Defra has today launched a consultation on the draft Soil Strategy for England. Views are sought particularly on the direction for soils policy in the next five to ten years, aswell as considered opinion on the current pressing challenges to soils and soil function in England .

The BES will be preparing a response to this consultation in advance of the 23 June deadline. Please contact policy@BritishEcologicalSociety if you would like to contribute to this.

Click here to access the consultation document and supplementary material.

The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee has today published the report of its inquiry into the withdrawal of funding for equivalent or lower qualifications (ELQs). The Committee find that the Government presented no compelling evidence or analysis to justify the withdrawal of funding for ELQs in 2008, prior to a planned review of funding and fees for qualifications across all sectors in 2009.

The Government’s arguments; that ELQ students were competing for places with, and displacing, those applying for first degrees and that the money withdrawn from funding ELQs would fund extra university places, were found to be without satisfactory evidence. Figures released by HEFCE in January 2008 suggest that there are no newly funded extra undergraduate places available in the first year of the scheme (2008/09).

The Committee call for a planned review on exemptions to the ELQ policy to be brought forward from December to summer 2008. They state that “exemptions from the withdrawal of funding…[should have] focus[ed] on students and courses likely to provide the greatest benefit to the economy and to meet skills shortages.” The BES argued that subjects allied to ecology should be seen as strategically important, and so exempt from the policy.

Read the Committee’s Report
Read the BES response to the Committee’s inquiry

Title: BIODIVERSITY AND OIL PALM: INTEGRATING SCIENCE AND POLICY- a scientific discussion meeting
When: 8 April 2008, 6pm. Doors open 5pm.
Venue: The Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Meeting Rooms, Regents Park, NW1 4RY

“The economic value of palm oil ensures it is here to stay, but the crisis threatening biodiversity and the environment demands immediate action. Guidelines have been produced on producing ‘sustainable’ palm oil. But recommendations concerning biodiversity impacts are vague and difficult to implement. Solutions require dialogue, and it is with this in mind that this meeting is convening representatives from Asian industry and government, conservation and science to discuss:

• How is biodiversity impacted by oil palm?
• What are the issues for industry in mitigating impacts on biodiversity?
• How can stakeholders work together to minimise conflict?

For further information about this event, visit the ZSL website.

Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor to DEFRA, has criticised the EU’s plans to introduce compulsory quotas for the use of biofuels in petrol and diesel, before research has delivered a better understanding of their impact on the environment. Under the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, to come into force next week on 1 April, all petrol and diesel must contain 2.5% biofuels. Britain must implement this quota in order to comply with its share of a 2003 EU Directive that 5.75% petrol and diesel must come from renewable sources by 2010.

The EU plans to raise the compulsory biofuels quota so that 10% of petrol and diesel should come from biofuels by 2020.

The Government has commissioned the Renewable Fuels Agency to undertake a review of the indirect impacts of biofuel production, on greenhouse gas emissions and food security. The initial report is expected in June.

Original article – The Guardian, Tuesday 25 March 2008

Nanotechnologies, artificial life and geo-engineering of the planet are just a small selection of the threats, and opportunities, for the future biodiversity of the UK, as identified by environmental policy-makers, academics and scientific journalists. The paper, published online today in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology, is the result of extensive consultation across the environmental sciences community, culminating in a two-day workshop at which 35 representatives of a range of organisations met to prioritise the top twenty-five issues.

The resulting list is intended to provide a direction to policy-makers, in deciding actions to take to deal with each, and to research funders in setting the direction of strategic research. The paper, by Professor Bill Sutherland, University of Cambridge, alerts the ecological community and policy-makers to the benefits of horizon-scanning in the environmental sciences, to identify novel challenges and opportunities ahead.

Interviewed on the Today Programme with Professor Sutherland, Mr Phil Willis MP, Chair of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, said that a “courageous government” was necessary to make decisions, based on scientific evidence, for which the public might not be fully prepared. He also highlighted the necessity for scientists and policy-makers to work more closely together than presently, to deal effectively with issues science has identified.

