Guidance on Integrating Climate Change and Biodiversity into ...

It may take many years before they become fully operational, and in that time, biodiversity in theaffected areas may have changed, the area may be subject to different climate impacts, such asstorm events, increased flood risk, etc. For such PPs, environmental outlooks or scenario studies thatanalyse the trends and their likely future directions may provide a useful reference.To be able to understand how the proposed PP could impact on the future environment and how itsimplementation might be impacted by the changing environmental context, it is critical tounderstand the likely evolution of the baseline without the proposed PP in light of expected changesin the climate, either positive or negative . You should also consider the result of implementing otherPPs. Spatially explicit data and assessments, potentially using the Geographic Information System(GIS), are likely to be important in making this analysis, and to understand the distributional effects.The type and geographical scale of a particular PP is likely to determine what is appropriate for aparticular SEA. Several European sources of data, including data repositories and online digitaldatasets, such as the Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE) or the Climate change DataCentre might be useful for analysing the evolving baseline trends. Annex 2includes acomprehensive overview and links to sources of information on biodiversity and climate change.It is essential to consider the following aspects when looking at the evolving baseline:• Trends in key issues over time: e.g. water quality and availability during droughts, ecosystemdeterioration, vulnerability of infrastructure to extreme climatic events, etc. Are these trendscontinuing, changing, or levelling out? Are there environmental outlooks or scenario studiesavailable that have assessed the likely future direction of these trends? If data are unavailablefor certain indicators, are proxy indicators available, e.g. if air quality monitoring data is notreadily available for an urban area, are there data relating to trends in traffic flow/volumes overtime?• Drivers of change: e.g. major drivers such as demographic trends and the economic affluence ofthe society, the legal and policy framework, market forces and economic incentives, majorprojects that affect the issue, institutional powers and capacities to regulate and manage theissue. The drivers can be broken down into:o Direct drivers: e.g. changes in land use and land cover; fragmentation and isolation;extraction, harvest or removal of species; external inputs such as emissions, effluents,chemicals; disturbance; introduction of invasive, alien or genetically modified species;restoration.o Indirect drivers: e.g. demographic, socio-political, economic, cultural, technologicalprocesses or interventions.• Thresholds/limits: e.g. have thresholds already been breached (such as air quality thresholds inurban areas, etc.), or are the limits expected to be reached? Have targets been set that need tobe met, such as national or regional energy or emissions targets related to the ‘20-20-20’ targetsin the EU’s Climate and Energy Package? Are there tipping points to be avoided in order toprevent serious deterioration or breakdown of relevant ecological and social systems? 2727 See examples of environmental limits relevant to climate change and biodiversity at http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/thresholds_database.40 <strong>Guidance</strong> on integrating climate change and biodiversity into SEA