Be behind the headlines!

Scientists, social scientists, engineers and clinicians can experience life in the heart of the newsroom by applying for a British Science Association 2012 Media Fellowship.

Spend 3-8 weeks this summer working with hosts including the BBC, Guardian and Nature to produce accurate, well-informed news about developments in science, and work alongside the UK’s top science editors in the British Science Festival Press Centre.

Return to work with media confidence, contacts, and first-class communication skills.

“I came away brimming with ideas, skills and advice for my researcher peers and I met some amazing people with the same values and drive as me. It was extremely interesting, educational and fun I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the world outside their research bubble.” Media Fellow

Apply online from 16 January – 11 March 2012

We welcome applications from researchers at all stages of their career.

Sponsored by RCUK, Wellcome Trust, BBSRC, STFC and the IET

The British Ecological Society has a opportunity for a paid internship to assist the Science Policy Team for two days a week for three months at the Society’s office in central London.

Policy Interns will help:

•Monitor legislation and policy developments relevant to the science of ecology;
•Assist with the preparation of policy statements, briefing papers and responses to Government consultations;
•Assist with the organisation of policy meetings and events;
•Assist with administrative tasks.

Qualifications and skills:

•Graduate;
•Knowledge or interest in the science of ecology;
•Knowledge or interest in public policy;
•Excellent IT skills.

To apply please send a covering letter (no more than one side of A4) and a CV (no more than two sides of A4) to Ceri Margerison, Policy Manager, at Policy@BritishEcologicalSociety.org

The closing date for this opportunity is 17.00 on Thursday 22nd March, 2012.

The Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, today announced the creation of 12 new Nature Improvement Areas (NIA) across England. NIAs were a flagship policy contained in last year’s Natural Environment White Paper “The Natural Choice”, which set out aims to improve the quality of the natural environment across England, halt the decline in habitats and species, and strengthen the connection between people and nature. Defra launched a competition to fund an initial 12 NIAs in July 2011, judged by a panel led by Professor Sir John Lawton. 76 applications were received and 15 applicants were invited to give presentations to the panel before 12 were selected to receive Government funding. The successful partnerships will begin work in April 2012 each receiving a share of the £7.5 million fund over 2012-2015, provided by the Defra family.

At the announcement of the new wildlife havens, Mrs Spelman said: “Each of these projects has something different to offer – from the urban areas of Birmingham and the Black Country to the rivers and woods of North Devon; from marshes, coalfields and wetlands to woodland and arable chalkland and grassland. The exciting wildlife projects are the result of different organisations all working together with a common purpose – to safeguard our wildlife for generations to come”.

The 12 NIAs will be:
•Birmingham and the Black Country Living Landscape: includes urban, wetland, river and heath habitats. It will create heathland on brownfield sites and 40 hectares of new native woodland;
•Dark Peak: includes moorland and woodland in the Peak District National Park. It will restore habitats such as upland heathland and create 210 hectares of native woodland;
•Dearne Valley Green Heart: is mostly on farmland and former mining settlements with woodland and wetland. It will restore the River Don floodplain and create new wetlands and woodlands
•Greater Thames Marshes: includes agricultural marsh and urban habitats. It will create and enhance grazing marsh, salt marsh and mudflat habitats;
•Humberhead Levels: straddling Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, it is mainly wetland, lowland and peat habitats. It will create or restore at least 1,427 hectares of wetland habitat;
•Marlborough Downs: this is predominantly a farmer-led partnership looking to restore chalk and grassland habitats and increase the numbers of farmland birds as well as creating a network of traditional clay-lined dewponds to act as wildlife havens;
•Meres and Mosses of the Marches: incorporates wetlands, peat bogs and ponds in Cheshire. It will aim to reduce diffuse pollution by working with farmers, improve peatlands and restore wildlife areas around the River Perry;
•Morecambe Bay Limestones and Wetlands: the most northerly NIA, this consists of limestone, wetland and grassland habitats. It will restore coast and freshwater wetlands and create 200 hectares of woodland, planting 10,000 native trees and develop habitat for six species;
•Nene Valley: within the River Nene regional park, this project will work with farmers to restore habitats and restore tributaries and reaches of the River Nene;
•Northern Devon: this incorporates river, woodland and grassland. The project will recreate and restore 1,000 hectares of priority habitat and restore the River Torridge so that it can support the critically endangered freshwater pearl mussel;
•South Downs Way Ahead: encompasses key chalk sites of the South Downs National Park. The NIA will restore 1,000 hectares of chalk grassland and encourage the return of the Duke of Burgundy butterfly and several species of farmland birds; and
•Wild Purbeck: is a variety of river, wetland, heath and woodland habitat as well as the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe. This NIA will introduce livestock to manage heathland , restore wetland and create or restore 15 ponds as well as creating 120 hectares of new woodland and a new seven hectare saline lagoon.

