Adaptation to Climate Change Legal Challenges for Protected Areas

Climate change will cause further loss of biodiversity. As negative effects are taking place, adaptive measures are required to protect biodiversity the effects of climate change. The EU policy on climate change and aims at improving a coherent ecological network in order to have resilient ecosystems and to provide for connectivity outside core areas. existing legal framework, the Birds and Habitats Directives, can enable approaches, by establishing and managing the Natura 2000 network and for connectivity measures. However, policy and law so far have mainly aimed at conserving the status quo of habitats and species within core . The question is whether a legal requirement to protect certain species in places makes sense when species and even ecosystems are migrating due to change. Instead, efforts must be increased to protect ecosystem , goods and services from the negative effects of climate change, and facilitate the ecological restoration of new areas. Even more effort is for the implementation of connectivity. If existing legislation proves weak to face these challenges, a new ‘Ecosystem Framework Directive’ might the necessary legal impe