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The national and provincial governments in the Netherlands are taking many measures to achieve nature conservation objectives, such as those of the EU Birds and Habitats Directives and Water Framework Directive and for ecosystem services and biodiversity in general. Climate change can be a risk for Dutch nature. It is therefore important to obtain a good understanding of the current and future risks of changes such as rising temperatures, extreme drought, extreme wetness, sea level rise and salinisation. From a literature study and expert knowledge we conclude that the risks associated with climate change will probably increase in the future and will play a more important role in achieving the goals for nature. Climate change also presents some opportunities, but to a lesser extent., Rijk en provincies nemen veel maatregelen voor het realiseren van de natuurdoelen, zoals voor de Europese VHR en KRW-doelen, maar ook voor ecosysteemdiensten en biodiversiteit in het algemeen. Klimaatverandering kan een risico (gaan) vormen voor de Nederlandse natuur. Het is daarom van belang om goed inzicht te krijgen in de huidige en toekomstige risico’s van o.a. temperatuurstijging, extreme droogte, extreme natheid, zeespiegelstijging en verzilting. Op basis van literatuurstudie en expertkennis blijkt dat de klimaatrisico’s in de toekomst waarschijnlijk gaan toenemen en een belangrijke(re) rol gaan spelen bij de realisatie van de doelen voor natuur. In mindere mate biedt klimaatverandering ook kansen.

The Interministerial Policy Review (IBO) Biodiversity explored current policy and alternative policy options (also known as sets of measures) in terms of achieving biodiversity objectives. The aim is to contribute to effective policy development in favor of biodiversity. This exploration was conducted partly on the basis of expert opinion on the measure sets, as provided in two separate sessions in March and May 2023. This report describes the methodology used to formalize this expert judgment, as well as the outcome., Het Interdepartementaal Beleidsonderzoek (IBO) Biodiversiteit heeft het huidige beleid en alternatieve beleidsopties (ook wel maatregelpakketten) verkend wat betreft het behalen van de biodiversiteitsdoelstellingen. Dit met als doel bij te dragen aan een effectieve beleidsontwikkeling ten gunste van de biodiversiteit. Deze verkenning is deels uitgevoerd op basis van een expertoordeel over de maatregelpakketten, zoals gegeven in twee afzonderlijke sessies in maart en mei 2023. Dit rapport beschrijft de methodiek die gebruikt is voor het formaliseren van dit expertoordeel, evenals het resultaat.

Cities are growing rapidly. It takes a chain of activities to get food from farms to cities. This food system is largely driven by autonomous market development, seizing opportunities favourable to a stakeholder but unfavourable to society at large. Spatial planning is crucial along the chain of food system activities to improve food system outcomes, resilience, and limit negative trade-offs. To include the food system in spatial planning, it must first be mapped (i.e., spatialisation) to understand the functions. These maps inform the spatial planning process, which in turn influences spatial configuration of activities. This paper explores the role of spatialisation and spatial planning in the food system of the fast-growing Dhaka Metropolitan Area (DMA) using three different approaches: urban footprint, mapping, and semi-structured interviews. Stakeholders are unaware of spatial aspects that are present in DMA’s food system and therefore do not consider it while developing spatial plans. The analysis in this article, based on the Urban Food Footprint analysis, food system spatialisation, and interviews shows that spatial planning informed by descriptive spatial information can play an important role in guiding the transformation to a more robust, resilient, and inclusive food system.

Bonaire is facing major challenges including (mass) tourism, population growth, urban expansion, climate change, biodiversity loss and the unilateral dependency on tourism. In thirty years, Bonaire will inevitably look different. Here, two different possible futures are presented, to form a basis for dialogue amongst stakeholders and to stimulate a positive change and sustainability on Bonaire. One of these scenarios follows current trends (business-as-usual), and the other bends those trends into a nature-inclusive future after a vision developed by a trans-disciplinary team of researchers, local experts and stakeholders. For both scenarios drivers and impacts are visualized and documented on climate, tourist numbers, population,infrastructure, resources, land use, erosion and nature. Visualizing scenarios is one important piece in creating awareness about the future as it allows to shed light of the difficult to grasp long-term effects, and explicitly showcases current trends. It gives opportunities to imagine a future that looks different from the prognosis, and to inspire to work towards a sustainable and desirable future.

