Biodiversity loss is a pressing global problem and land use is known for being one of the most
direct contributors. In European Union countries, a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)
is required for land use plans that set a strategic framework for future development such as
regional land use plans. Biodiversity would be very feasible to address in the SEA as it has the
capacity to include the complexity biodiversity poses. Technology is increasingly being used
for biodiversity conservation as it allows effective collection and processing of data. This
research aimed to assess current SEA practices of addressing biodiversity and explore
possibilities of how conservation technology could be used to assist SEA in addressing
biodiversity loss more effectively in the field of land use planning. To fulfil the research aim, a
document analysis of six regional land use plans and their SEA reports and four semi structured interviews with an AI-company Spoor AI staff were conducted. The results of the
document analysis showed that biodiversity is typically addressed in qualitative terms while an
effective assessment would also require quantifying biodiversity variables. The results of the
semi-structured interviews indicated that previous experience from the wind power sector has
shown that conservation technology could be taken advantage of in collecting data about
biodiversity cost-effectively and reliably, while AI can be used to analyse that data.
Conservation technology could be taken advantage of in SEA by deepening the understanding
of the development context, supporting the decision-making and monitoring. Implementing
conservation technology in SEA could encourage the use of the strategic thinking SEA -model
and contribute to several theoretical principles that guide the SEA practice.
