European biodiversity as a whole is not sufficiently improving despite probably the most developed legal framework and several decennia of efforts. Moderate progress was achieved, but only in some of biodiversity indicators. One of reasons for this is the fact, that drivers negatively impacting biodiversity – such as development of transport and transport infrastructure – are growing with comparable speed as efforts to address biodiversity crisis. Responding to these trends is not trivial, and proposing just even stricter nature conservation rules and growing area of protected areas would not deliver. Systemic and functional approach is necessary, and it cannot be replaced by most “patches” of what remained more or less functional from the past. Missing links and lost functionalities need to be repaired, renewed and/or compensated by newly developed elements. This approach is integrally included in recently adopted new Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework, and in European Union it will be supported (among others) by freshly adopted Nature restoration law.
In relation to transport infrastructure this will require changed approach in evaluation of environmental impacts, based not only on compensation of immediately affected ecosystem services, but also on pro-active action covering functionalities lost in the past. It will be therefore essential to define to what extent and how the future development of transport infrastructure should be planned and which parts of it can be returned to nature or compensated by targeted measures. This means that development of European (or national) transport and biodiversity strategies should proceed in coordinated way, informing each-other, and in collaboration with strategic environmental impact assessment. Following changes caused by altering climate, biodiversity in European Union stands on crossroads: European landscape needs de-fragmentation, increased space for natural processes and connectivity and in addition to existing patches of functional ecosystems in protected areas, building of new, rather “ordinary”, but functional elements which were lost in last several decennia.