I Anno

Biodiversity Governance in Europe: Law, Policy, and Coordinated Conservation

Course description

This Master-level course analyses biodiversity loss as a governance problem rather than merely an environmental one. Using the European Union as its main laboratory and drawing on comparative and global perspectives, it explores how ecological complexity, legal obligations, and political conflict intersect in the conservation of species, habitats, and landscapes.

The course is built around a single guiding idea: achieving meaningful biodiversity conservation requires more than ambitious legal norms. It depends on Coordinated Conservation Governance (CCG) – the institutional processes and relationships through which public authorities, across levels and sectors, can act coherently in the face of fragmentation, uncertainty, and conflicting objectives.

We begin by unpacking biodiversity as a concept and condition: its scientific emergence, contested metrics, and the temporal features of biodiversity decline (irreversibility, thresholds, invisibility). We then examine the economic grammar of ecosystem services, and the architecture of the global biodiversity regime (CBD, Aichi Targets, Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework), including rights-based and litigation strategies.

The second part introduces the governance toolkit: coordination, coherence, and Environmental Policy Integration (EPI), culminating in CCG as an analytical lens. The third part turns to the European Union as a biodiversity conservation authority: its constitutional foundations, the Birds and Habitats Directives, the Natura 2000 network, the Nature Restoration Law, financial instruments, and cross-cutting principles such as “Do No Significant Harm”.

Throughout, we alternate between theory and concrete practice: site designation and management, appropriate assessment, national parks, and species and biotope-based conservation. A set of detailed case studies – notably PATOM and the Marsican brown bear, and the Maiella and Lake District National Parks – enable students to apply the CCG framework to real governance problems.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Explain and critically assess the main concepts and metrics used in biodiversity science and policy.
• Analyse the strengths and limits of global and EU biodiversity regimes.
• Understand and evaluate the notions of coordination, coherence, EPI, and CCG in concrete institutional settings.
• Interpret how law, administrative practice, and ecological knowledge interact in instruments such as Natura 2000, appropriate assessment, and restoration law.
• Apply the CCG framework to case studies and to students’ own professional or research contexts.

2. Lecture PLAN

Core readings refer to sections of an unpublished book (which I will provide in successive batches on this platform) titled Institutions and Policy of Biodiversity in Europe, plus optional extra readings to be indicated in single lessons.
At the end of each of the six blocks, we will pause and take a test to progress to the next one. The final evaluation will be based on each test result and a case study discussion at the end of the course.

Block I – Prelude and Foundations (Lectures 1–4)

Lecture 1 – Prelude: A Professor in the Field & Course Orientation

• Focus:
• Present the course aims, structure, and assessment (if applicable).
• Use the Ortolan bunting story to introduce biodiversity as something lived, sensed, and politically charged.
• Show how birds function as indicators and how a local vignette opens up to EU conservation law and agricultural subsidies.
• Core reading: Prelude: A Professor in the Field; Introduction (first half).

Lecture 2 – Biodiversity as Concept and Condition I: Emergence and Ambiguity

• Focus:
• Historical emergence of “biodiversity” in the 1980s as a mobilising and normative concept.
• The multiplicity of definitions and metrics; biodiversity as “extremely confusing” yet powerful.
• The shift in temporal consciousness: from extinction as exceptional to human-driven mass extinction.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, §§ 1.1 and 1.1.1.

Lecture 3 – Biodiversity as Concept and Condition II: Units, Levels, and Pluralism

• Focus:
• Genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity – and their non-linear relations.
• Critique of species-centrism, the “species problem”, and species as pragmatic constructs.
• Microbial communities, intra-individual genetic diversity, functional and process-oriented units, phenotypic plasticity, evolutionarily significant units (e.g. Apennine brown bear).
• Core reading: Ch. 1, remainder of § 1.1.1.

Lecture 4 – Making Biodiversity Visible: Metrics, Indicators, and Epistemic Mediation

• Focus:
• How biodiversity “enters governance” through measurement and indicators.
• Species richness, evenness, Shannon & Simpson indices; functional and phylogenetic diversity; scale issues (SAR, SAD).
• Baselines, Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), data gaps and “presbyopic” monitoring; knowledge as constitutive of the object governed.
• The politics of indicators, protected-area coverage vs ecological quality.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.1.2.

Block II – Decline, Values, and the Global Regime (Lectures 5–8)

Lecture 5 – Biodiversity Decline: Irreversibility, Thresholds, and Invisibility

• Focus:
• The “Evil Quartet” + pollution and climate change.
• Irreversibility and the non-compressibility of evolutionary time.
• Threshold dynamics, tipping points, and the difficulty of ex ante identification.
• Temporal lags, shifting baseline syndrome, and how decline becomes normalised.
• Why these features pose specific challenges to legal and political institutions.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.1.3.