Voorliggend rapport presenteert de uitkomsten van een monitoring van de vergroening voor het jaar 2021volgens de geactualiseerde methode en gebruikmakend van gegevens die werden verzameld insamenwerking met RVO. De evaluatie laat zien hoe en door welke boeren maatregelen voor blijvendgrasland, gewasdiversificatie en ecologische aandachtsgebieden en tevens de equivalente maatregelen zijngekozen. De resultaten werden geïnterpreteerd wat betreft te verwachten effecten in relatie tot de gesteldedoelen van de vergroening. In de analyse worden ook de resultaten uit de voorgaandemonitoringsrapportage betrokken, zodat een beeld ontstaat van de vergroening na zeven jaar.

Dutch nature policy towards 2030-2050 sets the ambition of healthy and robust ecosystems, which are in harmony with social and economic activities. Resilience is mentioned as a criterion for a healthy, robust system. But when is a system resilient, and how do you assess this? How can we operationalise the complexity of resilience in such a way that it can be easily applied by the various stakeholders in policy practice? In this article, we introduce an approach to arrive at an integrated assessment of resilience in a socio-ecological context, as advocated by nature policy. Based on a number of clarifying questions, we propose a step-by-step plan that helps operationalise the concept of resilience in each context for policy in a structured manner.

A large and growing number of EU and national policies draw on, or affect directly and indirectly, Europe’s forests, including their ecosystems. Hence, there is a need for improved efforts to provide up-to-date assessments of the condition of European forests. The Forest Information System for Europe (FISE) is launched to respond to this need. This report shows the content developed for the FISE platform in the form of mock-ups., Een toenemend aantal beleidsstukken op EU- en nationaal niveau heeft - direct of indirect – effect op de bossen in Europa. Daarom is er een groeiende behoefte aan een overzicht van de actuele toestand van de Europese bossen. Het Forest Information System for Europe (FISE) is opgezet om in deze behoefte te voorzien. In dit rapport wordt de voor het FISE-platform ontwikkelde inhoud in de vorm van mock-ups getoond.

This report provides actors in the bee landscape Green Circles directions for making their area atfriendly. The report introduces ecoprofiles for pollinators and building blocks for the bee landscape and makes recommendations for a bee friendly management and design of the green infrastructure. The accompanying annex report provides more background information on the building blocks developed and the knowledge on which they are based., Dit rapport biedt actoren in het bijenlandschap Groene Cirkels handvaten voor het bij-vriendelijk maken van hun gebied. In het rapport worden ecoprofielen voor bestuivers en bouwstenen voor het bijenlandschap gepresenteerd en aanbevelingen gedaan voor een bij-vriendelijk beheer en inrichting van de groene infrastructuur. Het bijbehorende bijlagerapport geeft meer achtergrondinformatie over de ontwikkelde bouwstenen en de kennis waarop deze zijn gebaseerd.

The use of functional information in the form of species traits plays an important role in explaining biodiversity patterns and responses to environmental changes. Although relationships between species composition, their traits, and the environment have been extensively studied on a case-by-case basis, results are variable, and it remains unclear how generalizable these relationships are across ecosystems, taxa and spatial scales. To address this gap, we collated 80 datasets from trait-based studies into a global database for metaCommunity Ecology: Species, Traits, Environment and Space; “CESTES”. Each dataset includes four matrices: species community abundances or presences/absences across multiple sites, species trait information, environmental variables and spatial coordinates of the sampling sites. The CESTES database is a live database: it will be maintained and expanded in the future as new datasets become available. By its harmonized structure, and the diversity of ecosystem types, taxonomic groups, and spatial scales it covers, the CESTES database provides an important opportunity for synthetic trait-based research in community ecology.

Current spatial planning methods are often technocratic, slow, fail to use the right kind of evidence or do not involve (all) the actors needed to create support and consensus. We present a method that facilitates the use of evidence (data) in participatory spatial planning processes, resulting in a joint understanding of the most important causalities, as a means to build capacity across actors. QUICKScan is a participatory modeling method that links stakeholder- and decision maker knowledge and preferences to available spatial and spatio-statistical data, and is designed for group use in a multi-stakeholder workshop setting. We describe four urban QUICKScan applications, that vary in objective, scale and institutional setting. The most critical in organizing a QUICKScan session is to: (i) include crucial participants in a single plenary workshop (decision maker, local data expert, and local thematic experts), (ii) create an open atmosphere in which each and everyone's opinion is treated equally, (iii) dialogue is more important than an abundance of detailed spatial data, and (iv) start with simple modeling rules and iterate often while expanding the set of rules and trying out alternatives.

