FIDELIO (Forecasting Social Impacts of Biodiversity Conservation Policies in Europe) is a 5 year research project exploring social impacts of 20 European Protected Areas

Protected Areas are one of the key conservation tools and in Europe we have over 100,000 designated areas. Despite this large number, several of these Protected Areas are ineffective or exist only on paper. The FIDELIO project aims to explore why some Protected Areas are more effective than others setting at its core the unravelling of complexities in socio-ecological systems of Protected Areas and the important role of social impacts of these conservation policies.

The project is grounded on key theories of environmental sociology and environmental psychology capturing the interactions of society with the natural environment taking also into consideration more recent debates such as the 'nature contributions to people' argument.

Find out more about FIDELIO