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.

Monday 28 November 2011, 19:00, The Book Club, Shoreditch

From the team behind Science Question Time, we bring you the nerdiest quiz of the year. Think you know your biochemistry from your badgers, and neutrinos from your nuclei? Or just want to relive your old sciencey school days? Then grab some friends, come down to The Book Club, and show us what you’re made of.

Helped by some special guests, we’ll be dredging up the year’s breakthroughs and blunders in science – taking in its highs and lows in the media, as well as use and abuse in politics.

There’ll be prizes for the geekiest costumes, nerdiest names, and brainiest teams. Confirmed guest round hosts so far include Pallab Ghosh (Science and Politics), Aleks Krotoski (Technology), Adam Rutherford (Sci-Fi), Alex Bellos (Maths) and Louise Crane (Pictures).

Entry is just £4, and teams can be up to 6 people. Any profits will go directly to support CaSE’s science and engineering advocacy. Buy your tickets here (you can enter as a team or we will sort it out on the night)!

Brought to you by James Lush at the Biochemical Society, Imran Khan and Beck Smith at the Campaign for Science and Engineering, and Dr Alice Bell.

Sign up here!

Full listing at the new Science Policy Talking Post blog: http://sciencepolicytalkingpost.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/the-year-in-science-xmas-quiz/

The Cambridge Conservation Forum’s (CCF) Annual Symposium will take place on January 5th 2012 in Cambridge.
Tickets are on sale now.

There will be a broad range of speakers at this event, covering international items -‘Rio+ 20 – why is it important for biodiversity conservation’ to on the ground and local projects for example, ‘Nature Improvement Areas’ and ‘The work of Tiger Protection and Conservation Unit in Sumatra’.

Find out more at www.cambridgeconservationforum.org.uk.

16:50, Wednesday 23 November 2011, The Geological Society

The Carbon Capture and Storage industry in the UK is thought by many to have the potential to become as large as the North Sea oil and gas industry has been over the past 40 years. If this can be achieved, it will be a major contribution to meeting our carbon emissions targets, and could generate significant value for the economy. Is this ambition realistic? What are the scientific, technical, regulatory, economic, political and social challenges?

The Geological Society, together with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, is holding a joint two-day research conference on Carbon Capture and Storage on 22-23 November, bringing together geoscientists and reservoir engineers to discuss scientific and technical challenges, uncertainties and opportunities for CO2 storage.

The conference will conclude with a panel debate, at which the conference delegates will be joined by an invited audience of those from government, industry, regulators, NGOs and others involved in planning and policy-making. A distinguished panel will lead a discussion of the policy-making, regulatory, economic and social context for CCS, and the
broader implications of the issues discussed over the previous two days, chaired by conference convenor Professor Jon Gluyas. The panellists are:

Dr David Reiner (Senior Lecturer in Technology Policy, Judge Business
School, University of Cambridge)

Professor Richard Macrory (Professor of Environmental Law, University
College London)

Mr Mervyn Wright (Technical Lead, CCS Demonstration Project, Department
of Energy and Climate Change)

Dr Bryan Lovell (Senior Researcher, University of Cambridge / President
of the Geological Society)

Registration will be from 16:15 on Wednesday 23 November. The discussion will run from 16:50 to 18:00, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

We very much hope you will be able to join us for this debate. If you wish to attend, please email policy@geolsoc.org.uk, stating your name and job title/preferred affiliation. There is no charge for attending the debate.

(Places at the conference itself are still available – full details and registration are at www.geolsoc.org.uk/ccs_nov2011.)

How can you predict whether a policy you develop will actually work? This was the question addressed by a public lecture at the London School of Economics yesterday evening, delivered by Nancy Cartwright, Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at LSE and at the University of California, San Diego.

Prof. Cartwright questioned how you can know whether a policy that is successful in one location will work in another. She suggested that in fact, based on success in one place you cannot assume that it will: “getting policy right is hard, but it is harder if you only rely on one tool”.

Prof. Cartwright criticised the enthusiasm of some economists to champion the significance of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) to assess the efficacy of policies. As in RCTs for a medical intervention, policy treatments are assigned to some of a sample group and not to others, with the randomisation minimising any significant background or location differences between the controls. This allows a policy-maker to conclude that a significant improvement in the ‘treated’ group is due to the success of the policy intervention.