CESTES is a global database for metaCommunity Ecology: Species, Traits, Environment and Space. It compiles 80 datasets from trait-based studies. Each dataset includes four matrices: species community abundances or presences/absences across multiple sites, species trait information, environmental variables and spatial coordinates of the sampling sites. CESTES presents a harmonized structure and covers a diversity of ecosystem types (marine, terrestrial, freshwater), taxonomic groups (plants, vertebrates, invertebrates...), geographical regions, and spatial scales. The CESTES database is a live database: it will be maintained and expanded in the future as new datasets become available (https://icestes.github.io/sharedata). A zipped folder called “CESTES.zip” includes two alternative formats for the CESTES database: - a “xCESTES” folder that includes 80 Excel files (one file per dataset), each named according to the following structure: “AuthorPublicationYear.xlsx” - a “rCESTES” folder that includes the CESTES core processed database (comm, traits, envir, coord matrices) as an R list object “CESTES.RData” plus two R scripts, and two metadata tables for data processing and exploration. This “CESTES.zip” folder also includes: - an extended metadata table, “CESTES_metadata.xlsx”, that provides the general metadata information of all the datasets, - a tutorial document, “HOW_TO_SHARE_MY_DATA_FOR_CESTES.pdf”, that explains how to share data for integrating future datasets in the database. A second zipped folder, called "ceste.zip", corresponds to the non-spatial ancillary to CESTES. We provide access to 10 additional datasets that were not completely suitable for the CESTES database, due to the absence of spatial information or insufficient metadata but that were potentially valuable for their three other data matrices (comm, traits, envir). They follow the same structure as CESTES, except that they do not present the “coord” sheet and sometimes include only partial metadat, CESTES is a global database for metaCommunity Ecology: Species, Traits, Environment and Space. It compiles 80 datasets from trait-based studies. Each dataset includes four matrices: species community abundances or presences/absences across multiple sites, species trait information, environmental variables and spatial coordinates of the sampling sites. CESTES presents a harmonized structure and covers a diversity of ecosystem types (marine, terrestrial, freshwater), taxonomic groups (plants, vertebrates, invertebrates...), geographical regions, and spatial scales. The CESTES database is a live database: it will be maintained and expanded in the future as new datasets become available (https://icestes.github.io/sharedata). A zipped folder called “CESTES.zip” includes two alternative formats for the CESTES database: - a “xCESTES” folder that includes 80 Excel files (one file per dataset), each named according to the following structure: “AuthorPublicationYear.xlsx” - a “rCESTES” folder that includes the CESTES core processed database (comm, traits, envir, coord matrices) as an R list object “CESTES.RData” plus two R scripts, and two metadata tables for data processing and exploration. This “CESTES.zip” folder also includes: - an extended metadata table, “CESTES_metadata.xlsx”, that provides the general metadata information of all the datasets, - a tutorial document, “HOW_TO_SHARE_MY_DATA_FOR_CESTES.pdf”, that explains how to share data for integrating future datasets in the database. A second zipped folder, called "ceste.zip", corresponds to the non-spatial ancillary to CESTES. We provide access to 10 additional datasets that were not completely suitable for the CESTES database, due to the absence of spatial information or insufficient metadata but that were potentially valuable for their three other data matrices (comm, traits, envir). They follow the same structure as CESTES, except that they do not present the “coord” sheet and sometimes include only partial metadat

Wageningen University & Research onderzocht de herkomst van eiwitrijke diervoedergrondstoffen (>154 g/kg ruw eiwit) in het Nederlandse mengvoer voor de jaren 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015 en 2018. Daarbij werd 'regionaal geproduceerde eiwit' gedefinieerd als eiwit in diervoeder, geleverd door eiwitrijke grondstoffen die afkomstig zijn van in Europa geteelde gewassen. Gegevens over de gebruikte hoeveelheden grondstoffen, eiwitgehaltes van deze producten en hun oorsprong (regionaal versus niet-regionaal) zijn gecombineerd om het aandeel regionaal geproduceerde eiwitten in de vijf grootste Nederlandse veehouderijsectoren (melkvee, vleesvee, varkenshouderij, leghennen en vleespluimvee) te verkrijgen, alsmede voor de veehouderij als geheel. De regionaal geproduceerde volumes eiwitrijke diervoedergrondstoffen werden berekend als eiwitvolume en totaal volume. In deze studie ligt de focus op eiwit afkomstig uit mengvoergrondstoffen en is eiwit afkomstig uit ruwvoer en enkelvoudige grondstoffen buiten beschouwing gelaten. Wel is een variant doorgerekend waarin ook de hoeveelheid eiwit uit eiwitrijke vochtrijke diervoeders is meegenomen. Op basis van eiwitvolume was het aandeel eiwit afkomstig van eiwitrijke diervoedergrondstoffen van regionale oorsprong in mengvoeders voor alle diercategorieën samen 39% in 2011, 41% in 2013, 48% in 2014, 38% in 2015 en 47% in 2018. Wanneer ook eiwitrijke vochtrijke bijproducten worden meegenomen, was het aandeel eiwit van regionale oorsprong in 2018 50%. Als we kijken naar de herkomst van het eiwit uit alle mengvoergrondstoffen, waarbij we dus ook de grondstoffen meenemen met minder dan 154 g/kg ruw eiwit zoals de granen, dan blijkt over de periode 2011 - 2018 dat 56 tot 65% van het eiwit in mengvoer van regionale herkomst is.

