This report has been prepared for the Office of Environmental Protection in response to a brief to review the
evidence of the impacts of development pressures on biodiversity in Northern Ireland.
The Report describes how development pressures are defined and explains the methodology used in the review,
including the search terms, geographic scope and criteria for inclusion and exclusion used to identify appropriate
peer-reviewed research. This resulted in 70 papers being identified as relevant, and while this included
individual useful studies that provide valuable evidence on specific forms of impact or on individual species or
habitats, it became apparent that there is a lack of robust, systematic evidence on how development is
impacting on biodiversity in Northern Ireland.
In the absence of such evidence, the Report goes on to describe engagement with grey literature to identify
other insights to assist in appraising the biodiversity impacts of development. Using data from Northern Ireland
Government statistics, regulatory data and other sources, three development pressures are identified as most
likely resulting in significant biodiversity impacts:
- Land Use Change: Residential Development;
- Land Use Change: Agricultural Development and Intensification;
- Resource Use: Mining and Extraction.
The evidence around each of these is reviewed, accompanied by a discussion of the wider range of other
development pressures that may have biodiversity impacts.
The report concludes by reflecting on the challenges in securing robust evidence for evaluating development
impacts on biodiversity in Northern Ireland, and makes a number of recommendations on how this could be
improved, including: more effective use of existing datasets; research tasks that could identify the impact of
specific development pressures; and developing opportunities for ameliorating the impacts of development
through the planning system.