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 Spain
Partners:
FA
Fundación Artemisan (FA), a private non-profit organisation aiming to conserve wildlife for the benefit of biodiversity and our countryside, is working closely with GCT and also leading pilot study in Spain. We’ve created a Spanish Farmer Cluster - in an Orchard agroecosystem, a classic landscape dominated by olive groves, as the cultivation of olive trees is one of the most important within the Mediterranean Basin. At the moment, several farmers are interested to implement agri-environmental measures and the land also managed for wild game and other species. FA aims to make the most of the current farmers’ interest on the benefits of habitat management for game, protected species and yields. Our challenge is to develop successfully habitat improvements adapted to the different scenarios, which are also suffering from climate change and specifically from extended drought periods and soil erosion. There is also the risk of land abandonment at the cluster, one of the main problems for farming in Spain. FA is confident that other NGOs and the farmers’ unions will collaborate as third parties, improving the social aspects of the clusters. Their experience in previous project will ensure this.
The Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) is leading on Citizen science data interoperability. We’r also participating in networking with other citizen science relevant initiatives. We’re developing a platform to capture, process and database data relating to the professional biodiversity monitoring based on the current Nimmbus system.