Tuesday 13th March 2012
The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) 1 Carlton House Terrace, London

Business has been put at the centre of the stage to deliver the sustainable economy that the Government pledges to provide in the Natural Environment White Paper (NEWP).This creates real opportunities for businesses, in terms of new markets (e.g. via Payment for Ecosystem Services/Offsets/Restoration) and new collaborations with delivery agencies and other institutions (e.g. via Nature Improvement Areas).

This one-day event, supported by professional and business bodies, will provide a forum for businesses to engage directly with some of the key researchers working in this area.

With top speakers including Prof. Ian Bateman (Co-Leader of the Valuing Nature Network), Prof. Rosie Hails, MBE, (Leader of the Natural Capital Initiative), Prof. Dave Rafaelli (Leader of NERC’s Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Programme) and Dr Rob Bradburne of Defra, as well as key business leaders, the day will provide a mix of speakers, discussion and project-development breakout sessions.

Outcomes of the day will include:
 Identification of specific areas where there are already tools that could be used or developed further by industry in collaboration with academia
 Identification of common themes of interest and actions that would address these
 Initiation of project developments for internship funding

To register for this free event and for full details of the day and directions to IOM please go to http://natural-capital.eventbrite.com.

SAC & SEPA BIENNIAL CONFERENCE (in association with Forest Research, the James Hutton Institute and Scottish Natural Heritage)
3-4 April 2012, Edinburgh
Integrated management of our agricultural and forestry landscapes is essential to the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. However, current understanding of the linkages between different ecosystems and the services they provide is incomplete. The management implemented therefore needs to be flexible to adapt to these uncertainties. The need for implementation at the landscape scale also means integrating management practices across different land-managers.

This conference will seek to present not only the best possible scientific understanding of the complexities associated with the delivery of multiple ecosystem services but also provide a forum to raise and discuss what still needs to be done to have an ecosystem approach recognised and supported by land managers, researchers and policy makers. The conference will be relevant to members of all three of these target audiences.

A range of platform presentations will be made under the four conference themes:
1. How are the linkages between ecosystems and the services they provide currently understood, viewed and valued?

2. What does the delivery of multiple ecosystem services mean at a practical level in terms of management and scale of implementation?

3. How does the governance of landscape-scale management affect the delivery of multiple ecosystem services?

4. How does our thinking, management practices and policies need to adapt?

The keynotes for each of the four themes will be given by Jonathan Pryce from the Scottish Government (Theme 1), Brian Chambers from ADAS (Theme 2), Heidi Wittmer from Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Theme 3) and Tom Crompton from WWF (Theme 4).

Venue, Costs and Accommodation

The Conference will take place in the John McIntyre Conference Centre of the University of Edinburgh on 3-4 April 2012. Details of Costs and Accommodation can be found at www.sac.ac.uk/sacsepaconf.

A fusion of economics and ecology is required to properly measure and capture the value of biodiversity. That was the message of an event at Parliament earlier today organised by Biodiversity, the UK all party parliamentary group, chaired by Barry Gardiner MP, and attended by the BES Policy Team.

Lord Deben, president of GLOBE International, began proceedings emphasising the need for an optimistic outlook by ecologists with regards to biodiversity, saying “misery never convinces” and that we should “celebrate 30 years of growing awareness for environmental issues”. Lord Deben went on to highlight the importance of establishing a method for the valuation of natural capital as quickly as possible so that biodiversity impoverishment “can no longer be avoided on the political agenda”.

Professor David Hill of the Environment Bank went on to discuss the need for moving away from seeing the environment as a “charitable exercise”, and to support the establishment of policies that enable financial markets to properly value ecosystems. Professor Hill echoed Lord Deben’s calls for action stating “don’t start, don’t go”.

Dr Tim Jenkins, director of the Great Transition Initiative suggested that well-being and not wealth needs to be the measure of progress within society and that the value of natural capital may be at a critical threshold. Dr Giles Atkinson, of the London School of Economics, agreed that wealth should be measured in more depth than from a purely financial point of view and joked that economists were “worried about adding together, literally, apples and oranges”.

Dr Roddy Farley of the Scottish Natural Heritage presented cause for optimism in his assessment that Scottish natural capital was on the rise but reinstated the need for a transparent, readily available measurement for the value of biodiversity which can be used on policy time frames.

The final speaker was Pandev Sukhdev, author of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, who highlighted the problem of the economic invisibility of nature and how this can result in short term private profits but far more damaging long term public losses. He sited an example of shrimp farms in south Thailand where the initial short-term profit was grossly out weighed by the long-term cost when natural capital losses were factored in.

