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This report presents the current state of knowledge about progress with the management of contaminated sites in Europe. It directly supports the EU Soil Thematic Strategy (COM(2006) 231), which identifies local soil contamination as an important issue. It presents facts, analyses, and methods on the management of Contaminated Sites, which can inform policy makers, professional practitioners, researchers, citizens and the media. The report is based on data that were collected from the National Reference Centres for Soil in 39 coun-tries belonging to the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIO-NET) during a campaign organised by the JRC European Soil Data Centre in 2011-2012. The information presented in this report is based on a set of indicators which have been agreed on and used by the EIONET for more than a decade. This set of indicators contrib-utes to the Core Set Indicator “Progress in the Management of Contaminated Sites” (CSI 015) of the European Environment Agency (EEA), which is used for reporting on the State of the Environment. These indicators aim to answer the following policy-relevant questions: What is the esti-mated extent of soil contamination? How much progress has been achieved in the manage-ment and control of local soil contamination? Which sectors contribute most to soil contami-nation? What are the main contaminants affecting soil and groundwater in and around Con-taminated Sites? How much is spent on cleaning up soil contamination? How much of the public budget is used? The data request was sent to the then 32 EEA member countries (27 European Union Mem-ber States together with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey) and the seven EEA cooperating countries in the West Balkan: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia , the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Montenegro, Serbia as well as Kosovo under the UN Security Council Resolution 1244/99 . 28 countries returned the questionnaire., JRC.H.5-Land Resources Management

The present report covers an exercise where a defined development approach (ABD) has been tested in a rural cross border case study area in the Western Balkans. The aim is to draw lessons both for continuing implementation of the ABD in this particular area and more generally initiating it in the Western Balkans. Concretely, the UNDP Area-Based Development (ABD) approach is targeting specific geographical areas characterised by a particular complex development problem (setting it apart from surrounding areas), through an integrated (multi-sector), inclusive (community versus particular groups or individuals), participatory (bottom-up) and flexible (responsive to changes) approach. This approach has been implemented in the pilot case of the Drina valley – Tara Mountain area (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia. As a result of 6 months of interaction among stakeholders, 4 priority development themes were identified in tourism, rural development (with a special focus on agriculture), SME and entrepreneurship and environmental protection. This pilot case allowed drawing relevant lessons for the implementation of ABD to what concerns the area delineation process, the bottom-up process, the top-down accompanying framework and the institutional / legal framework. Lastly, 7 other rural cross border areas within the Western Balkans region have been identified as potential ABD target areas ., JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Economy

SMART indicators were developed using the AFI structure and method for relatively extensive dry-stock, and relatively intensive dairy farming in the northwest and south of Ireland, respectively. Both these farming contexts are subject to the same multi-objective Irish Rural Environment Protection Scheme. The rationale and detailed structure of four indicators are presented; these relate to: organic nutrient application, organic nutrient storage, the biodiversity value of intensive grass husbandry, and the aesthetic landscape value of grass husbandry practice. Sixteen other indicators are detailed in supplementary material. The majority of the indicators developed are proxy indicators based on farm management practice, and provide an indirect measure or estimate of likely environmental quality, or relative environmental risk. In many cases, the complexities of environmental concerns required the development of integrative multi-metric indicators with corresponding transformation functions. Wherever possible, these functions were based on known (evidence-based) regional or national impact models. Such models (including quantification of relevant environmental quality levels) were frequently unavailable, in which case a participatory process of stakeholder and expert engagement was essential to fill knowledge gaps. Despite their customisation to the farming contexts studied, the basic structure and underlying logic of many of the developed indicators may be of much wider use in similar livestock-based agro-ecosystems. A common, georeferenced spatial framework built on contextual indicators that takes into account climate and farming type, would represent a significant advance in the harmonised development of indicators relevant to analysis of agri-environmental policy., JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Economy