GEM-CON-BIO identifies as its starting position that biodiversity is the basis for the successful provision of ecosystem services and therefore a key component of sustainable development. European citizens such as those in rural communities that are most in need of sustainable development support are also those that are most reliant on biodiversity for their livelihoods. The biodiversity that supports our communities is affected by all levels of governance and all the groups of actors involved. First and foremost the biodiversity that makes up the ecosystems that provide us with the services that maintain societies does not recognise administrative or political borders. The impacts made in one region are felt in others. River basins provide a good example of this as they often span several regions or countries; for example the Drava-Mura river basin is bordered by 5 countries. Thus we have to consider the governance issues for sustainable development and conservation from the local up to the European level including each of the groups of actors (public, private and policy).

GEM-CON-BIO aims to identify what constitutes "good governance" in the context of biodiversity conservation. To do this, it aims to answer the following crucial questions:

• What types of governance are related to ecosystem management?
• What principles can help us understand and evaluate them in terms of conservation effectiveness and sustainable development (environmental, social and economic sustainability)?
• What are the similarities and differences between governance modes and processes?
• Which factors & constraints generate over-performers and under-performers?
• How can policy changes foster sustainability?

In order to answer the above, a range of governance types are being reviewed and examined through 29 thematic and case studies, with particular emphasis on innovative and market-based approaches to govern the use of ecosystems and individual species. Lessons are drawn from community and private sector experiences, from region-specific practices and conditions and from efforts to link ecosystems in order to achieve a broad management and governance level (regional, national and global). Co-management approaches, currently flourishing all over the world, are an important focus of discussion.

The case studies relate governance types to critical management characteristics and assess the results for conservation and for communities different cases. Such characteristics include:

• Governance characteristics
• Size of managed lands (small, large, global)
• Management characteristics
• Characteristics at the species level
• Economic characteristics
• Social characteristics
• Conservation result (positive, neutral, negative, not decided)

GEM-ON-BIO is primarily concerned with ecosystem management with a view to sustainable use, as this is practiced by local communities or private owners, or through collaborative management with the government. There are a number of reasons that direct this focus. There already exists a significant body of information concerning the mechanisms available to protected areas where no use is allowed, but GEM-CON-BIO believes that an effective effort to preserve biodiversity has to explicitly address the causes or mechanisms that threaten it and the economic instruments that could be harnessed to support it; any effort that ignores principal forces such as the market will not be efficient or effective.

Based on the answers to the above questions, an analytical framework will be derived to help us understand the critical characteristics that exist in all the studied cases. This framework will be used to assess governance modes in terms of feasibility and potential conservation success, and will help to identify the critical elements and threshold factors that will need to be present in governance structures in order to be successful. It will also identify the constraints that will deprive a structure from being economically, financially or socially successful, while attaining conservation goals, and highlight the opportunities for the local communities to become involved in the management of their environment.

Case studies

Case studies provide the tool to identify which governance modes foster conservation of biodiversity and sustainable development and under which conditions. While these case studies are the project's backbone, the consortium also draws from the governance experience of other areas of sustainable development policies.

The selected case studies differ in terms of governance types and in their success in terms of sustainability objectives. In order to adequately address the governance issues at different levels, case studies are partly intensive and local, and partly extensive and pan-European. Case studies from the US are also analysed in order to provide information on instruments and governance modes for which the European experience is limited, but there is a strong tendency in Europe to experiment with them at the moment.

For the case studies the researchers identified areas that have a range of biodiversity and land use practices; from strict nature reserves, to mixed use areas and buffer zones to agri-environmental schemes within agricultural lands. The exact classification of the areas used and their number was identified by project partners, but the key was to ensure a range of areas and equivalence across case studies.

The case studies focus on the link between organizations and institutions underlying the management of the ecosystem and the capacity of the ecosystem to generate ecosystem services. Factors to be examined include the ecological knowledge and understanding of ecosystems and their dynamics, the manifestation of such knowledge in management practices and management organizations, the incorporation of these management practices and organizations into different societal levels, and the social legitimacy and adaptive capacity of these management practices and organizations, including social learning as well as institutional and organizational flexibility, to cope with the variability of environmental and social change.