National Programme on Biological Diversity

The National Programme on Biological Diversity is a national sectoral programme of Latvia. Its main objectives include maintaining and improving the diversity of ecosystems and their natural elements, maintaining and improving natural species diversity, maintaining the genetic diversity of natural species as well as of crop plants and animal breeds, promoting the conservation of the traditional landscape structures, and ensuring sustainable use of natural resources.
The document provides a detailed set of measures for preservation of biological diversity. Specifically, in the sea, the coastal areas and other bodies of water, the Programme provides for measures on waste management in sea, oil pollution control, protection of coastal waters, prevention of animal mortality due to fishing gear, protection of fish populations and species, reduction of the degradation processes of beach and dune ecosystems, promoting conservation of sea cliff ecosystems, conservation of swiftly flowing river stretches, ensuring integrated monitoring of aquatic ecosystems in lakes, and protecting fish migratory routes along rivers. In the area of the biodiversity of forests, the Programme envisions promoting sustainable forest management, preventing a decline in diversity of forest habitats, ensuring suitable conditions for populations of protected and game forest animals, and protecting migration paths and reducing the rate of forest fragmentation. For the protection of wild species, the document plans to promote development of sustainable game animal management, prevent decline of numbers and distributions of local wild species in nature, ensure suitable protection status for threatened species, implement actions to ensure protection of species outside of their natural habitats, develop plant collections and seed banks, ensure the appropriate actions as required by the Convention "On International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora", and maintain commercially important wild species resources. For the protection of crop and livestock breeds, the Programme aims to develop a programme for maintenance of genetic resources of crops, append the Latvian crop variety gene bank, develop a programme for maintenance of genetic resources of livestock, and popularise local-origin breeds. For sustainable agriculture, the document targets to maintain the characteristic habitat mosaic of rural landscapes, implement and popularise the Code of Good Agricultural Practices, promote diversity of land use in rural landscapes, create protection belts utilising local tree species, popularise the use of biological agriculture methods and environmentally friendly production of food products, prevent the flow of pesticides and fertilisers from treated crop fields, prevent soil compaction, continue traditional management of farm pastures, prevent mortality of animals and their young during agricultural work, and implement agricultural methods with low impact on animals. The document also pertains to energy and biodiversity - aiming to support the use of local energy resources, make full use of wood production waste, and promote planting of forests for energy. In the area of mineral resources, the Programme provides for preventing destruction of rare habitats and locations of rare species by development of new quarries or expansion of existing quarries, reducing impact on plant and animal communities in territories surrounding mining peat harvest fields, and preventing unwanted effects on ecosystems in areas of sapropel extraction.
In the area of energy, the Programme aims to support the use of local energy resources; in municipal planning of energy resource budgets, consider restrictions on forest and peat use in specific territories; and make full use of wood production waste.
The implementation of the Programme is co-ordinated by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development. To achieve the goals of the Programme, inter-Ministry Commission or the Co-ordination Council was also created, which is headed by the State Secretary of the Ministry. At the beginning of the fiscal year, the head of the National Programme prepares a summary of the implementation of the Programme during the previous year and presents a plan for the next year.