7th BEES workshop (Belgian Ecosystem Services)

The concept of Ecosystem Services (ESS) – and its organizational and functional principles – have largely percolated into scientific work attempting to qualify and quantify the interlinkages between society and nature. At least since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and more recently with the TEEB initiative (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) at European level, ESS (e)valuations have become attractive and available for a number of governmental levels. The scientific concept of ESS appears thus to have hardened from a metaphor into a paradigm which rules an important number of current assessments and monitoring approaches of society-nature interactions.

On this pathway of operationalization, the quest lies today in discussing, experiencing and documenting the usability, insertion and use which could - and is - made of the ESS-concept and its (e)valuations when it comes to define, configure, amend public policies for nature and biodiversity protection. Imagining the policy implications and usefulness of ESS (e)valuations has thus logically become the core of a series of recent debates in the field; a discussion which can also be understood as an attempt to improve our understanding of the largely enthusiastic reception such (e)valuations of nature trigger among many environmental policy makers.

With an eye on this emerging discussion, the BEES-project is organizing its 7^th workshop around these issues of expected, existing and experienced linkages between policy and ESS concept, between policy and ESS-(e)valuation, specifically for the Belgian level. In order to do so, we asked for a series of internationally renowned experts to develop on their experiences with ESS (e)valuations, and we propose to confront the audience - in a collegial, constructive and open manner – with some Belgian experiences of ESS-(e)valuations and their linkages to policy-making.

The main question which will guide the discussions will be to construct together the future foundations of how public policy makers should meet ESS-(e)valuations, addressing the need for adapted science-policy interfaces for ESS (e)valuations, as well as appropriate governance schemes for ESS (e)valuations.

Keynote speaker