In response to an online debate run by the Economist, 91% of participants have concluded that ‘untouched wildernesses have a value beyond the resources and other utility that can be extracted from them’. The debate ran between 4th and 14th October, with speakers including Pavan Sukhdev, leader of the TEEB (the Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity) study.

Full details of the debate are available here.

The value of ecosystem services provided by the UK’s wildlife and habitats has been estimated in two research reports published by Defra today. These two primary valuation research studies examine benefits people obtain from the natural environment in the UK.

Using expert judgement and participatory valuation approaches, the study ‘Economic valuation of the benefits of ecosystem services delivered by the UK Biodiversity Action Plan’ estimated the value of seven ecosystem services delivered by different UK BAP habitats and the changes in provision of these services through biodiversity conservation measures over the next 20 years.

The report on ‘The Benefits of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in England and Wales’ assessed the economic value of changes in biodiversity and associated ecosystem services which will result from future policy scenarios for Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).

The reports estimate the wildlife covered by the UK BAP and Sites of Special Scientific Interest is worth approximately £1.5 billion per year to the UK.

Story taken from the Natural Capital Initiative website.

The creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was one of the most significant actions to come out of the 10th Conference Of Parties to the Convention of Biological Diversity held in Nagoya, Japan. The IPBES is a panel based in part on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It aims to amalgamate evidence for future biodiversity policy, and is expected to become a focal point for public and media awareness of biodiversity issues.

Since its beginnings a number of meetings have been held including a key workshop between Defra and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) in July 2011. The workshop explored how best to engage government with science-policy and coordinate UK Government, scientists, NGO’s and business.

The BES is also holding a session on the IPBES at the BES Annual Meting in Sheffield entitled ‘Where next for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment and IPBES?’ on Tuesday 13th September at 11.15am. To attend the Annual Meeting and book a place at the session visit the BES website.

Such events are in preparation for the first international plenary of the IPBES due to be held in Nairobi, Kenya in October 2011. At the plenary government representatives will consider the draft principles and procedures governing the work of IPBES, the initial elements of the work program, processes for nomination and selection of host institution(s) and host country for the platform.

The Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, (IEEM) has published a report entitled ‘Closing the gap: Rebuilding ecological skills in the 21st Century’. The work, which was commissioned by IEEM, was undertaken by the Management Standards Consultancy and built upon initial IEEM research.

The report collated information from literature, surveys, interviews and workshops involving practicing ecologists and environmental managers at all stages of their careers, as well as other stakeholders, employers and graduates.

Investigation found a continuing skills gap and skills shortages in:
• Species identification, especially of invertebrates, fish and lower plants.
• Ecological survey, sampling, data assessment, evaluation and monitoring skills for fish and invertebrates.
• Habitat creation, restoration and management in marine, coastal and upland environments.
• Techniques to control the spread of invasive species and wildlife diseases.

In addition:
• There are knowledge gaps amongst ecologists regarding the application of environmental economics for the valuation of ecosystem services.
• Freshwater, coastal and marine systems and processes are poorly understood in comparison to terrestrial systems.
• Understanding of the application of spatial planning, as it relates to environmental planning, is weak.
• Understanding of environmental legislation and its policy implications is weak in some sectors.

Knowledge gaps found by the report have raised concerns that a lack of capacity among ecologists and consultants could have significant implications for the implementation of environmental policies and for meeting EU biodiversity targets. This comes at a time when knowledge is needed now more than ever as the ecosystem approach reaches the forefront of government thinking.

IEEM is now calling for Government to commit to policy and funding support for a new strategy to address the issue. IEEM suggest the new strategy should be government led, and involve education institutions, skills agencies, cross-sector employers, and societies to help encourage and train people to bridge the gaps in knowledge.

Britain’s largest pollinator study has been launched today. The project led by Professor Jane Memmott, from the University of Bristol, will be conducted in twelve cities across Britain to determine how well pollinators such as bees and butterflies are doing in urban areas.

