The BES is refreshing its policy priorities. What do you think we should be focusing on?
From food security, to multiple demands on land, to balancing the trade-offs between ecosystem services, 2020 will bring great challenges for the UK and internationally. Ecological science can inform the response to these challenges. Where should the BES be focusing our efforts to ensure that our members’ science is fed into the policy debates to shape our future?
Leave your comment here on the blog, ontribute your views through Twitter (#BES2020), or email the Policy Team.
Focus should be placed on agroecosystems and biodioversity and ecosystem services provided from cultivated land. In order to presernve and enhanve biodiversity, practices such as biological control shoud be encouraged globally. Ecologists should be more involved in this type of systems and use holistic approaches examining each agroecosystem from every aspect (pests, diseases, beneficials, other biodiversity, economic benefits etc, pollution…)
Kelly’s above surely has to be one of the priorities especially as agroecosystems and the biomes in which they are embedded are among the most productive terrestrially.
Look at the IPCC 2007 areas of crop production and grazing and then look at the IPCC 2007 areas of the world due to have the greatest temeperaturee and water regimen change and there is a _major_ overlap!!!
In addition, managing biomes to anticipate climate succession to minimise the transient atmospheric carbbon dump that we get with all carbon isotope excursion (CIE) events has to be looked at even if it is controversial (it will mean spoecies translocation). The BES at the very least needs to consider this.
(I will be raising this in the next edition of my _Climate Change: Biological & Human Aspects_ from Cambridge U. Press.)