1st CoP Event & Co-Design Workshop

1st CoP Event & Co-design/Co-creation Workshop

Making Marine and Coastal Biodiversity Observations Policy Relevant

Thursday, 23 May 2024 (online)

About the event

This was the first mobilisation of MARCO-BOLO’s Community of Practice (CoP), representing both generators and users of marine biodiversity data, products, and services in the EU and beyond. The event successfully brought together over 70 experts and stakeholders in marine, freshwater and coastal biodiversity data.

The purpose of this 1st CoP Event was to:

Begin the Co-Design process by introducing the MARCO-BOLO project on monitoring biodiversity observations.
Provide a platform for policymakers to present their needs, requirements, and perspectives.
Encourage the broader biodiversity community to test, use, and adopt the MARCO-BOLO Data Management Plan (DMP), project outputs, Essential Ocean Variables (EOV), and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) for reporting to MSFD and other EU and international legal frameworks.

The overall goal was to gain buy-in and demonstrate how the MARCO-BOLO project, its Data Management Plan (DMP), and other outputs can contribute to major EU environmental policies.

Seagrass coverage and composition (EOV and MSFD descriptor) were presented as a tangible use case to showcase the complete data pipeline from observations to reporting and its application in biodiversity policies.

This first event targeted policymakers at national, regional, and EU levels, including the European Commission, Regional Sea Conventions, national representatives responsible for reporting to marine-related directives, the GOOS BioEco (Global Ocean Observing System Biology and Ecosystems) Panel, as well as the wider biodiversity monitoring, observation, and scientific community.

Expected outcomes

Identify potential topics for discussion at future MARCO-BOLO co-design workshops/events.

Demonstrate both the challenges and benefits of improving interoperability in biodiversity data flows.

Start the process of co-designing MARCO-BOLO biodiversity products, including improving data flows for EU (e.g., MSFD) and global policies.

Identify potential knowledge transfer outputs that would be helpful for the wider biodiversity community.

Identify key policy needs and requirements and suitability of MARCO-BOLO to assist Member States and Regional Sea Conventions to better report their biodiversity data, helping with data and metadata standards.

Program and presentations

Thursday 23 May 2024

Time

Item

Speaker

09:30 – 09:45

Welcome, agenda, housekeeping, and icebreaker

Lisa Benedetti, UNESCO
Vicente Fernandez, SeaScape

09:45 – 09:50

Overview of the MARCO-BOLO project

Giulia Vecchi, EMBRC

09:50 – 10:00

Stakeholder profiling survey: results, data landscape, challenges from a social sciences perspective

Arne Langlet, UNIVIE

Session 1: Setting the scene – biodiversity data requirements for policies at European, regional and national levels

Moderator: Vicente Fernandez, Seascape Belgium

10:00 – 10:10

Views from DG ENV

– DG ENV perspectives on MSFD status and what is needed from biodiversity data and products, views on other legislation, WFD, Birds and Habitats Directive and coming Nature Restoration Law

Alice Belin, DG ENV

10:10 – 10:20

Views from DG MARE

– DG MARE perspectives on biodiversity monitoring and data including views on future ocean observations initiative and how to link with Biology and ecosystem services

Zoi Konstantinou, DG MARE

10:20 – 10:30

Views from DG RTD

– DG RTD perspective on how EU research projects on biodiversity monitoring and data can help improve biodiversity monitoring data flows to EU policies

Ivan Conesa Alcolea, DG RTD

10:30 – 10:40

Views from the Joint Research Center (JRC-ISPRA)

– Biodiversity monitoring and dataflow harmonisation at national, regional and European levels

Elisa Alonso Aller, JRC-ISPRA

10:40 – 10:50

Views from Regional Sea Conventions

– Regional Sea Convention (RSC) focused structures (OSPAR strategy/underlying programmes) that guide RSC work, for context, and how alignment/ consideration can allow data reuse for MSFD or other obligations

Chris Moulton, OSPAR

10:50 – 11:00

Q&A

Session 2: The use case of Seagrass observations and reporting to policy frameworks

Seagrass will be used as an example to demonstrate the full data pipeline, its use as an EOV/EBV and MSFD descriptor and importance for other EU policies (Habitats Directive, etc). Further, how data and data flows for seagrass coverage are currently being used to comply with EU policies.

Moderator: Vicente Fernandez, SeaScape

11:00 – 11:10

Seagrass cover and composition Essential Ocean Variable (EOV)

– What are EOVs, using seagrass is a case demonstrator

– EOVs vs EBV process – what they are, importance for monitoring in EU and beyond, etc.

– Global perspective and importance of EOVs/EBVs for harmonizing global marine biodiversity data

Lina Mtwana Nordlund, GOOS BioEco Panel member & EU Horizon BioEcoOcean Project Coordinator

11:10 – 11:20

Regional/National perspectives

– Regional Sea Convention perspective reporting for seagrass (or other indicator) to MSFD / data harmonization for reporting / problems and solutions / etc.

Joni Kaitaranta, HELCOM

11:20 – 11:30

Q&A

11:30 – 11:40

CoffeeBreak

Session 3: Starting the Co-Design/Co-Creation process so MARCO-BOLO improves data flows and management

How the work carried out in MARCO-BOLO (Data Management Plan and other products) can help increase the biodiversity data available for environmental regulations from national, regional to European levels and how to pull more existing data into data pipelines to better assess ecosystem status.

Moderators: Dan Lear, MBA & Ward Appeltans, UNESCO