized based on their relevance to different stages of the policy process (e.g., planning, implementation, reporting or review), while indicators were categorized as relevant to policy reporting. Actions and indicators were also tagged by ecosystem realm (i.e., terrestrial, freshwater, marine) or as cross-cutting. The potential applicability of EBVs for broadly supporting the implementation of each of the 102 actions and sub-actions. Also, the monitoring of the 16 available indicators from the 'Strategy's dashboard, was assessed. The review found that EBVs could broadly be used to support the implementation of 37 actions and the monitoring of five indicators. These selected actions and indicators were then mapped to EBV classes and candidates based on the EBV framework by the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). EBV candidates were ranked from high to low priority based on the total number of actions and indicators they were mapped to, both overall and within different ecosystem realms and stages of the policy process. Candidates linked to the greatest number of actions and indicators were considered the highest policy priority. Overall, the species abundance candidate ranked 1st in terms of policy priority, followed by species distributions (2nd), ecosystem distribution (3rd) and ecosystem vertical profile (4th), with markedly higher total scores than other candidates. These candidates were also consistently ranked among the top four candidates across different ecosystem realms and stages of the policy process. Taking into consideration the findings from the Europa Biodiversity Observation 'Network's (EuropaBON) User and Policy Needs Assessment, this review identified species abundances, species distributions and ecosystem distribution as priority EBVs for the development of remote sensing (RS) biodiversity products in the OBSGESSION project. The ecosystem vertical profile also ranked highly, but further assessment is recommended to determine its policy importance. While this review provides a priority set of EBV candidates based on policy needs, further prioritisation considering scientific gaps and technical feasibility for monitoring EBVs via RS will be continued under Task 1.2 as part of the Science Policy Traceability Matrix (SPTM), taking into consideration work already undertaken on RS-enabled EBVS.