For immediate release - Wednesday 25 February 2009
Press release issued by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology - 2009/3
Symposium tackles link between health of environment and economy
How can we value our natural capital to ensure a sustainable economy, will be among the questions discussed at the ‘Valuing our Life Support Systems’ symposium on 29 April 2009 in London. Speakers include Prof John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government; Gearoid Lane, Director, British Gas New Energy; Lord May of Oxford, Climate Change Commission; and Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Director of Corporate and Legal Affairs, Tesco.
The symposium is being organised by the Natural Capital Initiative, a partnership of the Institute of Biology, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the British Ecological Society.
Prof Rosie Hails from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who chairs the Initiative said, “We don’t yet understand the true value of all the services the environment provides us with – the natural capital so vital to our well-being. This means we can’t make well-informed decisions about how to manage the environment.”
A number of organisations have now committed to developing the ‘ecosystems approach’, which is a holistic strategy for the integrated management of land, water and biodiversity to promote sustainable, equitable development practices.
Prof Hails continues: “The Natural Capital Initiative aims to improve the ecosystems approach by identifying gaps in science, policy and its implementation – and encouraging them to be filled.”
Other questions the symposium will ask are: How can we tell if a large offshore windfarm is good or bad for the environment? What are the pros and cons of alternative types of agriculture subsidies? How can we design towns to improve people’s health and well being? Can an ecosystems approach help businesses and policy makers in the health, agriculture, transport, energy, food, town planning and water sectors make better-informed decisions?
The symposium is supported by NGO, business and public sector sponsors, including the cross-governmental programme, ‘Living with Environmental Change’ and the Government’s ‘Foresight’ programme that aims to bridge the gap in policy making between the short and the long term.
This three-day symposium is for representatives from government departments and agencies, parliament, academia and research, businesses and NGOs. It includes a high level discussion on day one about the challenges involved in implementing the ecosystems approach. Three workshops over the following two days will then aim to come up with recommendations that will be published soon after the event.
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Notes to Editors
More details can be found here: www.naturalcapitalinitiative.org.uk
For further information please contact:
Kate Groves, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
E-mail: groves@ceh.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1491 692358
Mobile: +44 (0)7920727653