The mistake that enthusiastic policy developers then make is, Professor Cartwright suggested, to infer from the success of the policy in one location that the policy must then produce the desired outcome more widely. Several assumptions underlie this: that in the inital ‘treated’ policy population the policy had the causal effect due to ‘causal principle X’; ;that in the target population the policy will also have the desired effect due to this causal principle, and; that the support factors needed for successful policy implementation are in place in both populations.

Professor Cartwright demonstrated that causal principles have a number of problems, making it less than clear that a policy successful in one location will be successful in another. The first problem was described as ‘fragility’: the idea that a causal problem can easily be broken by pushing this too hard. One example of this is the relationship between employment and inflation. Inflation and rising prices will lead to reduced unemployment as businesses expand production. If a government tries to reduce unemployment by manipulating inflation however, businesses will not create jobs because they are aware that inflation is caused by government measures, not market forces. The second problem is one of ‘locality’, with causes dependent on local situations and particular conditions.

Professor Cartwright illustrated the problems of ‘fragility’ and ‘locality’ by an example; that of a child nutrition policy in Tamil Nadu, India, that provided mothers with nutritional advice and with supplementary baby food. An RCT proved that this could improve child nutrition. The conclusion was therefore that “mothers given better nutritional knowledge improve their child’s nutrition (when also given supplementary baby food)”.

However, when implemented in Bangladesh this policy did not work. Men in Bangladesh procure food for the household and in many extended families Mothers-in-law control food distribution between family members. Therefore in this case mothers were not able to influence their children’s nutrition. The causal principle underpinning the policy should in fact have been: “Better nutritional knowledge improves child nutrition when given to those who a) control what food is procured; b) control what food gets dispersed and c) hold the child’s interests as central to performing A and B”.

This example demonstrates that causal principles often have to be expressed in an abstract way if they are to be applied to any situation which differs from the original situation under test. The causal principle can be characterised as a rule which (very probably) holds true. It is vital to understand how the supporting factors in the new situation differ from that under test in order to make sure that the causal principle applies in a range of cases.

With thanks for this information to Evelyn Underwood, Policy Analyst at the Institute for European Environmental Policy</a.

A day-long opportunity, on 16th November 2011, to take part in activities coordinated by researchers in the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme: contribute to the planning of the rural/urban fringe, tell us what the uplands mean to you, measure environmental inequalities in the countryside, test your knowledge of risks in the food chain and more…

This conference will provide an opportunity to:

– Debate major questions about the future of the UK countryside
– Learn about innovation in science, methodology and practice from the Relu programme
– Participate in real-life science

Info at http://www.relu.ac.uk/conference/index.htm

The Third Gareth Roberts Science Policy Lecture will be given by David Willetts, MP, Minister of State for Universities and Science. Mr Willetts will speak on the subject of ‘UK science skills for the future – what are the priorities’ tomorrow night, 19th October.

This event has sold out but you will be able to follow discussion on Twitter, via hashtag # ROBERTS2011.

The Gareth Roberts lectures are hosted by the Science Council to honour Sir Gareth Roberts, the founding president of the organisation, who died in 2007. This event is taking place as part of the 2011 London Science Festival.

Today is the first day of a plenary meeting to discuss and decide upon the formation of the Integovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), convened by the UN Environment Programme. Representatives from the United Nations, and observers from NGOs and other bodies, have assembled in Nairobi, Kenya, to consider how IPBES will operate and, amongst other decisions, determine where the IPBES secretariat will be located.

On the eve of the meeting, Prof. Bob Watson, Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser, gave an interview to the Independent newspaper, in which he outlined his hopes for IPBES. Prof. Watson suggested that the only way in which IPBES can function effectively will be if developing nations have ownership over any in-country ecosystem assessments which are conducted, and if these are conducted by scientists from that nation – similar to the UK National Ecosystem Assessment. “If they think that this is just the white world, the developed world, telling them what to do, that’ll be the end of it.”

