BES Facebook pageBES Annual Meeting 2010
7 - 9 September
University of Leeds, UK
Putting the ecosystem approach into practice - how much do we know?
Wednesday 8 September
Organisers: Stewart Clarke and John Hopkins, Natural England
There is an increasing emphasis in both research and practitioner circles upon the ecosystem approach and in particular, ecosystem services. The term ecosystem services now regularly crops up in both academic journals and government policy documents. However, the breadth of the concept, which bridges environmental, social and economic science disciplines, is such that it seems unlikely that any one individual or group of scientists has a detailed understanding of the issues and research needs. Indeed one of the most exciting things about the concept is that is forces inter-disciplinary working.
Natural England is now working with a range of partners in three pilot areas to investigate how ecosystem services might be placed at the heart of land management. In addition to this practical demonstration project we are actively involved in discussion about research priorities with the research councils and other government bodies. A key challenge in implementing an ecosystem services focused approach to land and water management, is in having sufficient scientific knowledge to make management decisions i.e. how ecosystem properties affect processes and in turn, deliver services.
We are proposing a lively and fun workshop to get people to think about the ecosystem services concept in practice and contribute to a research prioritisation exercise.
The workshop has three main aims:
- To raise awareness of two current research and demonstration initiatives on ecosystem services (Natural England Pilots and a new NERC Thematic Programme)
- To encourage participants to think about the application of ecosystem science to land and water management
- To investigate perceptions of 'degree of understanding' about key ecosystem services amongst both researchers and practitioners.
