European Environment Agency and European Commission have presented two new instruments that will help in the fighting against the loss of biodiversity in European ecosystems.

The opening session of the Green Week conference in Brussels saw the unveiling of two new weapons to step up the fight against biodiversity loss: BISE, the Biodiversity Information System for Europe, is a new web portal centralising information about European biodiversity in a single location and a "biodiversity baseline" to be used by policymakers, offering a comprehensive snapshot of the current state of biodiversity.

European Environment Agency and European Commission have developed these tools in the framework of the International Year if Biodiversityand, more accurately, in the European Green Week, which, this year, focuses on this issue.

A baseline for measuring progress

One of the reasons cited for Europe's failure to halt biodiversity loss by 2010 was gaps in available knowledge about the state of biodiversity in Europe. The baseline is intended to solve that problem, providing policymakers with a starting point for measuring the state of biodiversity inside the EU.

The new tool provides a framework to articulate linkages between species numbers, habitats status and ecosystem services, and uses facts and figures that are scientifically robust and have been validated and/or peer reviewed in the Member-States. Information on species and habitats will be organised into main ecosystem types (coastal, wetlands, grasslands, forests and so forth), and, where appropriate, data will be updated each year to provide a clear historical record of progress.

A new platform for biodiversity information

The conference also saw the launch of BISE, the Biodiversity Information System for Europe. BISE is an information portal designed to facilitate access to existing information about nature and biodiversity, presenting existing data in a far more comprehensive manner than before.

As well as information about EU policy and legislation in the area of nature, there is a wealth of material about the state of the EU environment and ecosystems and the threats they face, information about research in biodiversity that is going on around the EU, and access to information about the state of biodiversity reporting in Member States, designed to encourage greater cooperation.