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CONTEXT. Land use decisions are essential for reaching of biodiversity conservation targets. Usually, conservation is planned separately from other land use, using specialised approaches such as spatial conservation planning and prioritisation (SCP). This separation of processes makes it difficult to optimise between competing land uses or to plan for land sharing solutions. OBJECTIVES: We present a real-life planning case where SCP was integrated to regional planning process from early on. The aim is (i) to present the process and its results, and (ii) based on the experiences, to evaluate and discuss the potential and challenges of integrating SCP to a general land use planning. METHODS: We present the regional planning of the Helsinki-Uusimaa region in Finland where SCP was integrated as part of the general land use planning process between 2014 and 2018. We applied Zonation software and a diverse collection of spatial biodiversity data and carry out various spatial prioritizations guided by planners and environmental experts. We compared the priority areas to future plans (Uusmaa 2050). RESULTS: We show high spatial variation of biodiversity in Uusimaa region and SCP is able to highlight sites of high importance for biodiversity aware planning. Roughly 70% of biodiversity is outside protection by the Uusimaa 2050 plan draft.CONCLUSIONS: While SCP is relatively well-known by ecologists and nature conservationists, its concepts, framework, and tools are usually not familiar to general land use planners. Integration of SCP can yield to better decisions, but new practices require sufficient resourcing and tight collaboration between the parties. |