The first of four webcast Earth Debates in advance of Rio+20 will happen at 19.00 on Wednesday 25 January.

Ecosystem services – can we put a price on nature? will be chaired by BBC Environment correspondent Richard Black. The panellists will comprise:
• The Rt Hon Caroline Spelman MP, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who is the lead representative at Rio+20 for the UK
• Claire Brown was a senior scientist at UNEP-WCMC who coordinated the UK National Ecosystem Assessment development
• Will Evison, an environmental economist with leading consultants PwC was the editor of the TEEB for Business report.
• Ian Dickie, a Director of the city business Aldersgate group which lobbies for better business engagement in the green economy.
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What questions would you like the experts to answer? Tweet your views now using hashtag #earthdebates and join the debate online.

With thanks to the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity (UNDB) UK Friends Newsletter (13 January 2012) for this information.

The Rio +20 Earth Summit, taking place in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, needs to build upon the momentum begun by the last round of UNFCCC climate change negotiations in Duban, South Africa. That was the message of an event in Parliament yesterday evening, organised by the Aldersgate Group (co-sponsored by WWF) and attended by the BES Policy Team.

Chris Huhne MP, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, gave the opening speech, emphasising the positives which had emerged from the climate change negotiations; primarily from the ‘huddle’ called on the conference floor at the eleventh hour by the South African delegation. Using the analogy of the film ‘Sliding Doors’, where each of two realities were equally possible depending on the choices made in an instant, Chris Huhne suggested that the outcomes of the talks could have been very different, if it wasn’t for strong leadership by a number of countries.

Outcomes from Durban included an extension to the Kyoto Protocol and a commitment to develop a successor- an international legally-binding framework to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases – no later than 2015, to come into force in 2020. Parties to the negotiations have also recognised the need for greater urgency and ambition in tackling emissions; acknowledging that the timetable for action and the pledged emissions cuts lag someway behind the necessary momentum suggested by climate science.

One of the important commitments to emerge from Durban is to a Green Climate Fund, which will assist developing countries in their efforts to establish clean energy mechanisms. Member countries of the UNFCCC are required to contribute to the fund, although the Secretary of State and others at the Aldersgate Group event recognised that public money will need to be used to leverage significant amounts of private funding for the mechanism to be a success; there were questions around whether and how, this would be possible. The Green Climate Fund builds on the pledges made at the Copenhagen negotiations in 2009, to mobilise $100 billion per year for clilmate change adaptation and mitigation.

In a question and answer session to follow the Secretary of State’s speech, one delegate challenged the Government to be yet more ambitious during international negotiations, inviting Chris Huhne to give his view on innovative approaches that can really help to move the international community towards a ‘paradigm shift’ and new political reality. To this, Chris Huhne replied that investment in science and innovation would be key; an interesting statement given the extensive analysis in recent months by the Campaign for Science and Engineering that the UK science budget is actually going to decline in real terms to 2015, whilst other countries are investing in R and D as a way out of recession.

David Nussbaum, CEO of WWF UK, speaking later in the evening, emphasised the importance of Rio +20 leading to action, not rhetoric and to a vision of human development proceeding in parallel with conservation of the planet’s ‘life support systems’ (ecosystem services). Consistency across the UK Government will be vital. A speaker from the Aldersgate Group echoed this point when calling for the Prime Minister to vest genuine responsibility in the negotiating team from Defra who will be sent to Rio; allowing substantial pledges to action to be made.

Finally, a speaker from Philips stressed the need for Rio +20 to build on the momentum and atmosphere of change which he felt was in evidence at Durban. To make genuine progress: efforts to advance technology must be continued; policy frameworks must be developed (a global treaty); innovative financing mechanisms are needed to take care of the upfront investments that will be necessary, along with changes to budgeting practice – emphasising that upfront costs may be high but long-term, this investment will reap dividends. Finally, it is vital to communicate the ecological benefits of clean energy and a decarbonised, sustainable economy to the public at large but, beyond this, the social benefits of this transition. Ultimately, this will translate to changes in individuals’ mindsets and so onwards to voting choices, consumer behaviour and to business decisions.

The final speaker, from the Aldersgate Group, was pragmatic, saying that ‘Durban teaches us that we must manage our expectations for Rio’; the pace of political negotiations and of change can be achingly slow. Alongside international negotiations, he suggested, we must develop a pluralistic consensus on the need for change.