The BES, together with the UK Biodiversity Research Advisory Group (UK BRAG) organised a session at the BES Annual Meeting in Sheffield last month which introduced the IPBES to the assembled ecologists. Dr Andrew Stott, Defra’s representative to IPBES from the civil service, outlined the role of IPBES, as agreed at a meeting in Busan, South Korea, in 2010. A copy of Dr Stott’s presentation is available from the BES website.

As outlined by Dr Stott, IPBES will:

- Generate new knowledge: identifying information needed for policy; catalysing research and surveying
- Conduct regular and timely assessments: at global, regional and sub-regional scales; and on thematic and ‘new topics identified by science’.
- Provide support for policy formulation, through promoting access to policy-relevant tools and methods;
- Have a capacity building function: identifying needs; supporting the highest priority needs; catalysing funding.

IPBES is intended as an ‘IPCC for biodiversity’; a credible, scientifically independent body which is policy relevant but not policy prescriptive (similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

At the plenary meeting over the next few days decisions will be made about how the IPBES is structured; whether, for example, a scientific advisory group is formed which can advise the Plenary – the IPBES decision-making body- on scientific and technical aspects of the work programme and which can approve specific scientific procedures related to how ecosystem assessments are conducted. A further meeting in Nairobi, in March/ April 2012, will see delegates decide on further aspects of how the IPBES will work, including its work programme.

As IPBES develops, there are likely to be opportunities for ecologists and others to get involved with the conduct of assessments and with capacity building, although questions remain about how to incentivise scientists to take part in these activities (for example, through university reward structures such as the Research Excellence Framework). Ecologists and others in the UK who would like to find out more about IPBES and who would like to remain fully engaged with the development of the Platform, can join the UK Stakeholder Group, maintained by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC).

Today the BES has published our report of the Conservation Ecology Special Interest Group’s meeting into ‘Making Space for Nature’, examining the ecological issues raised by the Lawton Review, and other current topics in nature conservation.

Main points raised by the lively discussion and presentations during the day include the need for academic and applied ecologists to communicate with one another in order to develop new tools which can inform conservation planning and practical delivery. Communication between ecologists, policy-makers and the public is also fundamentally important; communicating with decision-makers is an area in which the skills of ecologists is lacking, according to a recent report by the IEEM. The report also highlights discussion at the workshop around possible tensions between a landscape-scale approach to conservation and a species-focused approach. Whilst an emphasis on ecosystem services can engage policy-makers, the public’s interest in the natural world is motivated by species (hence the 8 million-plus members of Wildlife and Countryside Link organisations). Conservationists should not forget this if wishing to engage people beyond those already involved with NGOs, as volunteer recorders and in monitoring for example, and in aiming to empower further those who are engaged, so that they can influence decision-makers.

The report includes summaries of presentations by Prof. Sir John Lawton- discussing the main findings of the Lawton Review; Dr Pete Brotherton- discussing what the Lawton Review’s conclusions might mean for Natural England and others moving forwards; Prof. Chris Thomas – highlighting a new tool he and others have developed to identify those species most at risk, and most in need of direct conservation action, in the face of climate change; Dr Paul Dolman- discussing potential shortcomings in the Biodiversity Action Plan and the need to develop a new approach to conservation based on species’ common functional requirements (so-called ‘guilds’); and Debbie Tann – discussing the work of the Wildlife Trusts in the context of their ‘Living Landscape‘ Approach. All of these presentations are available to download from the BES website.

The meeting on which the report is based was held on the 19th April this year, at the BES’s headquarters, Charles Darwin House.

The fifth in a series of ESRC-funded seminars on biosecurity is taking place at Birkbeck College, University of London, on 22-23 September 2011. ‘The Future of Biosecurity and Biosecuring the Future’ will bring together speakers, discussion panels, exhibition and film to consider:

- what is the future for biosecurity, and what will future biosecurity practices and approaches entail?

– Will climate change demand a new paradigm of ecological management through the growing disparity between ‘native’ species and suitable national ecological conditions?

– Will we learn to live with and value ecological change?

– Or will climate change be used to justify greater biosecurity control, as pest species and diseases ever expand their ecological ranges?

The transport and accomodation costs of participants will be covered in full. Initial expressions of interest in attending are now welcome to Dr Sarah Taylor, Keele University.