IUCN Foundation, The World Conservation Union, Slovakia IUCN European Programme ASPECTS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION THE NATIONAL ECOLOGICAL NETWORK - SLOVAKIA Introduction / C h a p t e r s : 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / Full text HTML / TXT ENGLISH SUMMARY INTRODUCTION TO NECONET AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Milan Koren, Peter Sabo, Jozef Steffek, Stefan Maglocky, Helena Carska Continental decline of the number of plant and animal species and on-going destruction of the ecosystems of Europe require an international response (Bennett,1994, Stanners, Bourdeau, 1995). More recent initiatives include the concept of the European Ecological Network (EECONET), consequently built upon national ecological networks (NECONET). The study oAspects of the Implementation of the National Ecological Network of Slovakia" concentrates on the economy areas, which significantly influence NECONET - forestry, agriculture, water management and tourism. For each of them it estimates potential of their development, defines main types of conflicts and proposes recommendations for sustainable development. Study also analyses landscape-ecological perspectives of sustainable regional development and state of the legislature related to protection of NECONET areas. To introduce reader to the subject, we present a short review of the basic principles of the NECONET design in Slovakia and IUCN principles of sustainable development. A) Nature conservation development concept through the EECONET of Europe and the NECONET of Slovakia (Compiled according to Koren, Steffek in IUCN, 1996) A1) Potential contribution of the nature of Slovakia to EECONET Richness of nature: The territory of Slovakia covers only 49 035 km2, but its contribution to the European Ecological Network (EECONET) is extraordinary high. The geological, geomorphological and climatic conditions and connection of four biogeographic provinces have led to remarkably high biological diversity in a relatively small area. Substantial part of the area is covered by forests. In many places the original forest stands have been preserved, which represent significant part of the world nature heritage. According to Soltes et al. (in IUCN, 1996) there have been found 1492 species of lichens and 891 species of bryophytes in the territory of Slovakia. According to Maglocky et al. (in IUCN, 1996) cca 3000 species of vascular plants grow here (out of these 2500 autochthonous). From the animals, there have been found 246 species of molluscs, 879 species of spiders, 352 species of birds and 85 species of mammals (In: Jedlicka, 1993, Steffek et al. in IUCN, 1996). Many species are endangered - the new Red list of higher plants of Slovakia includes 37,56% of 2500 autochthonous species (Maglocky, Ferakova, 1993). Legal framework of nature conservation and protected areas: The new Nature and landscape conservation act No. 287/1994 Z.z. is valid from 1.1.1995. The legal frame of nature conservation is described in Chapter 6. By 31st December 1994 there were declared 5 national parks and 16 protected landscape areas, covering 17,5% of the area of Slovakia. To the same date 899 small protected areas have been declared, covering 102 450 ha, including 4 biosphere reserves and 7 Ramsar sites. To this date also 3 areas have been included into the list of the World nature and cultural heritage sites. A2) Aims of the NECONET in Slovakia and its basic components The aims of the National ECONET (NECONET) design and management: 1) To safeguard more effective conservation of biodiversity in Slovakia, 2) To increase the ecostabilising efficiency of nature elements, which will improve the quality of nature environment and improve the landscape productivity. Basic NECONET elements Basic elements of NECONET and EECONET include core areas, ecological corridors and nature development areas. In relation to biodiversity, core areas have predominantly preservation (conservation) function, ecological corridors have predominantly dispersal and migration function. Specific group of the ecological network (ECONET) elements is represented by onature development areas", which strengthen the ECONET as a whole. Core areas: Core areas (CAs) represent the set of the keystone, ecologically stabile nature ecosys-tems of the territory, usually in the nodes of the ecological network. According to the IUCN EP proposals, the core areas are selected on the basis of representativeness, originality, high biodiversity, functioning as a refuge of protected, rare and endangered species and on the basis of the size of the area. Koren et Steffek (in IUCN, 1996) differentiate typical CAs - with typical ecosystems representatives for a certain biogeographical region and unique ones - with rare ecosystems representing certain region or with extraordinary high biodiversity. General criteria for the selection of core areas into the National ECONET of Slovakia: 1) Nature conservation value, which includes preservation (originality) of the ecosystems, rarity of the original, eventually secondary ecosystems and species, degree of the biodiversity, endangerment of the ecosystems and species. 2) Representativeness of the structures of the original ecosystems. 3) Equitability (spatial order) in the current landscape structure. 