A panel discussion was held yesterday evening at the Judge Business School in Cambridge, entitled ‘The price of extinction: what losing biodiversity costs’. The event was part of the Cambridge Science Festival, in collaboration with Cambridge Conservation Initiative and Science Magazine.

Tim Radford from The Guardian opened the discussion by highlighting the global scale of biodiversity loss: one eighth of birds, 13% of flowering plants and one quarter of mammals are currently at risk of extinction. The panel members were asked in turn to give their opinions on the most important issues for biodiversity conservation.

Dr Hazell Thompson from Birdlife International and Dr Ruth Swetnam from the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, were in agreement that a valuation system for biodiversity is required. Dr Thompson explained that biodiversity conservation often loses out because it is not practically valuable to the people who actually bear the cost of protecting biodiversity. For example, constructing mines in the rainforest in West Africa has a greater economic benefit for local people than protecting the rainforest. Dr Swetnam detailed the main physical resources that are provided by biodiversity, such as food, fuel and climate regulation, and concluded that if we don’t assign monetary value to biodiversity then the value will in effect be zero, and this will inevitably lead to biodiversity loss. In contrast, in the view of William Kendall from Green and Black’s, assigning value to biodiversity will not work in the world of business because business values immediate profits, so the benefits of biodiversity conservation are not considered because they are remote and poorly calculated. In his view, biodiversity conservation can only be incorporated into business through regulation, whether this is through external regulation such as government incentives, or self-regulation through customer pressure. Although valuation and regulation were presented in the debate as opposing views, perhaps they could go hand-in-hand: valuing biodiversity could be an important factor in implementing regulation.

Pamela Abbott, chair of Cambridge Conservation Forum, put forward the point that there could be huge benefits to human health of protecting biodiversity, which would reduce government spending on healthcare. For example, a 10% increase in local green space can increase life expectancy by five years. She brought the issue of biodiversity loss down to a local scale, using the catchphrase ‘Extinction begins at home’, and suggested that individuals can have a significant input into conserving biodiversity through making wildlife gardens.

Professor Bill Adams from the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, talked about the issue of how much biodiversity we actually need. He mentioned the recent paper published in Nature on Planetary Boundaries, in which Johan Röckstrom defined limits for the capacity of the planet to cope with anthropogenic changes, including biodiversity loss. Professor Adams suggested that the particular boundaries which are considered to be important by rich countries might differ from those which are important to poor countries, such as those supporting food production. This issue was also raised in the discussion afterwards, bringing up the fact that most of the initiatives for conservation of biodiversity come from the developed world, while most of the remaining biodiversity is in developing countries. Dr Ruth Swetnam put it plainly, saying that since the UK has already cut down most of its trees, we are not in a good position to tell the inhabitants of developing countries to keep their trees when they have families to feed. Perhaps biodiversity conservation will take a different angle if more people from developing countries become involved.

The only pre-election science debate to be held in parliament took place on 9 March organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry with the support of the Society of Biology, among other learned societies, and facilitated by the Science and Technology Committee. This was a great example of the value of unified action to highlight the specific value and needs of science research and education. The BES Science Policy Team attended the evening event.

Lord Drayson (Labour), Dr Adam Afriyie MP (Conservative) and Dr Evan Harris MP (Liberal Democrat) outlined their policies for science if successful in the forthcoming elections. In a long and lively question time all three candidates answered questions on funding and regulation of science; the balance between basic and applied research; the research excellence framework (REF); the balance between ‘glamorous’ and ‘Cinderella’ topics; the role of government in directing research calls; international exemplars of good funding practice, and whether the role of MPs is to respond to or actively lead public opinion of emerging science issues. There was agreement on a small number of topics including the importance of preserving the Haldane Principle and the need for a Chief Scientific Adviser to the Treasury, the only major government department currently lacking a CSA.

The RSC is hosting a video webcast at http://www.rsc.org/SAGE2010 and there was an active Twitter debate using the hashtag #scidebate.

Habitat banking describes the trade in habitat or biodiversity ‘credits’, i.e. areas of land where environmental restoration has taken place that can be bought to compensate for unavoidable habitat destruction through development. This concept has been in practice in the form of wetland mitigation banks in America since the 1980s, and its use is spreading as a means for governments to reduce the biodiversity loss associated with economic growth and development.

A report launched today by the organisation Ecosystem Marketplace provides a summary of the existing schemes around the world, listing 39 such projects in operation and another 25 planned in various countries. It calculates a market of between $1.8 billion and $2.9 billion per year alone from the 20% of projects that provide figures, resulting in the additional conservation management or protection of 86,000 hectares of land per year. There is increasing interest within the EU and the UK of adopting a more formalised habitat banking system, and both the EC and Defra have recently published scoping reports (available here and here) on the subject.

