Living with Environmental Change(LWEC), a consortium of 22 organisations that fund, carry out and use environmental research and observations, has launched a new strategy to drive collaborative research into how to manage the risks to life and property posed by flooding and coastal erosion in the UK. Across the country, it is estimated that 6 million properties are at risk from all sources of flooding or from coastal erosion; this number is only likely to increase due to climate change and extreme weather events. The LWEC ‘UK Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research Strategy’ marks, as stated by the document, ‘a major shift’ in the UK’s approach to tackling this significant economic, social and environmental issue.

Research priorities are grouped under three themes within the document: ‘understanding risk’; ‘managing probability’; and ‘managing consequence’. To take the first: managers of risks from flooding and coastal erosion need to synthesise data from multiple sources and assess the quality of these data in order to make informed decisions. The development of decision-support tools will be necessary. Secondly, the management of engineered and natural flood and coastal defences (see the blog post on Natural Flood Management from earlier this week for a brief overview of natural flood defences and the potential issues in making greater use of these) can be improved by research. This is an area where a small amount of investment may yield dividends for the UK. Finally, raising awareness and understanding of flood risk in order to influence the behaviour of individuals and communities in response to flooding and coastal erosion events is important, and an area where research into behaviour change can contribute. Also included within ‘managing consequence’ is the need for greater research so that forecasting and early-warning systems can be improved, alongside multi-agency emergency planning.

The LWEC strategy, it is anticipated, will lead to greater coordination of research effort amongst LWEC partners, whilst efforts will be made to translate the outputs of research into practice. LWEC will commission collaborative research projects, including at local scales, and will promote early collaboration between academics, industry researchers, service providers, the beneficiaries and end-users of research. Over the next 20 years (the timescale considered by the Strategy), the outcome should be the improved understanding and management of flood and coastal erosion risk for the benefit of millions of people.

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.

Rather than spelling disaster for environmental funding, the current debt crisis could provide an opportunity to create a win-win scenario for the environment and economic recovery – that was the message from an Aldersgate Group panel debate in December last year, attended by the BES Policy Team and summarised in a debate report published today.

On the panel were; Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for the Environment, Sir John Harman, Director of the Aldersgate Group, Paul Ekins, Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at University College London, and David Baldock, Director at the Institute of European Environmental Policy.

The speakers agreed that at a time when businesses critically need to minimise costs, measures to improve resource efficiency and reduce waste could give them a significant competitive edge. However, there was consensus that barriers such as a lack of long-term policy coherence and the lock-in of existing infrastructure will need to be addressed in order to pursue this opportunity for green economic recovery, and that Governments will need to demonstrate increased investment in research and development and measures such as the reform of environmentally perverse subsidies.

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology is recruiting for a new Director.

POST ensures that Parliament and parliamentarians are supported with impartial, balanced and accessible analysis and assessment of scientific and technological issues related to public policy.

The Head of POST must have a broad background and experience in science or science policy, combined with the ability to maintain and develop links at senior level within the science community. In addition, they must be capable of maintaining scrupulous impartiality and objectivity, in order to lead the office effectively on behalf of Parliament.

The closing date is 8th February 2012.

More natural means of managing flooding are desirable and should be brought foward by the Government in a new White Paper on water. So commented Anne McIntosh MP, Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Commmittee and of the All Party Group on Flood Protection, at a parliamentary event attended by the BES Policy Team yesterday evening. The well-attended meeting was organised by Oliver Pescott, the most recent BES-funded Fellow at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), to launch the POSTnote he authored on ‘Natural Flood Management’.

Natural flood management (NFM) is defined in the POSTnote as ‘the alteration, restoration or use of landscape features’. One of the four speakers, Dr Paul Quinn, Newcastle University, made it clear that NFM is not about taking a system back to a natural state but working with and engineering natural processes. Dr Quinn presented work in which he had been involved within the town of Belford, in which residents have faced six major flooding events within the course of seven years. During extreme events, huge amounts of rainfall can be observed running off farmland; this can be tackled effectively, Dr Quinn suggested, by ‘catchment systems engineering’, which seeks to ’slow, store and filter’ water. Farm tracks, specially engineered to store water behind them; dams which ‘leak’ slowly to control water flow; and the use of woody debris (’beaver dams’) to perform a similar function can all help to attenuate run-off.

