News

BESS Launch Event 22nd June, London

Details

Published on Wednesday, 16 May 2012 15:10

Professor Andrew Watkinson, Director of LWEC, opened the Launch Event, for the NERC/BBSRC/LWEC programme on Biodiversity of Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS), on the 22nd June at the Royal Overseas League, London.

BESS is a five-year research programme that will deliver the ecosystem science needed for decision making for the sustainable management of landscapes and seascapes.

BESS will do this through a partnership between researchers, stakeholders, managers and policy makers, working together from the start to inform 3 main issues:

• What are the relationships between biodiversity stocks and flows of ecosystem services?
• What are the important future drivers and how will these affect stocks and flows?
• What tools and metrics can be developed to measure trends in stocks and flows?

Details of the science and implementation plans of BESS can be found here.

To answer these questions, BESS interacts directly with all relevant stakeholders and the launch event was an opportunity to begin that process in earnest.

The meeting included:

• An introduction to the BESS programme
• Presentations from key stakeholders and practitioners involved in biodiversity and landscape
• management (agencies, NGOs, business community)
• Outlines of each of the 4 consortia awards on the BESS landscapes: lowland farmland, upland rivers, urban systems, coastal wetlands.