Download “The State of Biodiversity Markets: Offset and Compensation Programs Worldwide” report.

An event was organised this morning to launch the new Royal Society report ‘The Scientific Century: securing our future prosperity’. The report brought together experts from politics, industry and science to assess the role of funding for scientific research in the context of the current and future economic situation.

Sir Martin Taylor FRS, chair of the report’s Advisory Group, outlined the issues relating to scientific funding at the launch. He emphasised that, in addition to being a world-leader in scientific research, the UK is also highly successful at exploiting research, through clusters of high-tech companies surrounding universities. However, the UK’s current advantage is being threatened by major investment in science by the US, China, India, France and Germany, in response to the economic downturn. Sir Martin Taylor used the analogy of a football league to describe the potential consequences for the UK of lack of investment in scientific research: relegation from the premier league would make it very difficult to return to former standing. He mentioned that the President of the National Academy of Sciences has warned that the best scientists will move to the US if UK investment in science is not maintained.

The purpose of the report is to ensure that the UK remains at the pinnacle of science, and uses this to support economic growth. The panel at the launch were asked in turn to highlight the most important aspects of the report, in their view. Dame Wendy Hall from the University of Southampton emphasised the importance of a revolution in information technology throughout the education system, business and research, to facilitate international and interdisciplinary research. Sir Martin Evans from Cardiff University highlighted the investment in people, especially fellowships to support early-career researchers. David Roblin from Pfizer recognised the importance of knowledge exchange between academics and industrial science, and the focus on global challenges. Lord David Sainsbury highlighted a key incentive for politicians to implement the recommendations of the report: increasing investment in science will promote growth which will create much-needed jobs. Lord William Waldegrave warned that the UK would lose foreign investment in scientific research if seen to be dropping behind, and he also backed the recommendation for a Chief Scientific Adviser in HM Treasury, which received strong support from the audience.

Robert Chote, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, pointed out that the case for support for science does not ‘tug at the heartstrings’, so extra efforts need to be made to convince politicians that investment in science is valuable and has significant economic benefits. The report comes at a key time for political consideration, in the run up to the election. This evening, science spokespeople from the main political parties will meet at the House of Commons for a debate entitled ‘Science and the General Election 2010′. The launch of the Royal Society report today coincides with the publication of a document by the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CASE) ‘Building our Future with Science and Engineering’, which urges politicians to develop coordinated long-term policies for science and engineering. A letter from CASE was published in the Times yesterday demanding that the party leaders articulate their policies on science and engineering.

A new study, the results of which have been released as part of the ongoing analysis of data collected as part of the 2007 Countryside Survey, is at odds with a previous accepted analysis of carbon released from soil in England and Wales.

In 2005, Nature published the results of a study led by Prof. Guy Kirk of Cranfield University, based on the National Soil Inventory, a series of measures taken between 1978 – 83 and 1994 – 2003. Prof. Kirk and colleagues estimated that from 1978- 2003 there had been an estimated loss of 4m tonnes of carbon a year from the soils of England and Wales. Because of Scotland’s peaty soils, the team estimated that the total loss of carbon from the whole of the UK over this period was approximately 13m tonnes. As the loss had occurred across all land types the team suggested that the losses were linked to climate change.

Now a team led by Professor Bridget Emmett at CEH Bangor has compared Countryside Survey data collected between 1978 and 2007. The ecologists found that the carbon concentration in the top 15cm of the soil increased between 1978 – 1998 and then decreased from 1998 – 2007, leading to no net change in soil carbon concentrations. In arable land there was a net loss of carbon, probably due to soil disturbance through ploughing.

Speaking to the Observer, where the story was reported yesterday, Prof. Emmett said that “the amount of carbon in topsoils across England and Wales is about 2bn tonnes so detecting a change of even 4m tonnes per year is very challenging. Small differences in methods between the two surveys can therefore have a large effect”. Scientists have proposed that a study group with an independent statistical expert should be convened to examine why the two studies may differ.

Rise in UK carbon emissions disputed by report: Observer, Sunday 7th March, Juliette Jowit.

Science policy professionals met on Wednesday 3 March for a ‘Policy Lunchbox’ Seminar organised by the Biochemical Society and British Ecological Society. This seminar in the Policy Lunchbox series was led by Jane Butcher, Deputy Director, UK Resource Centre (UKRC) for Women in SET, on the topic of ‘Women in science: a policy perspective’. Jane’s presentation stressed the importance of maintaining the presence of the issues facing women in science on the agenda of the next Government, and how working collaboratively this might be achieved.

The vision of UKRC is that “by 2030 we will have an environment in UK Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) employment, research and policy making, in which women contribute to, participate in and share the benefit equally to their male counterparts”. The UKRC has recently published its Annual Review summarising its work and achievements over the past 18 months, including responding to consultations, providing briefings to parliamentarians and contributing to numerous policy initiatives.

