The goal of halting the loss of biodiversity constantly faces new policy challenges. Increasing use of bioenergy, i.e. the utilization of agricultural or forest biomass in energy production, is an example of such an emergent challenge. Bioenergy can be produced from wastes or harvesting remains, and in future to increasing extent from energy crops and short-term rotation forests.

More and more researchers are working on biodiversity issues in the context of bioenergy. However, because the field is still young, the exchange of information between researchers might have been limited so far.

To advance an interdisciplinary research community, ALTER-Net has chosen to make a synthesis of knowledge needs related to interlinkages between bioenergy and biodiversity. This activity is a pilot for a framework to tackle with new, unexpected challenges affecting biodiversity. There is a great need for this kind of a framework for synthesizing rapidly research outputs for decision making. The synthesis on the interlinkages between bioenergy and biodiversity will be distributed to both policy makers and researchers.

This ALTER-Net activity is led by staff at the Finnish Environment Institute, SYKE, who maintain separate web pages with more information.

Find out more

• Visit SYKE's web pages about this pilot project
• This bioenergy study is a part of an ALTER-Net project on the Governance of Ecosystem Services
• Contact for more information:
Taru Peltola, senior researcher
Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
firstname.surname@ymparisto.fi  [taru.peltola]