Recent reports on Europe's biological resources prove that the loss of biodiversity has not yet been halted despite efforts in this field. One reason for this is that the instruments used to address conservation issues do not always serve their purpose. The presentation given by Rainer Müssner at the International Association of Landscape Ecologists meeting in Northampton (IALE-UK) therefore dealt with procedural aspects of how to improve landscape planning (LP) and the codes of good farming practice (GFP).

LP and GFP represent two of the key integrative instruments to promote sustainable landscape use across EU Member States. In the development of integrative instruments, more attention should be paid to how to conserve biodiversity rather than just what to conserve. It was suggested that instruments could be improved by means of an expert panel setting methodological quality standards. The implications of this were then discussed.

The presentation is available for download [pdf, 760 KB, English].