The Green Belt as a European Ecological Network strengths and gaps

Kun Zhang
REVIEW AND GAPS: EUROPEAN ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS IN THE PAST 40 YEARS
was also the beginning for several major organizations, like EURPARC, IUCN (the world
conservation Union), WWF and many others.
The initial concept for a European ecological network was EECONET. As a
conservation model it was first published by Bennett in the year of 1991. At this period,
project cooperation and protecting protocols involved more countries to participate in the
construction of ecological networks. Ecological networks as a concept and strategy for
conservation have been clarified, and began to be spread more widely. Certain conservation
models have been proposed, pilot projects have been conducted and the focus increasingly
was on the preservation of semi-natural landscapes [3]. However, the theory and practice of
ecological network were still in their exploratory period.
In 1992, the European Union issued the Directive which focuses on the conservation of
natural habitats and wild fauna and flora (92/43/EEC), also known as the ‘Habitats Directive’
or the ‘Fauna-Flora-Habitats (FFH) Directive’. It was adopted as an implementation
instrument of the 1979 Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and
Natural Habitats. Together with the Birds Directive (79/409/EEC), it constitutes the main
legal framework for nature conservation in the European Union. Its aim is to contribute to the
conservation of natural habitats and wild fauna and flora in the European territory (European
Commission 2003).
In 1995, at the conference of European Environment Ministers, in Bulgaria, 54
European countries endorsed the initiative to establish a ‘Pan-European Ecological Network’
within the next twenty years.
3.3 The third period: further implementation and extension (around 2000-present)
Increasing urbanization, the deterioration of urban living environment and the
emphasizing of spatial structures and functions in landscape ecology lead to the extension of
the ecological network strategy. Primarily, during this period, ecological networks are not
only concerned with biological or ecological protection. The idea expanded to include webs
of linkages for several different aims e.g. ecological, social, political, cultural aims [1].
Additionally ecological networks were now widely integrated into spatial planning. They
were also included into sustainable urban development [4].
Simultaneously, based on the Natura 2000 from the previous decade, European
countries began to gradually implement the idea at national and local scales. Especially, 34
transboundary cooperation projects were identified within establishing ecological networks
across Germany’s external borders in the period 2003-2005 [7].
The three most important developments in this period pertain to the establishment of
the Pan-European Ecological Network, the European Green Belt and the ecological network
within the realm of the Alpine Convention.
The Pan European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBDLS) was
developed, under the auspices of the Council of Europe, in order to achieve effective
implementations of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) at European level. A
crucial component of the PEBLDS is the development of the Pan European Ecological
Network (PEEN), which would be as a guiding vision for coherence in biodiversity
conservation. One of the major goals of PEEN is to develop an indicative map of the Pan-
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