Ongeveer de helft van het eiwitrijke veevoer in Nederland wordt geïmporteerd van buiten Europa. Het overgrote deel van deze grondstoffen bestaat uit soja- en palmproducten. Op Europees niveau zijn we voor 96% van onze sojabehoefte en voor 70% van onze totale eiwitbehoefte afhankelijk van import van buiten Europa. In de teeltgebieden, met name in Zuid-Amerika, leidt de grootschalige teelt van deze gewassen tot grote ecologische en sociale schade; door ontbossing van natuurgebieden en daarmee gepaard gaande CO2- uitstoot en biodiversiteitsverlies, door uitputting van de bodem, vervuiling van drinkwater, bedreiging van de lokale voedselvoorziening en gedwongen landonteigening. Regionale eiwitteelt biedt een enorme kans voor de Nederlandse landbouw door het sluiten van kringlopen en het verminderen van milieuschade en sociaal onrechtvaardige omstandigheden. Om knelpunten en kennisvragen te identificeren die een (snelle) transitie naar het gebruik van meer regionaal eiwitrijk veevoer in de weg staan, richtte Milieudefensie in 2015 de Raad voor Regionaal Veevoer op. Dit rapport geeft de bevindingen weer van de Raad voor Regionaal Veevoer, inclusief haar aanbevelingen richting overheid, bedrijfsleven en maatschappelijke organisaties.

The GAES database (Version 01a) is a newly developed Global Agro-Environmental Stratification within the EU SIGMA (Stimulating Innovation for Global Monitoring of Agriculture) project. GAES will serve as a new agro-environmental stratification for better global monitoring of the agricultural production on the basis of Earth Observation data and crop growth models. It is anticipated that GAES will be exploited for a wider range of applications, some within SIGMA, towards data gap analysis that identifies agro-environmental strata with limited capacity and monitoring data on agricultural production. GAES was produced by applying segmentation techniques to newly available global agroenvironmental data with a high spatial resolution re-sampled to 1 km spatial resolution. The datasets were able to stratify the agricultural production zones according to the region’s agro-environmental characteristics, including climatic regimes, soil, terrain, elevation conditions, water availability and land cover proprieties. The GAES strata obtained by segmentation at four different spatial levels (with Level 4 as the most detailed) have been further characterised and described in terms of phenology (e.g. start and peak of the growing season), agricultural (water) management practices, field size, biotic constraints, national and sub-national crop production statistics, GDP, transport infrastructure conditions or market accessibility. The GAES database has four hierarchical layers, with 92 attributes. GAES Level 1 has 194 agro-environmental (AE) types (818 strata); GAES Level 2 has 300 AE types (1,688 strata); GAES Level 3 has 374 AE types (2,087 strata); GAES Level 4 has 516 AE types (3,208 strata). GAES typology is a combination of temperature, altitude, parent material and land cover characteristics. GAES Version 01 has become freely available.

Recent climate change is recognized as a main cause of shifts in geographical distributions of species. The impacts of climate change may be aggravated by habitat fragmentation, causing regional or large scale extinctions. However, we propose that climate change also may diminish the effects of fragmentation by enhancing flight behaviour and dispersal of ectothermic species like butterflies. We show that under weather conditions associated with anticipated climate change, behavioural components of dispersal of butterflies are enhanced, and colonization frequencies increase. In a field study, we recorded flight behaviour and mobility of four butterfly species: two habitat generalists (Coenonympha pamphilus; Maniola jurtina) and two specialists (Melitaea athalia; Plebejus argus), under different weather conditions. Flying bout duration generally increased with temperature and decreased with cloudiness. Proportion of time spent flying decreased with cloudiness. Net displacement generally increased with temperature. When butterflies fly longer, start flying more readily and fly over longer distances, we expect dispersal propensity to increase. Monitoring data showed that colonization frequencies moreover increased with temperature and radiation and decreased with cloudiness. Increased dispersal propensity at local scale might therefore lower the impact of habitat fragmentation on the distribution at a regional scale. Synergetic effects of climate change and habitat fragmentation on population dynamics and species distributions might therefore appear to be more complex than previously assumed.