The UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published a report Economic Valuation of the Benefits of Ecosystem Services delivered by the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Complex but interesting, ties in to the National Ecosystem Assessment.
Published today, the long-awaited Biodiversity 2020: a strategy for England's wildlife and ecosystem services. This complements the earlier publication in 2011 of the UK government's policy white paper on the natural environment Nature's Choice and the UK National Ecosystem Assessment.
The report of a UK workshop on IPBES is now available. The first plenary of IPBES is to be held on 3-7 October 2011, with a likely focus on organisation and governance for those governments participating.
A whole range of reports and a key policy vision from the UK Government on environment - a new White Paper The Natural Choice: this will determine strategic directions for a whole range of policy and funding in the next few years and is the first since 1990. The White Paper is the next phase from the earlier Green Paper consulting on views for environmental policy. A key evidence element in the development of the White Paper has been the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, and other background evidence is available. Also just released:
The UK National Ecosystem Assessment reporting has been launched with a Synthesis report - links to the 27 more detailed reports available also, but these are currently in a range of states of completion.
The UK National Ecosystem Assessment has just been published. This will tie in with the imminent publication of the new White Paper on environment and a new England biodiversity strategy.
JNCC (the Joint Nature Conservation Committee) have put UK biodiversity indicator information on their website - a slightly different set from the England biodiversity indicators from Defra earlier in the year but the same messages.
Number 53 of the long-running UK biodiversity news is available from JNCC. Reference to the new biodiversity strategy for England, and to international biodiversity day - it looks as though we are inching towards a defined national biodiversity week for the UK in May, which would be a useful complement to Science Week. Also reference to publication of a new White Paper in June, with the National Ecosystem Assessment.
A UK research strategy for global food security is published from government and various agencies - some references to the impact of agriculture on biodiversity, and the reliance on ecosystem services. Little bit on pests, but not much on genomes of wild related species.
The UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has just published the latest assessment of the 26 national biodiversity indicators for England on their website. Not good news for farmland birds, some butterflies, grassland plants and invasive species impacts. /...more
.../Worth looking at this in some detail. On the natural history side, there is reasonable news for some groups of organisms with either improvements or stability since 2000 and often back to the 1980s. Gradual and sustained improvements in areas where there has been concerted regulatory effort since the 1970s - so freshwater quality, marine pollution and some fisheries.
Climate change impacts on biodiversity are looked at through the spring responses of certain sensitive species - lot of noise in the data, as you might expect, but a conclusion of temperature-sensitive events becoming gradually earlier in the year - since 1999 around 9 days earlier than the mean for the 20th Century.
Public attitudes are interesting - not a lot of development in awareness of the relatively technical term "biodiversity" but a sustained increase in visiting nature reserves over the years.
Biodiversity action plans show a slight decrease in the number of species and habitats where things are getting worse, and an increase in stability.
