Bringing nature into decision-making and policy design: Experiences from overseas Europe

Abstract Although many legal instruments have been adopted at the international and European Union levels to conserve biodiversity, continued degradation calls for reflections on their national and local implementation. The article examines biodiversity policy implementation in the outermost European region of Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago rich in biodiversity. In particular it focuses on the policy uptake of new concepts. It deals with the valuation and integration of the services provided by nature into decision-making, and the application of policy measures based on the use of the planet’s natural assets. The article also analyses the challenges encountered in such institutional change. The concepts of ecosystem services and nature-based solutions are relatively new in the scientific literature and almost absent in policy literature. This article aims to stress the relevance of these concepts for the development of more innovative policies that bring nature and its services into decision-making and policy practice.