For the sub-programme for Environment, this call will cover action grants for "Traditional" projects, Preparatory projects, Integrated projects, Technical Assistance projects.
For the sub-programme for Climate Action, this call will cover action grants for "Traditional projects", Integrated projects, Technical Assistance projects.
Proposals may be submitted by legal persons (entities) registered in the EU. Applicants may fall into three types of beneficiaries: (1) public bodies, (2) private commercial organisations and (3) private non-commercial organisations (including NGOs).
Full details are on the Europa website.
]]>Full details are available online. Closing date is 15 May 2018.
]]>The online Science Café will address the diverse values of nature and how to integrate them into decision making. The event, which is organised by the EU-funded Eklipse project, will feature both civil society organisations and researchers discussing how the different values, social/cultural, ecological and economic, given to nature could be succesfully integrated into policy. The aim is to see what disagreements exist in integrating the different values and find conclusions and solutions on how to overcome them.
The event will take place on Monday 20 November 2017 from 20:00 - 21:30 UTC+2. You can find out more and register for the event here.
]]>Ana, a student at the University of Waterloo, Canada, was one of over 30 students who attended the 2017 ALTER-Net Summer School on Biodiversity, ecosystem services: science and its impact on policy and society. The school, which takes place annually in the remote French village of Peyresq, has been running for 12 years. Aimed at early career researchers, it provides a unique environment for learning, critical thinking and debate on issues relating to interdisciplinary ecosystem and biodiversity research.
'...we seized the learning environment to develop academic skills, constructively criticize the science we are producing, approach ecosystem services from different perspectives...'
In her blog, Ana says that ALTER-Net Summer School students were '... stimulated to think critically about the research produced in the realm of ecosystem services, its potential to impact policy, and to push for positive change in society.'
She also describes the unique setting that makes Peyresq such an incredible place for learning. She writes 'As a result of the combination between interesting participants, inspiring place, exquisite cuisine and high level discussions, we seized the learning environment to develop academic skills, constructively criticize the science we are producing, approach ecosystem services from different perspectives, discuss their contributions and areas for improvement, and build meaningful connections with people who share similar interests.'
Ana, originally from Brazil, holds a degree in biology. Her primary research interest lie in human and environmental interactions, especially regarding environmental governance towards social and ecological sustainability. You can read her full blog here.
]]>The positive relationship between biodiversity and urban ecosystem services is often implied in both scientific and policy literature, along with a tacit suggestion that enhancing urban green infrastructure will automatically improve both biodiversity and urban ecosystem services. However, it is unclear how much published evidence there is to support these assumptions. To find out, the authors of this paper conducted literature review of studies published between 1990 and May 2017 that examined biodiversity ecosystem service (BES) relationships.
Within the 317 publications reviewed, urban ecosystem service metrics were mentioned 944 times. However, only 228 (24%) of these mentions were tested empirically. Among these, 119 (52%) demonstrated a positive BES relationship. The literature review revealed a paucity of empirical evidence underpinning urban BES relationships. The authors conclude that 'While there is a growing body of evidence from controlled experiments in non-urban ecosystems demonstrating that biodiversity underpins ecosystem service delivery, comparatively little research on the topic has been conducted in urban areas.' In order to optimise urban biodiversity and ecosystem services, they call for more quantitative empirical urban BES research to increase our mechanistic understanding of these relationships.
This paper resulted from the workshop entitled ‘Urban biodiversity for the delivery of ecosystem services’ at the conference ‘Nature and Urban Wellbeing: Nature-Based Solutions to Societal Changes’ in Ghent, Belgium, 18-20 May 2015. The conference was organised by ALTER-Net (European Ecosystem Research Network) and European Commission.
To support further the development of such an initiative, a team led by Sonja Jähnig and Michael Monaghan at ALTER-Net partner the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology (IGB) in Berlin, Germany, has created a 10-minute survey to identify and prioritise efforts of the global community working with, and interested in, freshwater biodiversity. They particularly encourage the participation of practitioners in conservation and education, as well as people involved with the making and implementing of freshwater-relevant policies.
You can find the survey in six different languages (EN, FR, DE, ES, CN, RU) at www.bit.ly/freshwaterlife
Please participate and share the link in your own networks. The survey will be online until October 31st 2017.
]]>The Brief 'Pursuing benefits for nature and society' presents some of the key research findings and practical experiences presented at the international ALTER-Net conference in May 2017 on ‘Nature and society: synergies, conflicts, trade-offs’. It formulates calls to policymakers that follow from these findings and experiences as well as from the panel debate that was part of the conference.
