The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)

Comhar, the sustainable Development Council are organising a conference on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity as part of the international year of biodiversity. The conference, which will be opened by Minister John Gormally, will take place on Thursday June 24th 2010 at the Clarion Hotel, IFSC, Dublin. To register place complete the registration for below and return to sheila.hynes@environ.ie
TEEB registration form

EPBRS meeting under the Belgium Presidency of the EU

The Belgian Biodiversity Platform, an initiative of the Belgian Science Policy Office, and the European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy (EPBRS), will host a landmark conference, Positive Visions for Biodiversity, to develop solutions to this question on the 16-19 November 2010 in Brussels.

Held in conjunction with the International Year on Biodiversity and with the support of the Belgian Presidency of the European Union, the pioneering summit will bring together over 250 participants during the first two days in a live brainstorm to create a vision for the future of our planet’s wealth of biodiversity— and establish a credible pathway to move towards it.

For further information and registration please contact: Estelle Balian, Event Secretariat, Email: epbrsbe2010@naturalsciences.be

Biochange end of project meeting presentations and recommendations

BioChange is a large scale, integrative and multi-disciplinary research framework designed to support national and local biodiversity policy in Ireland. To mark the end of the project and disseminate the research recommendations a final meeting and workshop was held on January 7th 2010.
The meeting aimed to disseminate the major research recommendations of the project while also providing delegates with the opportunity to further discuss a number of topics, which formed an integral part of Biochange, through a series of four workshops on:

• Bioindicators and long term monitoring
• Researchers, society & information
• Habitat loss and fragmentation
• Climate change impacts on invasive species

The presentations and final recommendations of the workshops are available on the Biochange website.

Mulkear Life Project: Restoration of the Lower Shannon Special Area of Conservation for Sea Lamprey, Atlantic Salmon and European Otter

This is one of the most exciting and important fish and nature conservation projects ever undertaken on a river catchment basis anywhere in Ireland and hopefully will be a conservation blueprint for future integrated catchment management. For further information on this project please go to the project website at: http://www.mulkearlife.com

EPBRS update

The next meeting of the EPBRS will be held from April 13th to April15th 2010 in Palma, Majorca. The title of this meeting is:

"Evolution and Biodiversity: The evolutionary basis of biodiversity and its potential for adaptation to global change"
The meeting aims to discuss how science can help policy makers identify priority areas for research on the interplay between evolutionary processes and biodiversity patterns in addition to the effect of anthropogenic pressures upon them.

Review of the Biodiversity Knowledge Programme for Ireland

During the term of the first NPBR (2003-2006) a working group of experts from within the platform membership produced a Biodiversity Knowledge Programme for Ireland. This document is currently the subject of review by the secretariat. Your views and comments on the research programme are welcome at this time by contacting the secretariat. A brief synopsis of the Biodiversity Knowledge Programme and a link to the full document are provided below.

There is currently a lack of understanding and knowledge regarding biological diversity and an urgent need to develop scientific, technical and institutional capacities to provide basic understanding upon which to plan and improve appropriate conservation measures. This lack of hard scientific data has been highlighted by the CBD, by the various other national, European and international regulations and by the National Biodiversity Plan.

The initiation, development and delivery of appropriate policy to meet national and EU obligations must be based on relevant and rigorous research knowledge (either collating existing knowledge or conducting appropriate new research where knowledge gaps are shown to exist). Since the conservation, enhancement and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity and biological resources must underpin all areas of environmentally based legislation; there is a clear necessity for the integration of scientific advice into policy-making and delivery.

This document aims to address and support Ireland’s biodiversity commitments by identifying a programme of research that is considered to be of high priority and by suggesting methods to implement that programme.