An Aldersgate Group event on 16th May will see Secretary of State for the Environment, Caroline Spelman MP, deliver a speech looking forward to Rio +20 and outlining the UK Government’s position on the Summit.

Applications can now be made to attend the ‘Workshop for Economists and Ecologists’ run by the Natural Capital Initiative. The workshop is aimed at encouraging interdisciplinary cooperation and knowledge exchange between economists and ecologists, with the goal of informing public policy. Sustainable agriculture will be used as the case study theme.

The workshop will take place on Tuesday 8th May 2012 at Charles Darwin House, London.

The day will begin with presentations outlining current ecological and economic perspectives on sustainable agriculture after which there will be a panel discussion, followed by group sessions to identify possible opportunities for interdisciplinary work.

If you would like to participate, please register by sending a summary of up to 150 words of how you would benefit from attending the event, as well as your position in any organisation you are affiliated with, and send to secretariat@naturalcapitalinitiative.org.uk by the 31st January 2012.

Interested in discussing the challenges facing Scotland’s biodiversity to 2020 and helping to inform the development of Scotland’s draft Biodiversity Strategy? Come along to a meeting in Edinburgh on 8th – 9th March 2012. BES members can attend for FREE (but must register in advance).

The BES is working with the British Society of Soil Science and the Scottish Government’s Biodiversity Science Group to organise a one-day conference (9th March), an evening lecture, reception and dinner (8th March) at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The meeting will:

•Introduce the science community in Scotland to the revision of Scotland’s Biodiversity Strategy;
•Explore the scale of the challenges facing the implementation of an ecosystem approach in Scotland;
•Provide an opportunity for the science community to find out about the needs of policy-makers;
•Provide an opportunity for networking between the science and policy communities.

The evening reception will celebrate the launch of the BES Scotland Policy Group, a new initiative from the Society that aims to link members of the Society in Scotland who are interested in informing policy development and through this to assist the Society’s policy team in doing the same.

Confirmed speakers for the 9th of March include: Colin Moffatt, Head of Science at Marine Scotland; Ken Norris, biodiversity theme leader at NERC and biodiversity chapter lead in the National Ecosystem Assessment; Helaina Black, James Hutton Institute; and Chris Quine, Forest Research.

Poster abstracts are invited upon registration. We particularly welcome registration by students to this meeting and will be offering a prize for the best poster.

Full details of the programme and how to register are available from the BES website.

A healthy natural environment is the foundation of a sustainable future with prospering communities. In the UK and elsewhere, pioneering projects are exploring new ways of managing land and sea environments and the benefits people derive from them. In particular, they are reflecting an ‘ecosystems approach’: a holistic and inclusive approach to promoting the sustainable use of natural resources and taking better account of the values people hold for the environment. A new network has been sponsored by Defra with the aim of sharing experience from projects taking an ecosystems approach. Entitled the Ecosystems Knowledge Network, it will stimulate knowledge exchange and practical learning across the country. It will assist organisations and groups to understand how an ecosystems approach can help build sustainable communities. The Natural Capital Initiative, one of the Society of Biology’s Special Interest Groups, is developing the network in an independent partnership involving the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Fabis Consulting, the University of Exeter (Centre for Rural Policy Research) and Countryscape.

The Ecosystems Knowledge Network is free to join and open to anyone with an interest in an ecosystems approach.

(Text from the Society of Biology website)

A conference at the University of Leicester in April next year will set out to explore this question, examining the importance of birds in the functioning of ecosystems.

It will also explore the cultural services that birds provide and consider how Government and non-Governmental organisations are engaging with this new approach in policy. Debating the philosophical and practical problems surrounding the ecosystem services approach will be a key feature of the conference, as well as finding new opportunities for bird conservation. It will cover the following topics:
• The provisioning, regulating and supporting ecosystem services provided by birds, avian functional ecology and relationships between bird diversity and ecosystem functioning;
• The cultural significance of birds and how this is valued;
• How Governments, policymakers and conservation organisations around the world are responding to and implementing the ecosystem services approach;
• Management strategies, tradeoffs and the consequences for traditional species based and practical
management.

The conference scope will be international, with a focus on how to integrate ecosystem service science with practical bird conservation into policy. It is aimed at academics, research and conservationorganisations as well as statutory government agencies and those engaged in policy, advocacy and conservation management.

Further information and details on how to register.

Registration is now open for this two day conference in April 2012, organised by the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) and Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). The programme and a word version of the booking form is attached. Further details are available on the conference website (http://www.sac.ac.uk/sacsepaconf) including a brief overview of each of the four Keynote Speakers.