Dr Wendy Kenyon, James Hutton Institute, highlighted the importance of working with land-managers if those wishing to control flooding wished to work with natural processes as stated. Dr Kenyon’s team have conducted a number of semi-structured interviews with farmers, revealing that first and foremost, farmers are concerned with the viability of their businesses. Dr Quinn had presented results showing that 10 – 20 storage ponds could make a significant difference to the peak water flow; Dr Kenyon argued that the presence of this number of ponds on agricultural land could begin to have a significant effect on the farmer’s bottom line and so the viability of this proposal would need to be considered carefully.

It is important to ensure too that farmers are able to access funding to support their efforts to implement NFM. Fifty eight percent of farmers questioned by Dr Kenyon said that they would be encouraged to introduce NFM measures if there was more funding available to do so and if it could be applied for easily. This is significant as under the Common Agricultural Policy, money is already available to support NFM but, according to Dr Kenyon, farmers have not been accessing this as a source of funds. We need, Dr Kenyon suggested, to work with farmers to find out why.

The issue of the scale at which experiments are undertaken and from which conclusions can be drawn is a highly significant one. It became clear through the presentations that there is a great deal of uncertainty concerning the robustness of conclusions which can be drawn about flood attenuation at the catchment-scale through NFM, based on small-scale experiments. Dr Neil McIntrye, Imperial College London, suggested that although strategic tree-planting can have an affect on ameliorating flooding at a local scale, this beneficial effect is likely to be marginal at regional to larger scales. The true benefits of such interventions are only likely to become apparent, Dr McIntyre suggested, once further research has been undertaken to understand catchment-scale interactions.

The case was therefore made for greater investment in field experiments and better modelling to understand the benefits of NFM. Anne McIntosh MP questioned why the science had not yet revealed these benefits, to which the scientists responded that the high cost of studying natural processes over time and the uncertainty created by extrapolating the results from one study site to another, where geomorphology and hydrology may be very different, constrain the ability to draw robust conclusions. Dr Quinn suggested that scientists would do best to measure at an appropriate scale and then build confidence in extrapolating conclusions, for example through better models.

Funding the necessary experiments and modelling approaches, alongside funding NFM interventions will be a challenge. Anne McIntosh suggested that there was little appetite in Government to pass the cost of NFM projects, including efforts to monitor the efficacy of these projects, onto the consumer through higher water bills. Ms McIntosh, and others, suggested that Payments for Ecosystem Services could be one mechanism of paying for NFM, although here the beneficiaries (presumably the consumers) would still need to pay for the NFM interventions implemented by land-managers (the providers of the ecosystem service of flood alleviation).

There should be scope to deliver NFM alongside other services as part of a framework of multi-functional land-use. Speakers did not touch on this to a great extent and it would have been interesting to have heard more from this perspective. Dr Quinn mentioned that buffer strips planted at the sides of agricultural land can slow the flow of run-off, indicating both a biodiversity and a NFM benefit. Dr Quinn also mentioned the need for multiple stakeholders to come together (eg as in Belford), including ecologists, land-managers and residents, to discuss and agree a shared vision for a catchment. South West Water is investing a great deal of money in NFM measures but for water quality reasons (eg reducing sediment load in the watercourse), with consequent benefits for river ecology. However, overall there was little discussion of the ecological benefits, or disbenefits, of NFM approaches.

In opening the meeting, Anne McIntosh informed attendees that in a meeting of the Liaison Committee (involving all Chairs of Parliamentary Select Committees), members had extracted from the Prime Minister an undertaking that a Water Bill would be published early in the next Parliamentary session. The BES will watch with interest to see whether NFM is incorporated into the Bill when drafted.

Applications for the next BES Fellowship at POST are now open and close on Thursday 5th April. If you are in the second or third year of your PhD in ecology at a UK institution, consider applying. Find out more from the BES website.

Sense About Science will be holding a Standing up for Science media workshop at the University of Manchester on Friday 23rd March. This full day event is free and for early career researchers in all sciences, engineering and medicine (PhD students, post-docs or equivalent in first job).

The workshop will combine discussion about science-related controversies in media reporting with practical guidance and tips for how to deal with the media. Please find further information here.

These workshops are very popular and places are limited. To apply send a CV and cover letter explaining your reasons for applying and stating any affiliations you hold to Victoria Murphy.

Closing date for applications is Friday 9th March.

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.