Abstract

Sweden has ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and is therefore obliged to abide by the objectives of the convention. According to national reports Sweden does not fulfil the intentions of article 14 Impact Assessment and Minimizing Adverse Impacts in CBD. To improve this, the Swedish Government has given focal responsibility to the Swedish EIA Centre. The Centre has translated the document Biodiversity in EIA & SEA Background Document to CBD Decision VIII/28 into Swedish, with main purposes (1) to increase focus on the obligations the CBD implies; (2) to facilitate the incorporation of biodiversity in impact assessments; (3) to create a framework of concepts in Swedish. On the basis of this document two workshops were held with invited representatives from several Swedish agencies. The workshops resulted in various suggestions on how to improve the impact assessment processes with respect to biodiversity in projects as well as in municipality planning. One interesting suggestion was to combine the levels of biodiversity, i.e. landscape, ecosystem, species and genotypes, with composition, structure and key processes in a matrix. If applied in the EIA process it would improve the incorporation of biodiversity values in impact assessments considerably. Summary statement of main points A matrix of the levels of biodiversity in combination with composition, structure and key processes applied in the EIA process could improve the incorporation of biodiversity values in impact assessments

Keywords

Biodiversity; EIA; Convention on Biodiversity; Matrix

Published in

Conference

The Art and Science of Impact Assessment

SLU Authors

• Sandström, Ulf

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/23004