Key messages in the Policy Brief are:
In the Brief, the ALTER-Net community makes a number of requests to European policymakers, aimed at a more integrated and inclusive approach towards environmental policymaking, using the UN Sustainable Development Goals as an integrative framework, and fully adopting the ecosystems approach. The importance of basing policy decisions on sound evidence from research is highlighted, and the community therefore calls for increased funding to enable interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary environmental research.
A 17-strong team of colleagues from 12 ALTER-Net partner organisations has written a paper on nature-based solutions. The paper, which is published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, considers the implications for science, policy and practice of the recently introduced concept of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), with a focus on the European context.
The team analysed NBS in relation to similar concepts, and, in the paper, they reflect on its relationship to sustainability as an overarching framework. From this, they derive a set of questions to be addressed and propose a general framework for how these might be addressed in NBS projects by funders, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners.
Among the team's conclusions, they assert that the strength of the NBS concept is its integrative, systemic approach which prevents it from becoming just another “green communication tool” that provides justification for a classical model of natural resource exploitation and management measures. They also argue that, to realise their full potential, NBS must be developed by including the experience of all relevant stakeholders such that ‘solutions’ contribute to achieving all dimensions of sustainability. Furthermore, as NBS are developed, we must also moderate the expectations placed on them, since the precedent provided by other initiatives whose aim was to manage nature sustainably demonstrates that we should not expect NBS to be cheap and easy, at least not in the short-term.
The first AHIA project was led by ALTER-Net partner ESSRG and was called Public participation in science and policy: development of a science-society interface in relation to biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Citizen science is a relatively new way of knowledge co-creation, where professional scientists and enthusiastic citizens collaboratively search for answers. While it certainly presents challenges, it also provides a great opportunity for both parties to engage science and nature together, and ultimately, can result in transformative societal changes.
The number of collaborative initiatives between scientists and volunteers (i.e., citizen science) is increasing across many research fields. The promise of societal transformation together with scientific breakthroughs contributes to the current popularity of citizen science (CS) in the policy domain. The researchers examined the transformative capacity of citizen science, in particular learning through environmental CS as conservation tool.
"the assertion of transformative effects of Citizen Science learning is often based on assumptions rather than empirical observation" - Bela, G. et al. Cons. Biol.
During their study, the team reviewed the CS and social-learning literature and examined 14 conservation projects across Europe that involved collaborative CS. They also developed a template that can be used to explore learning arrangements (i.e., learning events and materials) in CS projects and to explain how the desired outcomes can be achieved through CS learning.
The ALTER-Net team found that recent studies aiming to define CS for analytical purposes often fail to improve the conceptual clarity of CS; CS programs may have transformative potential, especially for the development of individual skills, but such transformation is not necessarily occurring at the organizational and institutional levels; empirical evidence on simple learning outcomes, but the assertion of transformative effects of CS learning is often based on assumptions rather than empirical observation; and it is unanimous that learning in CS is considered important, but in practice it often goes unreported or unevaluated.
In conclusion, the researchers point to the need for reliable and transparent measurement of transformative effects for democratization of knowledge production.
The research is reported in the journal Conservation Biology (Bela, G., Peltola, T., Young, J. C., Balázs, B., Arpin, I., Pataki, G., Hauck, J., Kelemen, E., Kopperoinen, L., Van Herzele, A., Keune, H., Hecker, S., Suškevičs, M., Roy, H. E., Itkonen, P., Külvik, M., László, M., Basnou, C., Pino, J. and Bonn, A. (2016), Learning and the transformative potential of citizen science. Conservation Biology, 30: 990–999. doi:10.1111/cobi.12762).
The team also produced a video about the role of Citizen Science in biodiversity research.
Be quick! The Belgian community of practice on Ecosystem Services is organising the third edition of the BEES Market. This year’s host, the Natural Capital Platform of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering at Ghent University, welcomes you on Tuesday 13th of December 2016 at Congrescentrum ‘Het Pand’ in Ghent, from 14 till 19 hours. The list of participants and stands is growing quickly, including updated projects from last years, as well as many new people and stands!
ALTER-Net partner, INBO (the Research Institute for Nature & Forests), is one of the event's organisers.
Back-to-back with the BEES the market, ECOPLAN 'planning for ecosystem services' project is organising its final event and lunch at the same location, making this a full day of free ecosystem service fun! For the morning event of ECOPLAN register here separately.
"A full day of free ecosystem service fun!"
