Development of Guidelines for Environmental Management in Nature Conservation

Nowadays, spatial planning, specifically landscape planning, is not conducted in a comprehensive manner, and is lacking particularly in the areas for which it would be most meaningful and desirable. A well-known example of this is tourism communities. Only approximately one-third of municipalities - which mostly also have important regional areas for nature and landscape conservation- generate landscape plans. Neither appeals nor longstanding advocacy of the conservation side did have a significant change in this matter. Thus the question arises as to whether environmental management systems could help municipalities to develop nature conservation objectives on a voluntary basis. A voluntary and market-based environmental management system could be further developed as a means  to persuade communities for nature conservation objectives. Approaches of Local Agenda 21, whose positive efforts often dissipate due to low developed structures, can possibly be captured with the help of an environmental management system as well.

The OECOS team carried out a research project on this issue. A conservation concept was developed for a municipal environmental management system for the use of the Association of German Nature Parks (Verein Deutscher Naturparke). The project was financed by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.