Biodiversity and Habitat Changes Modelling Experiences in Ukraine and Eastern Europe Countries

2. Regional Biodiversity Modelling History

The regional history of biodiversity modelling only started in 2005 with a serious attempt of digitizing biodiversity distribution maps. Unlike other European countries, Ukraine has demonstrated slow progress of biodiversity modelling (at least for applications at the level of decision makers) during 1990’s and 2000’s. This is in contrast to well known opinions about many successes in biodiversity conservation during 1992-1998. However these attempts were more virtually, instead of evidence based studies of its natural analogy as stated by V. Prydatko (2000).

The first location-based evaluation of the performance of Ukraine’s commitments under Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was done and summarized seven years ago (Sozinov & Prydatko, 2006). It reported both satisfactory and unsatisfactory indexes of Ukraine’s 14 years of membership to the Convention (since the Convention was signed). During this period, Ukraine was placed before Congo and after Togo on the basis of efforts devoted to preserve biological diversity (in percentage to the GDP). At the same time, over 200 legislative documents were issued (and approximately 13 normative documents developed per year), which directly or indirectly facilitated the preservation of biological diversity and the active development of cooperation in this subject. Regardless of 14 years of experience as a member to the Convention, only 8% of the documents issued ensured direct application of the articles and decisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which might be considered as the documents of practical CBD-directives. During 14 years the reporting of Ukraine remained unsatisfactory as only 15% of the obligatory reports were submitted. According to the selective data, the reporting activity placed Ukraine on the same level with Uganda and lower than Armenia and Uzbekistan.