Link to paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology: “Future novel threats and opportunities facing UK biodiversity identified by horizon scanning“

Listen to Professor Sutherland and Phil Willis on the Today Programme, 8.40am, 20 March 2008.

The Government has announced the creation of a new body to tackle carbon emissions in Whitehall. The new Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement will help Government departments to cut waste and reduce their carbon emissions. A new post has also been created in the Government Chief Sustainability Officer to embed a ‘culture of change’ across departments.

Alongside the creation of the new Centre, the Government has accepted the recommendations of the 2007 Sustainable Development in Government report. Measures to be taken across Whitehall include phasing out bottled water in meetings and the launch of a major ‘green’ IT programme across Government in the summer. Also from the summer, all new vehicles for ministers and permanent secretaries will emit less than 130g/km of carbon. From 2010, the Government will join the Carbon Reduction Commitment, an innovative carbon trading scheme (on which DEFRA is currently consulting) to cover all government departments, banks, retailers and local authorities, to compel them to reduce their carbon emissions.

At the UN climate conference in Bali in December last year, the international community accepted the need to build forest protection into the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. However, how forests will be protected was not decided and is now being hotly contested.

Advocates of the market-approach argue that including forestry credits in carbon-trading schemes is the only way to secure the future of rainforests: “In global markets, forests are worth more dead than alive…You have to look to markets to turn around what is in fact a market failure.” The European Commission argues that including deforestation in carbon trading would result in the market becoming flooded, devaluing the system and instead wish to use some of the proceeds from carbon trading to create an international fund to tackle deforestation.

There is no dobut that a well-defined and focussed programme to tackle deforestation will have a marked effect on global emissions. Deforestation accounts for 5-6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide annually, compared with 2 gigatonnes in the entire European trading scheme.

See the original article in Nature

Research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B has shown that current methods of locating conservation reserves are inadequate to deal with future environmental changes. A team from the University of California San-Diego found that the need for conservation areas will shift geographically in the future, with rising temperatures. There will be greater need for reserves in tropical regions high in biodiversity but poor in the resources needed to protect species.

Conventional methods of choosing conservation areas are often based on past threats – an approach inadequate when projecting conservation needs into the future on a 50-100 year timescale. The researchers advocate translocation of conservation reserves – 12% of the world’s land area- according to long-term projections. Such action will require unprecedented cooperation between countries and across traditional boundaries, they say.

Link to original research paper

Applications are now invited for the 2008 BES Ministerial Shadowing Scheme.
Eight ecologists will be given the opportunity to shadow politicians for several days in London, Edinburgh or Brussels, to be followed by a wrap-up workshop in London. Joan Ruddock MP, Minister for Climate Change Biodiversity and Waste at the UK parliament, John Bowis, MEP and Linda McAvan, MEP, have all agreed to take part. Dr Ian Bainbridge, Chief Ecological Advisor for Scotland, will also host an ecologist at the Scottish Government.

This fantastic opportunity is available to current members of the BES, based at an academic institution or equivalent body and who completed their PhD no more than eight years ago. The deadline for applications is Friday 18 April.

Find out more here.

Scientists studying the impact of insect feeding on a birch species (Betula pubescens) native to Northern Europe have concluded that damage to European forests through insect feeding will be exacerbated by increased global warming.

Trees damaged by insects compete less well with other species. Therefore the scientists predict a shift in the future composition of European forests as temperatures increase, with a consequent effect on forest ecosystems. As temperatures rise, insects are set to spread further north into Europe, with increasing numbers surviving milder winters. Eastern areas of Northern Europe could see damage to leaves of the birch trees increase by 5%, whilst a one degree rise in summer temperature in Scandinavia could double the incidence of insect damage.

The scientists recommend that an increase in insect damage to trees should be taken into account when modelling the impact of climate change on ecosystems.

Wolf, A., M. V. Kozlov and T. V. Callaghan (2008). Impact of non-outbreak insect damage on vegetation in northern Europe will be greater than expected during a changing climate. Climatic Change 87: 91-106.