More and more people outside and inside academic specialisms are becoming aware of the pressing need to halt dramatic losses in biodiversity worldwide.
The EU H2020 project, FRAMEwork is mounting an ambitious response to these critical problems.
The project will create a Biodiversity Sensitive Farming System that will encourage and enable farmers to conserve biodiversity, promote a rebalancing of agriculture in a way
that capitalises on the value of native biodiversity, and
improve the capacity of farming to deliver food and
nutritional security in the face of climate change, disease pandemics and other pressures on the system.
In Austria
Partners:
BOKU | HBLFA | IIASA
The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) is guiding an Advanced Farmer Cluster and overseeing biodiversity management activities including evaluation, implementation and monitoring to contribute to a Pilot Study and help establish a permanent, self-sustaining and growing, network of Farmer Clusters across Europe.
The Agricultural Research and Education Centre at Raumberg-Gumpenstein (HBLFA) is also running 12 Pilot Studies dealing with organically managed grassland with a focus on ecological staged grassland management for Biodiversity Sensitive Farming. 10 organic pilot farms with permanent grassland are part of the Framework with farmer and volunteer training activities. on how to implement and work within ecological staged grassland management will be organised.
These Pilot Studies give examples of best-practice and inspire farmers, some are also useful for: 1) landscape studies deepening ecological understanding on the development of methods and tools for the management, monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity, 2) the design of incentives to encourage biodiversity management by Farmer Clusters and 3) sharing of information and data for systems analysis.
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is leading on the development of the FRAMEwork Information Hub - an online knowledge and action platform. As well as activity on farm-based monitoring including collaborative citizen monitoring campaigns. These are contributing to citizen science data interoperability and standardisation across Europe.