This policy environment is highly complex: stereotyping and unconscious bias is brought about and reinforced by the employment life cycle. This includes inputs from society, education and employment policies and environments and life styles. Given this complexity, it is important to UKRC that encouragement of women in science is not just done from an early careers perspective, but looking towards the long term sustainability of increased numbers of women in SET – which includes the retention of those already employed in the sector.

The UKRC has six messages to the Government that would be crucial for building on the current momentum for change:
1. Leadership and top level support for change
2. Attracting and retaining women and girls to study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths)
3. Making the most of the talents of UK’s trained and qualified people to build the workforce.
4. Make SET learning and employment free from gender stereotyping
5. Take measures to make equality in SET happen
6. Support and fund the UKRC in its work, and strengthen its role in leading, providing services, influencing and innovating.

Jane led the discussion on how these goals might be achieved, sharing the ways in which the UKRC is working towards them. The advantages of targets for the numbers of women in SET versus quotas were considered: although rigid quotas have been seen to work in Norway, for the moment they are seen to be unpalatable and supported targets may be more pragmatic.

The role that professional bodies and learned societies might play in supporting the adult careers strategy was discussed: UKRC view professional bodies as key stakeholders, who act as influencers, leaders and champions for the equality agenda. Yet at the same time, Jane mentioned that it was tricky to get these organisations to look reflexively at their own working environment and to what extent they implement equality policies. Jane discussed the idea that some organisations don’t know how to implement these policies and shared some of the initiatives that UKRC are engaged with. This includes the SPIDER (STEM Professional Institutions Diversity and Equality Resources project) network and incentives such as the SET Fair Standard, which recognises good practice. The group discussed how their own organisations had engaged with these policies, discussing the values of initiatives such as job shares and the value of encouraging a wider working environment that valued flexibility to both men and women.

Integrating science, education, employment and gender policies is at times difficult to reconcile coherently. It was agreed that it is sometimes difficult or felt as inappropriate to raise gender concerns in wider policy areas. Jane gave the example of the Research Excellence Framework as an example of why it was important to push the gender issue: the proposed system pushes more emphasis to impact and mobility, which could inadvertently disadvantage women. At the same time, the UKRC felt that more emphasis on the work environment in the funding assessment criteria would provide an incentive for higher education institutions in incorporate equality policy into their employment practices. It was argued that with key policy papers such as higher ambitions and innovation nation largely ignoring gender equality issues, it was all the more important to proactively introduce these issues to the agenda, rather than waiting to respond.

Collaboration could be one way to achieve sustainable change. This would also solve the issue of reconciling gender policy in science with the wider agenda. Furthermore, the Government needs to encourage coherence between the legislation and stakeholders, as well as the disparate Government departments responsible for science and gender policies. The group agreed that a figurehead within Government might be useful to champion change, bringing together other interested individuals within Parliament e.g. All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in Science.

Policy Lunchbox is an informal network of individuals working in science policy. The next meeting, ‘Science Policy in Europe‘ is on Wednesday 27th April.

Join the Policy Lunchbox mailing list.

The BES believes that better retention of women in ecology will lead to the creation of a more diverse, stimulating and talented research community, in an inclusive and positive working environment. Find out more about the Society’s mentoring scheme for women in ecology.

A Parliamentary Seminar was held today to discuss the findings of the Foresight report ‘Land Use Futures: making the most of land in the 21st century’, which was launched last week. The event was jointly hosted by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and Foresight, which is based within the Government Office for Science.

The Head of Foresight, Professor Sandy Thomas, opened the seminar by explaining why this report is much needed: the pressures on land use are changing dramatically, due to issues such as climate change adaptation, changing demography and new regulatory commitments, such as targets for renewable energy. She listed the many uses of land, including food, energy production, supporting biodiversity and managing flood risk. However, she explained that this versatility is a double-edged sword, because it leads to competing demands on land. The Land Use Futures report takes an even-handed and practical view of land use, through extensive consultation with stakeholders. The report looks 50 years into the future and draws on scenarios and past lessons to suggest future directions.

The report has a broad technical and cross-sectoral scope. It considers potential new patterns of land use and demands, due to drivers such as new technologies and economic growth, showing that a reappraisal of land use is necessary to address these future challenges. Some specific issues regarding future land use were raised at the seminar. Given that policy has led to the development of more Brownfield land in recent years, there are concerns about the future availability of this land, and whether development of these areas may lead to sacrifices in terms of services provided such as water run-off. Supply of water for future developments in the South East of England was also raised as a major concern.

