Global Public Safety Systems. Research on the Coherence and Effectiveness of International Agreements Protecting Ecological Connectivity

Ecological connectivity is one of the primary prerequisites of effective prevention and adaptation to climate change. However the legal protection of this phenomenon has been scattered in different legal acts of international, European and national law. The main criterion adopted for the purposes of this research was to focus on the development of instruments for the protection of ecological corridors. The research included both framework agreements on the protection of biodiversity as well as agreements strictly related to the migration of fauna and flora. The main conclusions of the research show that the provisions of multilateral nature conservation agreements vary in terms of their legal force, and in most cases leave a wide margin of discretion to the parties with regard to the forms of implementation. Furthermore, the agreements are not integrated and coherent, and are still based on outdated management tools and terminology (dating back to the 1970-1980 period). Binding executive acts are not widely recognised as having the same legal force as framework conventions and are, in fact, lost in the microcosmos of national environmental legislation. It is recommended to conduct a harmonised, in-depth review of the implementation of the conventions analysed, in order to integrate and improve the coherence of the protection regime of ecological networks at national, continental and global levels. This should be done by adopting an integrative agreement under the auspices of all the conventions concerned. The detailed scope of the necessary amendments proposed in the final chapter of this article constitutes the main added value of this research.