For 50 years, subsidies at continental and state level have successfully driven production of a few crop species in Europe. Commercially driven homogenisation of diverse local land-use continues to degrade ecosystem services that sustained Europeans for centuries. Species whose dynamics and colonisation operates at small scale have disappeared through habitat loss and fragmentation, so that biodiversity has declined drastically at local level.

Over the same 50 years, human ability to predict has increased through the use of computers. Forecasts from associative models, which neglect causation, are being replaced by more accurate prediction from individual-based models that incorporate behavioural mechanisms. Models can be spatially specific through linkage to habitat and socio-economic data as cells in geographic information systems (GIS). Adverse development can be constrained (under 85/337/EEC) after environmental impact assessment (EIA) at local level and more recently (under 2001/42/EC) following strategic environmental assessment (SEA) at higher level. These high-level directives, and protection of areas (e.g. Habitats Directive, 92/43/EEC), may halt loss of biodiversity by 2010 at continental level.

However, the current system of assessment is bottlenecked by dependence on experts, which limits application to large or severe cases and can also prejudice repeatability in conflictive ways. The complexity of assessment is daunting, especially when sustainability impact assessment (SIA) includes social and economic sustainability factors as well as the environment. Review by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2002 (CBD/VI:7) noted applicability of assessments to 70 ecosystem services in 34 contexts. Moreover, a challenge not met by the current system of assessments, is to influence the myriad decisions made by individuals at local level, on what to remove or plant and how and when to manage it. Decisions that are made for farm fields and gardens are small-scale individually, but summate to change the environment.

We contend that the solution to the issues of repeatability, complexity and scale in environmental assessment for biodiversity can best be met by a computing system, combining GIS and individual-based modelling of organisms for predicting population processes across trophic levels. We consider that inclusion of socio-economic data in such an expert system is an asset rather than a complication, because private spending on wildlife-related activities is large (more than 40 billion Euros according to a recent study) and often requires or creates high biodiversity. Such private funding needs to be tapped and used cost-effectively for conservation of biodiversity in Europe. This was foreseen in CBD, in which an emphasis on sustainable use of biodiversity (in 13 of 19 substantive articles) gives “incentive-based conservation”. In MEA (2004) terms, “provisioning” and “cultural” ecosystem services are often private goods, whereas “regulating” and “supporting” services are public goods, to be sustained by public funding (despite pressure to reduce CAP funding that no longer gives cheap food). But the latter do not all need high biodiversity, so conservation needs private resources too:

Our view is that the internet offers the way to deliver context-adapted knowledge, computed by an expert system, to implement commitments of CBD parties in 2004 (CBD/VII) on assessment, incentives, sustainable use and the ecosystem approach. These recommended applying local knowledge, monitoring and empowerment with appropriate governance at all levels for adaptive management of biodiversity resources. Projects at local level (e.g. farm shops) can offset or mitigate wider commercial pressures and skilful tuning of small de-intensification measures (e.g. headlands), public works (e.g. road verges) and gardens can benefit biodiversity at minimal cost. The internet is also the way to collate the extensive bio-socio-economic environmental knowledge that is currently fragmented across Europe. In complex modern societies, it is challenging to bring together all the information needed for use of land and its wild resources in ways that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. However, to give all land-managers across Europe comparable expertise without such a system is impossible.