Full story available on the Defra website.

The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, ‘Scotland’s Biodiversity: It’s in Your Hands‘ is currently undergoing a review and a pre-consultation draft of the new strategy was published on the 15th February.

The Scottish Government published the first Biodiversity Strategy in 2004 with the aim of conserving biodiversity ‘for the health, enjoyment and wellbeing of the people of Scotland now and in the future’. It fulfilled Scotland’s obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity and to the UK BAP, and is intended to cover the period up to 2030.

The current review will update the Strategy to meet the new challeneges and targets for 2020 as set out in the UN ‘Aichi’ targets and the European Biodiversity Strategy. Consultation on the proposed changes will be ongoing over the summer.

The draft strategy review is available from the Scottish Natural Heritage website, and updates on the consultation will be published by The Scottish Government.

To be held on 25th May 2012

UK uplands store 5.1 billion tonnes of carbon in their soils. Can we use management to support the ecosystem services of uplands and their existing carbon stocks – to benefit for our long-term national climate change strategy?

This meeting is a unique opportunity to engage with a range of key stakeholders, which will allow cooperative communication to direct future work in upland conservation and aid policy development.

The aims of the meeting are as follows:

1. To engage with a range of stakeholders with a collective interest in upland conservation
2. Discuss opportunities that exist for carbon storage in suitable upland habitats and the implications of a future elevated CO2 climate
3. Demonstrate the added value that management for soil carbon sequestration can offer in several types of upland habitats
4. Provide a forum to discuss future strategies and directions that will optimise management of upland areas to benefit their ecosystem services, including below-ground carbon storage and carbon capture potential

For further information and to register attendance, contact Dr Alan Jones.

The 2012 conference of the IUCN UK National Committee is taking place on Thursday 26th April, considering the theme of protected areas in the United Kingdom.

“A platform for 21st Century protected area managers and policy makers to share best practice and consider existing and new policy and systems, opportunities and challenges. Development, climate change, economic constraints, and the needs of nature and people are all issues affecting the work of the protected areas community. This is a superb opportunity for protected area practitioners and policy makers from across the UK to come together, share and debate new and innovative ideas.”

Registration is £50 and further details are available from the IUCN UK website.

The Institute of European Environmental Policy (IEEP) is recruiting for a permanent, full-time Biodiversity Policy Analyst, to be based in the Institute’s office in Brussels. The post-holder will work as part of a small team to inform the development of biodiversity policy and related matters by the European Commission, including the development of an ecosystem approach to policy-making.

Key tasks will include:

- Drafting reports led by yourself or others, which typically will focus on policy issues, at a European or national level;- Undertaking literature reviews, the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, interviews, workshops and case studies;
-Assisting with, and in some cases leading the preparation of tenders and funding proposals;
-Playing a role in project development, management and administration;
-Providing regular briefing notes on developments in EU biodiversity policy and their implications;
-Working with colleagues to develop robust policy positions on behalf of the Institute;
-Promoting policy messages to wider audiences, beyond immediate client groups or sponsors, inter alia through contributing to the Institute’s communication, outreach and training activities. This will involve presentations to conferences and workshops;

For more about the role and for details of how to apply (closing date Monday 5th March) see the IEEP website.

Kennedy Warne, author of “Let Them Eat Shrimp: The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea”, answered a few questions, posed by The Ecologist, about the importance of mangroves, the devastation caused by shrimp farming and his experiences researching his book.

You call mangroves the “rainforests of the sea”. While most people know about rainforests, most don’t know about mangroves. Why is that and why are they important?

Kennedy Warne: Mangroves tend to be associated with mud, and most people don’t like mud. (With the possible exception of potters). They also tend to harbour mosquitoes, and very few people (apart from entomologists) like mosquitoes. So there are a couple of reasons straight off the bat why mangroves have been maligned and disrespected – or simply ignored. While terrestrial tropical rainforests aren’t exactly fun places to be, with their torpid heat, abundance of bugs, high rainfall and other challenging attributes, people still recognise their importance and endorse efforts to prevent their destruction. Why aren’t mangroves higher on the environmental priority list? I don’t know. Their contribution to the planet and to humankind is immense. As I write in the book, they serve as coastal barricades and land stabilizers; they supply nutrients to the sea and nursery grounds for marine life; and they provide homes and livelihoods for millions of people across the tropical world.