4) Possibility of the practical implementation into ECONET. Ecological corridors Core areas are linked through oecological corridors" (ECs). We know hydric and terrestrial corridors (these may be further differentiated according to the types of ecosystems enabling dispersal and migration of organisms) and with simplification also migration routes of birds (Bennett, 1991). Apart from a cyclic movement of animals the ecological corridor serves as a ochannel" for one-directional dispersal of organisms, from the places of their higher concentrations, to the places of their lower concentrations. Nature development areas Nature development areas (NDA) represent areas, where it is necessary (according to the required functionality of NECONET) to strengthen the nature component. We differentiate NDAs with primary protective (conservation) function - around isolated significant ecosystems, NDAs eliminating direct anthropogenic influences and NDAs determined for the revitalisation. Hierarchical structure of ECONET ECONET is a hierarchical system. Its elements can be ordered into several hierarchies - according to the encapsy principle. During National ECONET design, we worked mostly on the European and national hierarchical levels. A3) Selection of the NECONET elements and their hierarchy Selection of the elements of the National ecological network of Slovakia Different partial NECONET proposals (leading experts Dipl.Ing. Milan Koren, CSc. and RNDr. Jozef Steffek, CSc.) were based both on the evaluation of the nature potential of the landscape as well as on the evaluation of the curent status of the distribution of rare, endangered and keystone species in the territory of Slovakia. Their mutual confrontation led to the final proposal of the NECONET. Hierarchisation of the elements of the ecological network Biosphere level (BECONET) in a biogeographical sense corresponds to biogeographic region (Futak, 1980). Criteria for its selection include high concentration of nature values, relative preservation (originality) of the whole selected territory and uniqueness of the prevailing part of core areas of the lower order. European level (EECONET) and national level (NECONET) correspond to lower biogeographical units (subregion, district, subdistrict). Elements of the biosphere significance Core area of the biosphere significance: According to Steffek et al. (in IUCN, 1996) the greatest nature conservation values are concentrated in the biogeographical subregion of high (central) Carpathians - Eucarpaticum, nature values of which surpass all the surrounding regions. According to the principles of the individual landscape-ecological division, we have assigned to it the whole biogeographical subregion of the intra-Carpathian basins - Intercarpaticum and part of the adjacent subregion of the prae-Carpathian flora - Praecarpaticum. The selected area was denoted as West Carpathian Biosphere Core Area. Elements of the European significance Core areas of the European significance: In all the core areas definitely prevail natural forest formations, representative for the corresponding landscape type, and/or biogeographic district. Together, we have selected 35 core areas of the European significance. Especially important are forest beech ecosystems, which are the most important from the point of view of the primary ecological stability of the landscape of Slovakia. Ecological corridors of the European significance: Their most important parts include core areas of national significance. Hydric ecological corridors include larger parts of two important rivers of Slovakia. Ecological corridors on the European level are represented by several types of corridors, to which belong pan-European migration routes of birds, directions of the penetration of geoelements of flora and fauna, and the river ecological corridors Dunaj-Morava and Vah-Orava. Nature development areas of European significance: NDAs on this level have predominantly preservation function, supporting existing CAs of European significance, functioning as their buffer and/or transition zones. Further NDAs have been designed in case of non-existence of a core area in a given biogeographical district (e.g. in lowlands) and in suboptimally or non-functioning parts of the ecological corridors. Elements of the national significance Core areas of national significance: Apart from 35 areas of the European significance, other 35 highly valuable areas of national significance have been selected. Thus, the basic skeleton of the NECONET of Slovakia is formed by 70 core areas. Selected core areas of national importance again represent important structures of predominantly original ecosystems. Great importance have again beech and other forest ecosystems, however, the CAs of N-ECONET include also sufficiently large samples of non-forest ecosystems (steppes, wood-steppes, saltmarshes, wetlands and water communities). Ecological corridors of national significance: Apart from the ECs of the European significance there have been selected other 15 important corridors of national significance, and a dense network of the terrestrial ecological corridors, linking various core areas as well as nature development areas. Nature development areas: These often include remnants of rare original communities. These are not representative, but important as strengthening nodes of the NECONET. Conclusion The hierarchical network of the selected core areas, nature development areas and ecological corridors, was designed in an effort to cover all the main ecosystem types in Slovakia. Besides the predominant forest ecosystems (oak forests, beech forests, fir-beech