In order to achieve the goal of ‘Making the most of land in the 21st century’, the report emphasises the importance of an integrated approach between government departments and stakeholders. National objectives need to be aligned with regional and local interests, including incentive schemes, and more systematic incorporation of evidence is required to make informed and sustainable decisions. Professor Thomas outlined the next steps following the publication of the report. Firstly, political decisions will need to be made in order to establish the balance between incentives, regulations and market factors; secondly, Government departments, stakeholders and Foresight will work out detailed proposals for change; and finally, detailed proposals will be sent to ministers.

The story of forestry in Britain is unique. Our forests provide us with a range of benefits reflecting the changing needs and demands of society. Today, trees, woods and forests are expected to contribute to improving health, building resilient communities, and adapting to climate change. As British society’s perceptions and relationship with woods and trees change, the response is an evolution of policy and governance systems, forms of engagement, and mitigation actions in urban and rural areas.

Aimed at policy makers, researchers and agencies involved in British forestry and land use, the objectives of this conference, organised by Forest Research, the Research Agency of the Forestry Commission, are to:
• discuss societal and economic trends shaping the management of British trees and forests in both urban and rural contexts;
• share experiences of responses to these trends and how society can successfully engage with its woodland resource;
• identify future research and policy directions needed to meet emerging challenges.

Further details are available from the Forestry Research website.

At the Commission for Climatology meeting in Turkey this week, the Met Office submitted a Proposal for a New International Analysis of Land Surface Air Temperature Data, a document which calls for a reassessment of more than 150 years of global temperature records. This is part of a new comprehensive approach for analysing temperature data in order to better assess the risks of dangerous climate change. This will help to strengthen decisions on adapting to the effects of global warming.

The proposal is being viewed as a bid to regain public confidence, at a time when public conviction about the threat of climate change has steeply declined: an Ipsos Mori survey published this week showed that the proportion of adults who believe that climate change is ‘definitely’ a reality has dropped from 44% to 31% during the last year. The poll of just over 1,000 people in Great Britain was taken at the end of January, shortly after the scandal concerning leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, where allegations were made that researchers had manipulated the evidence in order to support man-made global warming.

The proposal emphasises that no substantial changes in overall trends are expected as a result of the reassessment; the main purpose is to ensure that datasets are completely robust and methods are transparent.

Source: Guardian, 25th February

Last night saw the BES Policy Team attend the winter reception of the All Party Parliamentary Environment Group (APEG) at the Houses of Parliament. Delegates from NGOs and industry were joined by MPs and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates on the House of Commons Terrace, for an evening of networking and speeches from Jonathan Porritt, Peter Ainsworth MP and representatives of the energy sector.

Peter Ainsworth MP, Chair of the APEG, introduced the event by stressing the importance of highlighting the up-side of a transition to a low-carbon economy to the electorate. He praised those present from the renewable energy sector for taking advantage of opportunities to create jobs. This was a theme of the evening; the need to relate climate change and the alterations needed in society and to people’s lifestyles to their everyday concerns. In a time of economic hardship people are concerned about their jobs and livlihoods; the opportunities which a transition to a more sustainable society can bring need to be better articulated.

The event was sponsored by the Mark Group and by the Micropower Council and speakers from both bodies again stressed the positives to come from a low-carbon society. Feed-in tariffs, paying people for the electricity they generate in their own homes and feed back into the National Grid (whether through solar panels or roof-mounted wind turbines), have now been released and are due to come into force on 1st April. One speaker emphasised that generating your own electricity can now yield a return of 8% on your investment, ‘better than any bank’. Householders will need an excuse not to generate their own energy, speakers stressed.

Jonathan Porritt, former Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, praised the APEG and Peter Ainsworth in particular for work in parliament to raise the profile of environmental issues. However, politicians still haven’t woken up to the reality of what living within sustainable limits actually means, he said. Commenting on the environmental agenda for the next Parliament he saw it as unlikely that any new Prime Minister would take the difficult, innovative, decisions needed to move to a new form of economic system. He said, therefore, that backbench MPs and groups like the APEG would be more important than ever to highlight environmental concerns, particularly if no political party achieves a clear majority at the next election. He wished all the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates present luck with the election, urging them to enter parliament energised and with new ideas for reform. He stressed the need for them, and others present, to work hard to move other environmental issues up the agenda; these have not simply followed in the wake of climate change and more needs to be done to raise awareness of biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystem services – and what these too mean for society.

One powerful point made by Mr Porritt was directed at science and scientists. ‘The truth will not conquer all’, he suggested; the public will not simply accept that changes need to be made to their lifestyles if the science behind climate change is presented to them- the reality of public engagement with science is far more complex. Scientists have to be better communicators and must relate climate change to people’s everyday lives. Again, as with other speakers he stressed that the positive side of de-carbonising the economy, the wider suite of benefits it will bring to society, must be articulated.