The BEES Xmas market brings together people from academia, public administration and civil society, from Belgium and abroad, with one common interest: ecosystem services.
The BEES market is the perfect spot to exchange ideas, learn from other experiences and discover how ecosystem services are transformed into real products or daily life applications.
The concept? A cozy afternoon in a friendly Xmas market-like atmosphere, some special guests: the perfect event to wrap up 2016 in a useful and fun way! You can choose to have a stand, give a training session or just to enjoy the market (for practical info on stands or sessions, contact us).
Hurry! Register here before 20th of November.
]]>"It’s a field of dreams – if you build it, they will come, and they will talk"
- Allan Watt, ALTER-Net Summer School organiser
The ALTER-Net Summer School, now in it's 11th year, is one of two examples chosen by Kovacevic to illustrate the value of taking sustainability science out of the classroom and into the environment, be it the Amazon rainforest or the French countryside. As Kovacevic says, "This can lead to a more profound and prolonged learning experience; summer school participants talk about the changes these programmes catalyse in their own lives and the lives of others once they return home." We have certainly seen this amongst our students.
In her article, Kovacevic quotes our current Summer School organisers, Marie Wanderwalle and Allan Watt. “Most participants have not experienced working in a project so they don’t know the struggle of discussing an idea with someone from a different background. The project is really all about teaching communication and team work,” says Vandewalle, a previous summer school student and now coordinator of the programme.
"The mountain vistas and isolation are crucial to the programme’s success", says convenor Allan Watt. “It’s a field of dreams – if you build it, they will come, and they will talk.”
You can read Kovacevic's full blog post here.
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Prof. Josef Settele of ALTER-Net partner UFZ has been selected by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as a co-chair for its Global Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Assessment. Prof. Settele and the other two co-chairs (Professors Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondízio) are three of the world’s most eminent experts working on connections between nature and human well-being.
Covering a timeframe from the middle of the last century until the middle of this century, the assessment will analyze the state of knowledge about how people and nature interact, direct and indirect drivers of change, values, response options and nature’s benefits to people. It will explore the contributions of biodiversity and ecosystems to long-term quality of life – focusing on the synergies and trade-offs needed to balance the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as progress made on the UN Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.
Josef Settele works at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, heading the animal ecology and social-ecological research section. He is a Professor of Ecology at Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg, and a member of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research – iDiv. He served as a coordinating lead author for both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the recent IPBES pollination assessment, and is one of the most prolific scientific authors in the field, with more than 370 scientific publications, including more than 30 books.
Sandra Díaz is a Professor of Community and Ecosystem Ecology at the National University of Córdoba and a senior member of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) at Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Founder and director of the international initiative Núcleo DiverSus on Diversity and Sustainability, she has authored more than 150 scientific publications, many of them in prominent academic journals, and served in leading positions for the IPCC, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), Future Earth and DIVERSITAS.
Eduardo S. Brondízio is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, co-Editor-In-Chief of Current Opinion on Environmental Sustainability and serves on a range of international scientific bodies including the Science Committee of the Future Earth program. Committed for three decades to research on human-environment interaction in the Amazon, he is the author of more than 180 scientific publications and has contributed to numerous regional and global assessments including the MA.
Link to IPBES press release: http://www.ipbes.net/article/co-chairs-announced-landmark-global-biodiversity-ecosystems-assessment
A gecko for your terrarium? Or a tortoise? Or would you rather have a snake? Reptiles are exceedingly popular as pets, trade is booming. Between 2004 and 2014, official imports to the EU came to just under 21 million live specimens, more than six million of these ended up on the German market. These also include a large number of representatives of threatened species that can be sold at extremely high profits. Some collectors are quite willing to pay prices of several thousand euros for such rarities. An international team of experts led by Mark Auliya of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig has now documented the implications of such transactions. The great demand from the European market is already endangering the survival of a great number of species all over the world is the warning issued by these researchers in the scientific journal Biological Conservation.
"More than 90 percent of reptile species are ... not even covered by CITES"
- Mark Auliya, UFZ, Germany
Sadly, this tortoise is not an isolated case. For their study, 37 scientists, conservationists and customs officials from 22 countries have compiled numerous other examples of species for which the pet market has become a serious problem, even though the Washington Convention (CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is actually intended to prevent nature being sold off in such a way.
This Convention, that to date has been signed by 182 states including the EU, regulates the international trade in threatened fauna and flora. Appendix I to the Convention lists particularly highly endangered species; imports or exports of these species for commercial purposes is no longer permitted. Appendix II contains a large number of other endangered species; a special permit is required for trading in these species.
