Holistic Biodiversity Management in Construction Materials Industry (GiBBS) Strategies and Measures for Biodiversity Protection in Context of Resource Extraction, project phase 1
The project aims to preserve and promote biodiversity in the mining sites of the building materials industry. Gravel, sand, clay and gypsum are major resources required for the production of building materials. According to the German Environment Agency, they make up at 517 million tons (in 2015) the lion's share of the non-renewable raw materials of a total of 769 million tons extracted in Germany. Their extraction causes considerable intervention in ecosystems, and land is consumed and converted. Nonetheless, mining sites can also provide valuable habitats for animals and plants after the extraction of raw materials has ended.
To enable companies to introduce appropriate measures to exploit this potential, an understanding of how biodiversity in mining areas changes and develops is necessary. The central aim of the project is to establish a systematic biodiversity monitoring system that is aligned with local conditions. It provides the basis for the development and improvement of biodiversity management and corresponding business practices of companies.
In the monitoring of biodiversity, citizens who are committed to nature conservation are also to be involved in the sense of Citizen Science via the platform naturgucker.de.
This research work will be continued with an implementation phase, in which different monitoring variants will be tested and an industry dialogue for the development of industry-wide, binding agreements regarding the introduction of a biodiversity management in companies will be conducted. With the involvement of industry associations and nature conservation organizations as central stakeholder groups, a sector-specific management concept is to be developed by conducting comparative site studies of mining sites of the partner companies and analyzing the transfer potential beyond the branch.