The study has been launched to investigate the idea that urban areas offer an unexpected haven for insect life, as city gardens provide a year long supply of pollen and nectar compared to short lasting unreliable food sources and monoculture crops found in nature reserves and on farmland.

Researchers will collect data to identify both insect and plant species, and measure abundance and density of pollinators in cities compared to those found in nature reserves and on farmland. This will allow scientists to build up a picture of what plants and insects are present in certain habitats, how well populations are doing and understand what plants insects are feeding on.

The results of the study could be key to helping boost pollinator numbers, which are currently in decline across the UK. Furthermore, over 80% of plants (including those that produce the food we rely on) depend on insect pollination to reproduce. By identifying where insects are doing well, we can work to improve their environment and to aid future pollinator population recovery.

The NERC Valuing Nature Network has today launched an ‘Announcement of Opportunity’, inviting proposals for project funding. The deadline for applications is 22nd September.

Full details, including the science plan outlining the two central themes under which submissions are being sought, are available from the VNN website.

Find out more about the VNN by reading our previous blog posts on this topic.

The NERC Valuing Nature Network (VNN) will release a call for proposals next week with a deadline of 16th September.

The VNN is an interdisciplinary network of natural, social and economic scientists. The proposals being sought through this initial phase will be for year-long projects, expected to report in the October 2012. It is anticipated that the initial projects will lay the ground for a more substantive phase two, with the results of the initial projects informing the second research call.

The announcements follows a series of discipinary scoping workshops which have taken place in London over the past six weeks, culminating in an interdisciplinary town hall meeting at the end of June. The workshop series brought together researchers to consider the challenges to putting a value on natural capital and the research questions which the network should seek to address. As a result, two major themes have emerged in the work of the VNN:

‘1. Developing a trans-disciplinary framework for the valuation of stocks of natural capital and flows of ecosystem services’.
Natural and social scientists to work together to develop integrated methods for monetary and non-monetary valuation of natural capital and ecosystem services. Teams also to work to identify how natural capital and ecosystem services can be managed sustainably.

‘2. Characterising the socio-ecological system knowledge required to properly capture the value of biodiversity, ecosystem services and natural resources’.
Evaluate the information available in relation to the valuation of natural resource stocks and ecosystem service flows, recognising the limitations and uncertainties in the current knowledge base. Identify ways to improve the accessibility and the integration of this existing data, including socioeconomic data sets. Develop integrated models of natural capital and ecosystem services at relevant spatial and temporal scales.

Further information is available from the VNN website.

On Friday, the BES Policy Team attended a ‘Town Meeting’, organised by the NERC Valuing Nature Network, a programme supported by the Natural Capital Initiative. The meeting was a first step to bring together those who might form interdisciplinary teams which will go on to bid for funds from the programme. A series of workshops throughout June brought researchers together in disciplinary groups; this meeting was an opportunity for all participants from these meetings to come together and to discuss potential collaborations.

The aim of the Valuing Nature Network is to improve valuation methods (valuation of stocks and flows of ecosystem services), address knowledge gaps set an agenda for future research. The limited funds available for the initial round of research bids (£50,000) and the limited timescale, means that VNN is not going to be able to generate much new science. Instead it is about developing tools and a framework for future science. Winning bids are however expected to make a contribution to science by providing novel syntheses of existing knowledge.

At Friday’s meeting, the VNN team outlined those major research areas which bids should address (recognising that no one bid can answer all of these questions). These were as follows:

1. Improving valuation (all methods) to incorporate the complexity of socio-ecological systems.
Bids should address the complexity of the real-world environment:
a. Spatial variability
b. Temporal effects
c. Direct and indirect effects
d. Incorporate non-linearities (e.g. thresholds, diminishing marginal values etc.)

2. Stocks, flows and sustainability.
What are the natural science challenges of incorporating stock sustainability within decision analysis?
a. Can flow values be improved?
b. What alternative approaches to flow valuations might ensure stock sustainability?