In the book you detail the devastation caused by shrimp aquaculture. How has the western taste for massive amounts of this “luxury” food at a cheap price played a role?

The problem with shrimp aquaculture is that in the industry’s pioneering years, during the 1970s and 1980s, the ideal site for a shrimp pond happened to be at about the same position on the shore that mangroves flourish: low enough to get occasional tidal flow, but high enough not to be affected by tides all the time. Because mangrove forests tended to be public lands occupied by subsistence communities, they were readily appropriated by a combination of commercial aggression and governmental compliance.

Governments in developing countries became keen backers of shrimp farming because shrimp fetched a high price in the West, and was therefore a reliable source of foreign exchange. It was relatively easy for aquaculture corporations to clear mangroves and build shrimp ponds, the land was cheap to rent and there was plenty of it, so the cost of farming shrimp was low. Probably the most odious part of the early years of shrimp farming was that when one pond was nutritionally exhausted, the company would abandon it and bulldoze some more mangroves to build a new one. So the forests gave way to ever-expanding swathes of ponds. And all the while, consumers in the West couldn’t believe their luck, that such a tasty seafood was flooding into supermarket freezers and on to restaurant menus for such a cheap price. They never made the connection between cheap shrimp and disappearing mangrove forests.

As you travelled, you say first-hand the devastation caused by shrimp aquaculture and massive coastal development. How has this impacted both the environment and the local communities?

When you read statistic of how much mangrove forest individual countires have lost – 50 per cent, 60 per cent, 70 per cent – it can be very hard to get a picture of what those coastlines would have looked like if they had been left alone. But then you go to a place like the Sundarbans, the largest tract of mangrove in the world, and it starts to dawn on you the magnitude of what has been lost. And because mangroves are among the most biologically diverse forests on earth, you also realise that many species that rely on mangroves have disappeared too. Australian writer Tim Flannery wrote a book called A Gap in Nature, and that is what mangrove clearance caused: a very large, unfillable gap in nature.

Initially, my interest was focused on the natural history of mangroves. But then I started to meet people whose lives had been disrupted – more than most, catastrophically damaged – by mangrove deforestation, and I started to turn my attention to the impact mangrove loss was having on coastal communities. They were losing a physical resource, of course – source of timber, thatch, medicine, food – but they were also losing a defining part of their identity as forest dwellers. It would be like living next to a river and waking up one morning and finding the river was gone. They plight affected me deeply.

The full article appeared in The Ecologist, February 17th.

In 2009, Professor John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, used the term ‘perfect storm’ to describe the critical combination of food shortages, water scarcity and insufficient energy resources facing the world’s population, predicting these would come to a head in 2030 resulting in significant social unrest and destabilisation. A conference last week, jointly hosted by WWF-UK and Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) , provided an opportunity to consider the solutions available for ‘Navigating the Perfect Storm’.

The well-attended event opened with an introduction by Prof. Beddington who commented that the three years since his oft-quoted statement has been a period of significant and rapid change in factors such as food prices, energy and water demand, and population. It is the latter issue which has really drawn Prof. Beddington’s attention and has emerged as a crucial concern which ‘we haven’t thought enough about’. Projections are for 1 billion more people in just 13 years, meaning that the timetable for action it is incredibly short. Already at current population levels, millions are without access to food, water and electricity. According to Prof Beddington, tackling these issues in a sustainable way is the ‘biggest challenge we’ve got’, yet the international community has so far ‘failed to get to grips’ with it. However, he said, these acute challenges also create opportunities for exciting and important innovations.

Ivan Lewis, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, reiterated that the current period of ‘momentous international change’ presents both both major challenges and potential opportunities in his keynote speech. He stated that the range and scale of current global challenges mean the ‘business as usual’ paradigm is no longer acceptable or sustainable and a ‘new covenant for development’, replacing the paternalistic relationship between developed and developing countries with a ‘tripartite, dynamic network’ for international cooperation, will be necessary. In this holistic approach, he stated, sustainable development will need to become the foundation of any development framework rather than the ‘bolt on’ it has often been. This change in approach will require strong political leadership and commitment to international development which Mr Lewis feels the current government is lacking but that the Labour party has begun to address in its formation of a ‘Road to Rio’ joint working group, bringing together ministers from various teams ahead of the Rio+20 conference in June this year. Mr Lewis stated that international conferences and agreements have often proved ineffective in the past due to the influence of strong individual interests. However, international binding targets drive action, even if they are not met. Mr Lewis concluded that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate in policy making and that scientists and politicians should play to their strengths and break down the barriers between them to cooperate on forming policy.

