The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030: Opportunities and challenges on the path towards biodiversity recovery

The European Union (EU) has committed to an ambitious biodiversity recovery plan in its Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Green Deal. These policies aim to halt biodiversity loss and move towards sustainable devel-opment, focusing on restoring degraded habitats, extending the network of protected areas (PAs), and improving the effectiveness of management, governance, and funding. The achievement of conservation goals must be founded on understanding past successes and failures. Here, we summarise the strengths and weaknesses of past EU biodiversity conservation policies and practices and explore future opportunities and challenges. We focus on four main aspects: i) coordination among and within the EU Member States, ii) integration of biodiversity conservation into socio-economic sectors, iii) adequacy and sufficiency of funds, and iv) governance and stakeholder participation.Whilst past conservation efforts have benefitted from common rules across the EU and funding mechanisms, they have failed at operationalizing coordination within and across the Member States, integrating biodiversity conservation into other sectoral policies, adequately funding and effectively enforcing management, and facilitating stakeholder participation in decision-making. Future biodiversity conservation would benefit from an extended and better-managed network of PAs, additional novel funding opportunities, including the private sector, and enhanced co-governance. However, it will be critical to find sustainable solu-tions to potential conflicts between conservation goals and other socio-economic objectives and to resolve in-consistencies across sectoral policies.

Automated summary

The EU has committed to ambitious biodiversity recovery plans, but past policies have lacked coordination, sufficient funding, effective management, and stakeholder participation. Future conservation efforts should focus on expanding and managing protected areas, exploring new funding opportunities, and enhancing co-governance while addressing conflicts and inconsistencies across sectors.