3. Scale
How do variations in scale affect natural processes, marginal values etc?
a. What are the barriers to decision-making across scales? How can these be overcome?

4. From science, through values to decisions
Clarify concept of shared social values and how they differ from traditional individual economic values. How would these be measured so that they can be used in decision-making?
a. Governance: the transition from values to decisions and onwards to implementation, regulation and incentives.

The characteristics of winning bids are likely to be:
- Genuinely interdisciplinary teams
- Teams integrating decision-makers
- Appropriate and interesting research questions to address the four objectives above
- A clear agenda for future research

The ‘announcement of opportunity‘ is expected in mid July, with a deadline for proposal submissions towards the end of September. Grants will be awarded to working groups in October, with working groups then expected to deliver reports in October 2012.

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector but there is still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding it’s environmental impact and how this is likely to change into the future as the sector expands to meet global food demands. A new report published by Conservation International and the WorldFish Centre investigating the aquaculture sector has identified some of the challenges in ensuring that the sector minimises adverse impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services whilst maintaining high growth to respond to global food shortages as population size increases.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate that around 84% of the world’s fish stocks are already over exploited indicating that fisheries will not be able to meet the protein demands of a rapidly growing population. Fish farming is becoming increasingly common (the sector has grown by 8.4% per annum since 1970) particularly in Asia and Africa, and now accounts for around half of all the fish we consume reducing pressure on natural fish stocks.

To identify the main sources of environmental damage in the industry and establish opportunities for increasing sustainability into the future the researchers investigated several different methods of aquaculture, measuring their inputs (fertilizers, energy, land and water) and outputs (carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and phosphorus) and then estimated the impact of the enterprise on ecosystems and biodiversity (acidification, eutrophication, and climate change).

Perhaps unsurprisingly the enterprises producing the largest quantity of fish had the highest environmental impact. The type of fish reared also has implications for the sustainability of the fishery, for example rearing carnivorous fish such as salmon and rearing shrimps and prawns which are highly dependent on temperature control decreases the efficiency of the enterprise and increases emission of nitrogen and green house gases. Seaweeds, oysters and mussels were found to have the lowest environmental impact.

A comparison between sectors was also included in the report, showing that aquaculture has a much smaller demand on fresh water and energy than poultry, pig and cattle farming, and has lower outputs of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.

By 2030 the sector is expected to double in size, producing 110 million tonnes of fish and seafood and the associated environmental impact is also expected to double. The report makes a series of research and policy recommendations to ensure that the sector is sustainable in the future, whilst simultaneously meeting the global demand for meat.

These include research into innovative methods to increase sustainability and improve efficiency, establishing regional networks to help improve efficiency in developing countries and promote best practice, and a variety of legislative measures to monitor the sector and promote compliance with environmental standards. The report also emphasises the importance of preventing new enterprises from establishing in important carbon sinks such as mangrove swamps

The report suggests that aquaculture may be the best solution to the global demand for meat as requirements for energy water and land are only a fraction of that for pig, cattle and poultry farming. Aquaculture will most likely be able to produce the most meat for the least demand on ecosystems, and the report indicates that fish farming should be promoted in policy to slow expansion of the other meat production sectors.

The full programme is now available for the policy session at the BES Annual Meeting, taking place on Wednesday 13th September, University of Sheffield. Prof. Steve Albon, co-chair of the world-leading UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), and Dr Andy Stott, UK-representative to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) will join us to discuss what the NEA means for science, policy and practice in this country. The session is organised in partnership with the UK Biodiversity Research Advisory Group (BRAG).

Four short presentations will explore how the results of the UK NEA, the first of its kind at a fully national scale to analyse the value of the UK’s natural environment by taking account of the economic, health and social benefits we get from nature, are being, or could be, taken forward in research and practice.

Dr Stott will discuss how the IPBES will address the gaps in the science policy interface with respect to biodiversity and ecosystem services internationally.

View the full programme and find out more.

Register for the BES Annual Meeting – early-bird booking deadline 1st July and regular booking deadline 14th August.