Resource description:
The BioValue project seeks a systemic shift in spatial planning practices to address the root causes of biodiversity loss. Rather than merely mitigating harm, it harnesses a transition towards enhancing biodiversity as a core spatial planning outcome.
This resource brings together a set of 14 strategic recommendations and a detailed catalogue of 44 instruments (19 Spatial Planning & Management Instruments, 10 Environmental Assessment Instruments, and 15 Economic & Fiscal Instruments) designed to guide planners, policymakers, and practitioners in enhancing and protecting biodiversity through spatial planning. The recommendations offer targeted guidance across different moments of the spatial planning process – ahead and beyond, during and within the process – while the catalogue includes a wide range of spatial planning and monitoring, environmental assessment, and economic and financial instruments – each classified by function and aligned with specific spatial planning objectives and needs. Together, they aim to reshape internal planning priorities and practices and imply changes in broader governance structures and societal values and norms that can promote a holistic positive approach to biodiversity.
To provide an indication to users on context-appropriate instruments for local realities, the document also includes assessments of political acceptability and implementation feasibility for each instrument, conducted by the three BioValue’s Arenas for Transformation: in Mafra (Portugal), Trento (Italy), and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany).
The recommendations and instrument catalogue are grounded in a conceptual framework for transformative change inspired in Wittmer et al (2021), centred on five building blocks – vision, knowledge, dynamics, emancipation, and governance – and driven by three BioValue’s core ambitions for spatial planning: (i) safeguarding and enhancing biodiversity, (ii) reducing unsustainable consumption and production patterns, and (iii) addressing socio-economic inequalities. These ambitions help define what transformative change should mean in practice, acting as guiding principles when formulating objectives, establishing planning policies and with planning implementation, desirably using a combination of the three types of instruments in the catalogue.
Together, the BioValue recommendations and catalogue of instruments provide an actionable and adaptable configuration for embedding biodiversity at the core of spatial planning. By selecting the recommendations and instruments that are appropriate to each case, policymakers, planners and other practitioners will be promoting changes in mind-sets, values and norms, either incrementally or disruptively, to advance transformative change, halting biodiversity loss, and supporting more sustainable, resilient, and nature-positive development in line with national and EU biodiversity goals.
Author/Contact:
Partidário, M.R., Geneletti, D., Falco, E., Laporta, L., Morais de Sá, A., Loupa-Ramos, I., Batista e Silva, J., Rojas, L., David, N., Kørnøv, L., Ravn Boess, E., Vammen, S., Eliasen, S., Wittmer, H., Locher-Krause, K.E., Zhu, Y., Monteiro, M.B., Soares, A., Lopes dos Santos, G., Martins, R., Santos, S., Marques, C., Raimundo, F., Podetti, F., Marchese, F.M., Hauck, J., Schmidt, J. (2025). Recommendations for policy mixes combining instruments from SP&MI, EAI and E&FI across governance levels drawing on the respective transformative potential. Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon