The Director General of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA), Guillermina Yanguas, closed today, at the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, the presentation of the LIFE+ project “Preparation of the Priority Action Framework for the financing of the Natura 2000 Network in Spain”, an initiative that has been working since 2012 with the active participation of the Autonomous Communities and which will be sent to the the European Commission.

 Yanguas has been accompanied by Sonia Castañeda, Director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Noelia Vallejo, from the Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Commission, and Miguel Aymerich, Deputy Director of Natural Environment of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, who have presented the project.

This initiative, implemented by the Biodiversity Foundation and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, aims to improve the financing and management capacity of the Natura 2000 Network in Spain through the preparation and implementation of a Priority Action Framework (MAP) for the financing of the management measures carried out in the sites included in this Network. as established in Article 8 of the Habitats Directive.

The Priority Action Framework identifies the strategic conservation priorities of Natura 2000 in Spain, the specific actions needed to achieve them and their potential sources of co-financing, charged to the various Community funds.

In the first phase of the project, priority has been given to the collection of technical information with the collaboration of all Autonomous Communities, coordinated by the Ministry of Agriculture, and the establishment of a methodology to define management measures and priorities.

In the second phase of the project, relevance will be given to the process of participation of actors and sectors involved with the aim of improving the document, mainly: national, regional and local public administrations, research centres and universities, non-governmental organisations, foundations and private entities, etc. Likewise, 5 pilot areas will be selected where planning, design and programming of priorities and measures of the MAP will be carried out. The objective is to obtain a group of pilot actions that contribute to a better management of spaces already declared or whose declaration is imminent.

The design of a system for the application of innovative financial mechanisms in the Natura 2000 Network, and their application, will also be carried out, in order to be able to finance through them some of the priority actions identified in the MAP. The final result will be a document of criteria, guidelines and guidelines that help in the application of the different mechanisms.

It should be noted that Spain and those Member States that have established their Priority Action Frameworks are positioned as possible candidates to implement the future Integrated Projects that are being defined for the next EU Multiannual Framework 2014-2020.

All the information on the “Framework of Priority Actions for Financing the Natura 2000 Network” can be found in www.prioridadrednatura2000.es

See the presentation of the Priority Action Framework here.