Blue Heart of Europe – hydropower is destroying environment for hardly any energy
Rivers are the source of life and also the livelihoods of surrounding communities. Following an almost one-year standoff in nearby Fojnica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, residents of the Kruščica village decided in 2017 to defend the river of the same name with their bodies. The resistance started when machines rolled in to build two small […]
Draft BIMR Policy Paper to be adopted by BIMR Regional Platform in first half of 2020
A draft BIMR Policy Paper, as regional strategic plan for biodiversity information management and reporting, should be compiled, reviewed and adopted by the BIMR Regional Platform (BIMR RP) and further endorsed by the Biodiversity Task-Force (BD TF) in the first half of 2020, said Ana Štrbenac, GIZ consultant in charge of coordination of the BIMR […]
Biodiversity Task Force of South East Europe’s role amid changing context of nature conservation
Alongside many activities within the regional projects in the field of environment, biodiversity and climate change Germany’s development cooperation fosters the collaboration in a new format in the Western Balkan. Under the auspices of the Regional Cooperation Council’s (RCC) Working Group on Environment, the Biodiversity Task Force of South East Europe (BDTF SEE) was established […]
Special Nature Reserve Zasavica – hidden biodiversity gem
In times when up to 100,000 species become extinct each year due to human activity, it’s a real miracle to rediscover plants and animals believed to have disappeared from an area. One such miracle has happened in the vicinity of the Serbian city of Sremska Mitrovica: in the Zasavica river, conservationists have discovered the waterwheel […]
First Red List of threatened species published in North Macedonia
Almost half of amphibians and reptiles are threatened with extinction and 4 vascular plant species are critically endangered in North Macedonia, according to the first national Red List, published in Skopje and developed by national experts under the guidance of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Thirteen reptile species out of 32 occurring […]
Willingness to share biodiversity data know-how is rising
Written by Adi Habul, Environmental Fund of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina For the last three decades, we have been witnessing a very rapid development of data collection, management and analysis processes in the field of biodiversity, as well as their integration into the uniform information systems that can respond to the needs of a […]
Damage from small hydropower is much larger than gains, study finds
The Balkans and Turkey are examples of how quickly free-flowing rivers and river stretches “can be degraded by being turned into impoundments,” World Wide Fund for Nature warned after publishing a study it commissioned together with RiverWatch, Geota and EuroNatur. Environmentalists said hydropower puts “tremendous pressure on Europe’s biodiversity, and for specific projects a disregard […]
Biodiversity_Next Conference reveals next steps in biodiversity protection information systems
The city of Leiden in the Netherlands was the capital of biodiversity when it hosted a four-day conference titled Biodiversity_Next in the second half of October. For the first time at this scale, the event brought major international organisations, research scientists, and policy makers together to jointly identify socio-technical bottlenecks and horizon-scan opportunities around data-intensive […]