"More than 90 percent of reptile species are, however, not even covered by CITES", is the criticism expressed by Mark Auliya. To date, biologists have described more than 10,000 reptile species worldwide. A mere 793 of these species are presently covered by trade regulations under CITES. Many other endangered reptiles that are included in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), on the other hand, have so far not made it into the Appendices of CITES. Orlov’s viper (Vipera orlovi), for example, is considered threatened with extinction; less than 250 adults are still crawling through a small region in the Caucasus. Yet the international trade in these snakes is not regulated. Just as little as the trade in various rare geckos from Madagascar and New Caledonia.
It is specifically such species that are in particular demand amongst collectors. Even though they enjoy rarity value, they can still be purchased legally and without any great degree of bureaucracy. So why does CITES not apply to all endangered animals and plants? "On the one hand, this is due to the fact that international trade is not an issue for every endangered species", explains Mark Auliya. There are, however, also enough cases where inclusion in the appendices fails only on account of economic interests or lack of political will.
Even if a species is listed by the Convention, it is, nevertheless, not necessarily out of danger. After all, the illegal trade in wild animals has become a crime that is just as lucrative as trafficking in drugs, weapons and human beings. There is a correspondingly strong incentive to circumvent the protective provisions. One possibility, for example, is to manipulate documents. This way, a CITES-listed species becomes an unregulated relative at the drop of a hat. Or an animal captured in the wild becomes one allegedly bred in captivity. A large number of monitor lizards from Indonesia or chameleons from Madagascar come onto the market using this strategy.
But time and time again, there are cases where smugglers do not bother with any paperwork. Interesting species are secretly taken across borders in suitcases or on the smuggler’s body, often by "hired tourists". There is an amazing level of ingenuity involved. In September 2007 a US citizen was arrested for smuggling three Fiji banded iguanas (Brachylophus bulabula) in his prosthetic leg. "To a certain extent, cartel-like organisations are involved", explains Mark Auliya. The persons involved are very much aware which animals reach the highest prices: rarities are always in great demand. For this reason, it is not only protected species that are targeted but frequently also new discoveries by the scientific community, as are endemic species that only occur in a very small distribution area worldwide. It is therefore not surprising that Cnemaspis psychedelica, a gecko species that was unknown until 2010, quickly became popular. After all, this little reptile not only adorns itself with colours reminiscent of tripping on drugs but lives exclusively on Hon Khoai, a Vietnamese island of only eight square kilometres in size. They have been offered for sale in Europe on a regular basis since 2013 - one pair for 2500 to 3000 euros.
"Regions that are home to a large number of such unique reptiles attract particular attention from smugglers", says Mark Auliya. These include, for example, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Madagascar. In many of the countries affected, poverty, poorly equipped authorities and a lack of controls make illegal trade particularly easy. But even in Australia or New Zealand, countries that have strict protective legislation and an efficient law enforcement system, their unique fauna is not spared.
According to the study, reptile smuggling can have dramatic effects, particularly for species with small populations and extremely limited distribution areas. But even larger populations cannot cope with over-harvesting. For instance, tortoises and large lizards are very long-lived and have low reproduction rates. The ability of these populations to compensate for massive losses from trapping is therefore limited.
So what should be done to prevent a reptile clearance sale? On the one hand Mark Auliya pleads in favour of stricter regulations committing all CITES member states to better protection for their own incidences. "On the other hand, main importers such as the EU must adopt responsibility", the expert points out. He identifies need for action, as an example, concerning species such as the highly sought-after Borneo earless monitor lizards (Lanthanotus borneensis) for which European reptile hobbyists are currently willing to pay up to some 3000 euros per pair. While this species is protected in their home country, it is to date not included in the CITES appendices. This means that smugglers only have to get such animals out of Borneo. They can then be offered for sale quite openly on the European market. In the US, in contrast, trade in species that are not included in the CITES appendices but are protected in their home countries is also forbidden. "The EU is currently discussing the introduction of a similar regulation", says Mark Auliya. "That would be a step into the right direction."
The European LTER community wishes to identify the future research needs and related infrastructure & service requirements in order to enable appropriate planning and design of the infrastructure (the research sites, etc.)
Therefore, the current flagship project for the development of LTER in Europe, the eLTER Horizon 2020 project, is conducting a horizon scanning to identify emerging research questions that may become relevant for future ecosystem research infrastructure development. This survey aims at collecting input from experts from different regions and fields of expertise.
You can find the short survey and links to background documents here. The closing date is 23 May 2016.
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