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Biodiversity and Nature Conservation
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The global decrease in biodiversity is an urgent environmental problem acknowledged by world leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg where, as part of the WEHAB (Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity) initiative, they pledged to "make a significant cut to the rate at which rare animals and plants are becoming extinct by 2010".
During the last decennium the international aspects of nature conservation and preservation of biodiversity have gained a central role in the environmental administrations. With the continued development of the European Union, a distinct European environmental policy has been evolving. Already, elements of a European nature conservation policy have emerged, although still incomplete with respect to systematics and coherence.
Simultaneously, it has become more and more obvious that international collaboration is indispensable to comprehensive conservation research. National environmental research must support the integration of nature management plans into a European and global context thus enhancing the need for international collaboration and co-ordination within applied research, environmental monitoring and development of standard methods for assessing the state of nature and the environment.
Against this background, the European Conservation Institutes Research Network CONNECT was established in 1988. In January 2003, it was decided to merge CONNECT and the PEER network for Biodiversity and Nature Conservation, thus bringing together the scientific and administrative capacities of the largest environmental research centres in Europe and of excellent research institutes dedicated entirely to biodiversity and nature conservation research.
The objective of the CONNECT network is to identify and quantify the impact of factors that threaten biodiversity in order to underpin the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Special emphasis will be given to the relations between biodiversity and socio-economical changes.
Therefore, the main current research lines are the analysis of the effects of land use change on biodiversity, the development of tools for the assessment and evaluation of biodiversity, and the analysis of the mechanisms for the evolution, persistence, and loss of biodiversity. Furthermore, the research is focused on the conceptual and theoretical advancement of conservation biology. The CONNECT members have a special expertise in ecological modelling, specifically mathematical and simulation models of ecological processes that enhance our understanding of the dynamics, structures and functional interrelations of ecosystems.
The CONNECT network is addressing the analysis and assessment of natural and anthropogenic structural changes in biological communities, leading to the development of a scientific basis for understanding and managing biodiversity. Basic research includes functional relationships in populations and communities, and the degradation, stability and regenerative potential of biological communities. Applied research questions include the forecasting of community dynamics under environmental change, and the monitoring of the efficiency of management, remediation and conservation schemes.
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For more information on this research network please contact:
Dr Allan Watt
CEH - Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Hill of Brathens
Banchory
Aberdeenshire
AB31 4BY
United Kingdom
Tel.: +44-1330-826300
Fax: +44-1330-823303
E-mail:
Dr Jurgen Tack
CONNECT Secretary
Institute of Nature Conservation
Kliniekstraat 25
B-1070 Brussels
Belgium
Tel.: +32-2-5581861
Fax: +32-2-5581805
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