Biodiversity Action Plan at farm level

Biodiversity Action Plan

Description

A Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) is a strategic framework and road map for improving biodiversity on the farm. A BAP supports certified farms and advisors to gain an overview of existing approaches and to enable an assessment of these approaches with regard to the local situation and local fauna and flora. The BAP is also a good basis for advising managers and consultants on how to improve the quality and effectiveness of biodiversity measures. The findings help to define relevant measures to promote biodiversity. By defining a baseline, the BAP provides also a good basis for managers and consultants to give advice on how to improve the quality and effectiveness of biodiversity measures.

Scope

The Biodiversity Action Plan should focus on the two main “fields of activity” for the protection of biodiversity:

The BAP should include goals and measure for both fields of activity.

Procedure

A Biodiversity Action Plan includes four steps:

  1. 1. Baseline Assessment
    2. Setting Goals
    3. Selection and implementation of measures; including
        a proposed timeline for implementation
    4. Monitoring

The BAP should be reviewed and updated every three years.

Source: Biodiversity Fact Sheet Layout: © Didem Senturk

Remarks

Consecutive improvement:
It is not expected that farmers implement the selected measures all at once. Farmers can start with a couple of activities and then show a continuous improvement for the next years.

The farm or cooperative should name a responsible person to lead the operations. The person in charge needs some practical and theoretical knowledge about agriculture and biodiversity and some internal standing for the realization in the BAP.

Publications

The paper "Biodiversity and Agricultural Production Practices Toolkit" by L. Buck takes the user through a process of inquiry concerning the production and resource management practices to ensure that a companys sourcing strategy promotes biodiversity.

In the paper "Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains (2017)" D. Moran and K. Kanemoto developed a new approach to link a set of biodiversity footprint accounts to the hotspots of threatened species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The report "Benefits of landscape features for arable crop production (2016)" by EIP-AGRI Agriculture & Innovations shows how landscape features (LFs) contribute to the profitability of arable crop production.

The Federal Department of Economic Affairs of Switzerland published 2012 a Guidebook on "Biodiversity Indicators for European Farming Systems".

Websites

The OECD database of Agri-Environmental indicators provides the latest set of agri-environmental indicators (AEIs) across 35 OECD countries and UE countries from 1990 to 2015.