Lecture 6 – The Governance Challenge: Landscapes, Values, and Visibility

• Focus:
• Biodiversity as contested social object: pastoral vs industrial vs urban vs “wild” landscapes.
• Historical landscapes and memory (agro-pastoral mosaics, transhumance, wood-pasture).
• Visibility bias, charismatic species, Monbiot’s “Cauldron Principle”; charismatic megafauna vs unseen invertebrates and soil microbiota.
• Why institutional systems fail even when knowledge and legal obligations exist.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.1.4.

Lecture 7 – Ecosystem Services, Valuation, and the Economic Grammar I

• Focus:
• Emergence of the ecosystem services (ES) framework: MEA typology (provisioning, regulating, cultural, supporting).
• ES as a translation device between ecology and policy/economics.
• Uptake in EU policy (MAES, Biodiversity Strategy, natural capital accounting).
• Examples: PES schemes, natural capital accounts, use of ES in environmental impact and spatial planning.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.2 (first half).

Lecture 8 – Ecosystem Services, Valuation, and the Economic Grammar II

• Focus:
• Critiques: instrumentalisation of nature, commodification, offsetting and the “balance-sheet” metaphor.
• Distributional issues and epistemic injustice (Indigenous and local knowledge, relational values).
• ES in courts and “juridical ecology”: how courts use ES in reasoning; risks of narrowing the interpretive horizon.
• ES as potential interpretive frame that reveals frictions, not just a pricing tool.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.2 (second half).

Block III – Global Regime, Rights, and CCG (Lectures 9–12)

Lecture 9 – The Architecture of Global Biodiversity Governance I: CBD and Aichi

• Focus:
• CBD as “constitutional” foundation of biodiversity law: three objectives and institutional architecture (COP, SBSTTA, SBI).
• The 2010 target and then the Aichi Targets: mainstreaming, NBSAPs, target-based governance.
• The failure of Aichi: soft law, lack of monitoring & compliance, uneven mainstreaming.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.3 up to and including Aichi.

Lecture 10 – Global Biodiversity Governance II: Kunming–Montreal GBF and the EU’s Role

• Focus:
• Kunming–Montreal GBF: theory of change, 2050 goals and 2030 targets, 30x30, ratcheting mechanism.
• Legal nature debate: soft vs (indirectly) binding; interaction with CBD.
• Finance, harmful subsidies, capacity-building, rights and equity (IPLCs, rights of nature).
• The EU as leader and laggard: normative ambition vs internal implementation gaps; alignment with EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.3 (GBF, EU in global regime).

Lecture 11 – Biodiversity, Human Rights, and the Politics of Environmental Claims

• Focus:
• The “rights turn” in environmental law: right to a healthy environment, rights of nature, intergenerational justice.
• Systemic biodiversity litigation: opportunities and limitations; focus on projects vs structural drivers.
• Judicialisation, anthropocentrism, and the republican conception of rights as political claims and constraints on arbitrary power.
• When rights help – and when they displace attention from governance architecture.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.4.

Lecture 12 – Coordinated Conservation Governance (CCG): Conceptualisation and Role

• Focus:
• From EPI’s normative expectation to CCG’s operational lens.
• CCG as condition of operational coherence across scales, sectors, and actors.
• Relationship between CCG and knowledge circulation, shared decision-making, and institutional fitness for ecological complexity.
• How CCG structures the remainder of the book and the course.
• Core reading: Ch. 1, § 1.5.

Block IV – Coordination, EPI and Decisional Conditions (Lectures 13–15)

Lecture 13 – From Ecological Interdependence to Decisional Fragmentation

• Focus:
• Diagnosis of fragmentation: differentiated competences, sectoral silos, multi-level governance.
• Misfit between ecological scales and decision-making frames; issues of time (short cycles vs long ecological processes).
• Why political will is an insufficient explanation: diffusion of responsibility and frame closure.
• Core reading: Ch. 2, § 2.1.

Lecture 14 – Coordination, Coherence, Integration: Conceptual Responses to Fragmentation

• Focus:
• Coordination: procedural alignment and its limits; stabilising interaction without changing orientation.
• Coherence: compatibility among policy goals, normative ambiguity, descriptive vs prescriptive uses.
• Environmental Policy Integration (EPI): promise to “mainstream” environment; EU’s constitutionalisation of EPI.
• The empirical record: patchy and reversible integration; integration as variable, not given.
• Core reading: Ch. 2, §§ 2.2–2.4.

Lecture 15 – Decisional Blind Spots, Actors, and Policy Design for Biodiversity Governance

• Focus:
• The decisional blind spot of EPI: temporal displacement, scalar misfit, distribution of authority across arenas.
• Public decision as interaction among actors with unequal resources and different time horizons.
• Policy design under uncertainty: aligning goals, instruments, and capacities; anticipating and committing across electoral cycles.
• How these decisional conditions ground the need for CCG.
• Core reading: Ch. 2, §§ 2.5–2.6.

Block V – The EU as Biodiversity Authority (Lectures 16–20)

Lecture 16 – The EU’s Constitutional Foundations for Biodiversity Governance

• Focus:
• Shared competence in environment (Art. 192 TFEU), evolution from internal market rationale to autonomous environmental competence.
• Article 191 TFEU: objectives and principles (precaution, prevention, rectification at source, polluter pays).
• Article 11 TFEU and the integration principle; minimum harmonisation and subsidiarity.
• Biodiversity’s structural position in the Treaties: dispersed but functionally constitutionalised.
• Core reading: Ch. 3, §§ 3.0–3.2.1.

Lecture 17 – EU Institutions, Administrative Diversity, and Emergent Constitutionalism

• Focus:
• Roles of Commission, Parliament, Council, Member State administrations, and the Court of Justice.
• Sincere cooperation, multilevel implementation, and composite administration.
• Emergent constitutionalism of biodiversity: how case law, guidance and practice “constitutionalise” biodiversity without explicit Treaty article.
• Opportunities and constraints for CCG in this architecture.
• Core reading: Ch. 3, §§ 3.2.2–3.5.

Lecture 18 – EU Nature Law as a Science-Based Endeavour

• Focus:
• How science enters EU nature law: site designation, favourable conservation status, appropriate assessment.
• Precautionary principle as legal standard (Waddenzee, Sweetman).
• Variation in national courts’ engagement with science: expert judges vs generalist courts; use of expert evidence; intensity of review.
• Co-production of scientific and legal authority; legitimacy issues.
• Core reading: Ch. 4, § 4.1.

Lecture 19 – Site Designation and Protected Areas: Natura 2000 and National Parks

• Focus:
• Legal criteria and case law on SPA/SAC designation (ornithological criteria, “most suitable territories”, role of IBAs).
• Member States’ “margin of discretion” and its narrowing by CJEU.
• Overlap and interaction between Natura 2000 and national/protected areas; political economy of designation.
• National parks as multi-objective governance arenas: conservation, recreation, development.
• Core reading: Ch. 4, §§ 4.2–4.3.

Lecture 20 – Natura 2000 as a Planning-Centred Governance Regime & Appropriate Assessment

• Focus:
• From designation to management plans: role, legal force, and national variation.
• Natura 2000 and spatial planning; integration versus proceduralisation (e.g. Netherlands).
• Appropriate assessment under Article 6(3): screening vs full AA, separation of mitigation/compensation, burden of proof, role of courts.
• Interaction of Article 6(2) and 6(3) and implications for ongoing activities (e.g. nitrogen litigation).
• Core reading: Ch. 4, §§ 4.4–4.5.

Block VI – Restoration, Instruments, Case Studies & Synthesis (Lectures 21–24)

Lecture 21 – The Nature Restoration Law, Restoration Targets, and Financial Instruments

• Focus:
• Nature Restoration Law (NRL): rationale, binding targets, national restoration plans, monitoring and non-deterioration.
• Relationship with Birds/Habitats Directives and Natura 2000; extension from protection to restoration.
• Financial instruments for biodiversity (LIFE, CAP, other EU funds) and the “Do No Significant Harm” principle.
• Coordination problems: restoration vs agriculture, energy, and infrastructure.
• Core reading: Ch. 4, §§ 4.6; Ch. 3, §§ 3.3–3.4 & 3.8–3.9 (as available in full draft).

Lecture 22 – Species Action Plans and the Move from Species to Biotopes

• Focus:
• Species Action Plans (SAPs): planning cycle, legal embedding, and connection to EU and global targets.
• Examples from EU and beyond (e.g. Brazilian PANs) and their governance lessons.
• Biotope-based conservation and functional units: moving from species ambition to habitat and landscape governance.
• Monitoring and evaluation challenges for SAPs under constrained resources.
• Core reading: Ch. 4, § 4.7 (and 5.2).

Lecture 23 – CCG in Practice I: PATOM and Coordinating under Fragmentation

• Focus:
• PATOM (Piano d’Azione per la Tutela dell’Orso Marsicano) as archetypal CCG case.
• Innovative aspects: multi-actor, multi-level coordination; articulation of roles and responsibilities.
• Why PATOM is often seen as a “missed opportunity”: institutional fragility, temporal misalignment, lack of sustained collaboration.
• Deriving general features of CCG from this case.
• Core reading: Ch. 5, § 5.1 (and related discussion of PATOM in Intro and Ch. 1).

Lecture 24 – CCG in Practice II: Maiella, Lake District & Course Synthesis

• Focus:
• Comparative case studies: Maiella National Park (Italy) and Lake District National Park (England).
• Overlapping planning regimes, agro-silvo-pastoral governance, species vs landscape focus.
• How CCG helps to read fragmentation, partial coordination, and implementation gaps in these landscapes.
• Final synthesis: what we have learned about biodiversity governance, EU as a laboratory, and realistic expectations for institutions.
• Core reading: Ch. 5, §§ 5.2–5.3.2 and Ch. 6–7 (when available) for final reflective arguments.