Soliciting the stakeholders: an original approach
In order to develop a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for biodiversity-friendly transport infrastructure, the expectations and proposals of stakeholders, both individual and institutional, were sought for and gathered in this report. The aim was to take into account how the biodiversity-transport infrastructure interface was addressed in the various representative bodies and to detect original ideas for improvement, including weak signals.
Expectations and proposals were identified by means of:
- an online consultation, as part of the BISON questionnaire
- an analysis of documents from representative bodies at national, European, international levels active in the fields of transport, environmental protection, and research.
Who were the input providers?
Input to the online consultation was provided by a panel of respondents (N = 47) from 14 countries with major contributions from Slovakia and France, and from universities and research institutions (30%), but very few NGOs (4%). On the other hand, NGOs and associations (43%) were the major source of documents of interest in the document survey (N = 80).
Stakeholders’ expectations and proposals
The following expectations (E) and proposals (P) were consistently highlighted in the online consultation:
- A-Policy & strategy (≈26%)
- B-Planning & environmental impact assessment (≈26%)
- C-Implementation & management (≈34% )
- D-Education, awareness, consultation & communication (≈14%
On the other hand, the analysis of institutional documents (see Figure 2) does not show the same consistency between expectations (E) and proposals (P)
- A-Policy & strategy = 31% of E vs. 9% of P
- C-Implementation & management = 41% of E vs. P = 24% of P
While
- B-Planning & environmental impact assessment is consistent (≈37%)
- D-Education, awareness, consultation & communication, too (≈ 11%)
The types of infrastructure involved
Expectations and proposals provided through the online consultation mostly concern all to almost all types of infrastructure: roads, railways, waterways, power lines, pipelines, airports, ports.
Not all inputs through the online consultation directly express research needs, but they all reflect general aspirations and practical suggestions that can help the BISON project to identify trends that are developing today and to build plausible deployment scenarios.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 