forests, detritus forests, spruce forests, dwarf-pine forests and floodplain forests), they include also sufficiently large samples of non-forest ecosystems (steppes, wood-steppes, saltmarshes, wetlands and water communities). The selected CAs are linked, for the most part, by a really functioning system of ecological corridors. In their selection, we have taken into account the diversity of ways of dispersal, as well as variety of migration routes of plants and animals. B) Sustainable development and basic principles of the IUCN, WWF and UNEP strategy oCaring for the Earth" (Compiled according to IUCN, UNEP, WWF, 1993) Classic definition from the 1980s developed by the World Commission for Environment states that oSustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (Brundtland, 1986). Another definition, by David Pearce (1989) states that basic conditions of sustainable development can be summarized as permanent safeguarding of environmental capital. Nature conservation has undergone a dramatic development during 1980s. This culminated in 1991 in a new common sustainability strategy called oCaring for the Earth" (IUCN, UNEP, WWF, 1991). B1) Basic principles and philosophy of the strategy IUCN (The World Conservation Union), WWF (World Wide Fund) and UNEP (UN Environment Programme) have put together basic sustianability principles in the above mentioned strategy. Basic message of the strategy oCaring for the Earth" (further only Strategy) is that humanity should live within the limits of the Earth|s carrying capacity, other choice is impossible. The key Part I of the Strategy consists of 9 basic principles of sustainability. Part II describes 62 other actions, necessary for the application of these 9 principles. Part III concentrates on concrete implementations. The first and founding principle is to Respect and care for the community of life which responds to the inner causes of crisis and represents the ethical base for the other principles. This is a morally binding principle, corresponding to the original definition of sustainable society, the ethics of which has to be based on respect and care for each individual and for the Earth. All the life on the Earth represents a great, mutually interconnected system. Degradation of any of its components can negatively influence the community of life as a whole. This first principle is primarily connected with the next four principles of the Strategy. These are: Improve the quality of human life (enabling each human to realise his potential to lead lives of dignity and fulfillment), Conserve the Earth s vitality and diversity (includes conservation of life-support systems, conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of renewable resources), Minimize the depletion of non-renewable resources (to extend the time of their utilisation through modesty, savings, reuse and recycling), Keep within the Earth s carrying capacity (to safeguard that the impact of civilization on the planet can be withstood by our biosphere). These four principles define the major criteria that should be met if human society is to come to grips with the outer causes of the present environmental crisis. To these principles are immediately linked next four principles reflecting directions how to achieve the above-listed aims at the individual, local, national and international levels: Change personal attitudes and practices, Enable communities to care for their own environments, Provide a national framework for integrating development and conservation, Create a global alliance. These four directions represent at the same time a feed-back, having an immediate influence on the first ethical principle. C) Primary and secondary functions of NECONET from the point of view of sustainable development Natural systems perform a number of different functions such as regulative, productive and informative functions. In this respect the large protected areas provide a broad spectrum of primary benefits, that belong to the group of regulative functions - mainly in the form of protection of representative and unique ecosystems of relevant biogeographic units, protection of animal and plant gene pool and preservation of the ecological stability of landscape. Even though the economic benefit of these functions can hardly be evaluated they should be treated as decisive for management of national parks, protected landscape areas and NECONET areas for forestry, agriculture, tourism and other economic purposes. Development of these activities in these areas should not exceed limits acceptable for the conservation of protected ecosystems and their nature dynamics. It can be said that from the point of view of NECONET function in the landscape, the third principle of the above strategy is decisive: Conserve the Earth|s vitality and diversity. Especially national parks and NECONET core areas represent genuine values in terms of well-preserved landscapes with a great potential of natural resources as well as products of natural processes inevitable for maintenance of healthy environment. On the other hand utilisation of natural resources in larger protected landscape areas is not as strictly limited as in the case of national parks and NECONET core areas and ecological corridors. ASPECTS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION THE NATIONAL ECOLOGICAL NETWORK - SLOVAKIA Introduction / C h a p t e r s : 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / Full text HTML / TXT