A call for a new policy approach was identified by Professor Bill Adams of University of Cambridge as one of the main topics of conversation surrounding the upcoming Rio+20 conference. Some people have high hopes that the summit will address many of the major global issues and argue that the process is ‘honing in on a solution’. However, others see it as simply a ‘spiral of talk’. Prof. Adams put the upcoming conference in the context of 40 years since the publication of ‘Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Since then, he stated, we have made progress in some ways but are at a point in what he called ‘the Anthropocene’ where ‘the rates, scales, kinds, and combinations of changes occurring now are fundamentally different from those at any other time in history’ (quoted from Vistousek et al). Consequently, we need new policy approaches and innovative solutions which holistically address the needs of society, the economy and the environment. Prof. Adams argued that this will require a transformation of production and consumption to reduce resource demand and improve equity. This ‘contraction and convergence’ will be ‘profoundly difficult’ due to the challenge of persuading populations in both developed and developing to adjust their material aspirations. Prof. Adams concluded that the current situation is ‘an uncomfortable place to be’ but exciting too as important political figures are beginning to recognise that a change in lifestyles and consumption is necessary to address the ‘perfect storm’ of issues facing the world.

Providing a different perspective, Dr Sejal Worah shared observations from her work as Programmes Director for the WWF in India, a country where there has been considerable economic development recently but where acute poverty and inequality, environmental damage and resource depletion persist. Dr Worah stated that efficiency and innovation offer ‘low hanging fruit’ in the pursuit of sustainable development, but that radical transformational changes are also necessary; India ‘has no choice but to develop differently to how industrialised countries developed’. She described a project in the Sundarbans which demonstrates the opportunity for technology ‘leap-frogging’; creation of a solar power station in the region resulted in community empowerment and a reduction in its reliance on unsustainable net-fishing whilst bypassing the use of unsustainable fossil fuels. Another project in the Himalayas restored depleted freshwater springs through various technical solutions developed in partnership with local communities and after a 100-110% increase in stream discharge, the Indian government scaled the approach up to a national scope. The lesson from this, Dr Worah said, is that it successful local solutions are possible and suitable for scaling-up, providing local communities are engaged and technical solutions are matched to the culture, society and economy.

The conference was rounded up with a brief panel discussion involving the four speakers alongside Katie Critchlow of BigGreenChange, Miguel Petana, Vice-President of Global External Affairs at Unilever and Chris Whaley, Head of European and International Co-ordination Division at Defra. The panel agreed that tackling the resource issues facing us will require accounting for the natural environment within economic meaures. Mr Whaley was of the opinion that there is a need to ‘trim down’ on the number of international conventions and review current objectives to focus on feasible goals. Prof. Adams agreed that alongside international policy, there is need to focus on scientific research into specific issues such as crop disease. Mr Petana said consumer education will play a role in reducing the impact of consumption whilst Ms Critchlow suggested a move towards legislating rather than persuading may be necessary.

In answer to a final question as to whether the panel felt optimistic about the current situation, two answered ‘no’, but the remainder were positive about our chances of navigating the perfect storm.

The Welsh government is seeking opinions on two major new proposals for the future of Wales’ environmental policy.

Following the announcement of Welsh Environment Minister John Griffiths in November last year proposing the development of a single body to replace the Countryside Council for Wales, the Environment Agency Wales, and the Forestry Commission for Wales, a consultation was launched earlier this month. The intention in creating a single body is to ensure more effective and sustainable management of Wales’ natural resources whilst minimising costs. The consultation will focus on issues including the legal change needed to establish a new body and definition of its overall purpose. Interested parties have the opportunity to submit their reactions to the proposal until May 2nd.

Simultaneously, a consultation is underway into a recently published Green Paper entitled ‘Sustaining a Living Wales’. The paper is a follow up to the government’s strategy ‘A Living Wales’ developed in 2010 and proposes a change in the governance and delivery of environmental management and regulation to an ecosystem-based approach. The consultation, launched at the end of January this year, is designed to assess the degree of support for such a radical change and whether the tools the government proposes are seen to be the right ones.