Beyond Economic Valuation: Alternative Ways to express the Value of Biodiversity in Science and Policy

This high-level event will bring together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, senior science policy advisors, stakeholders and practitioners, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of these innovative institutional governance arrangements, in the field of natural resource management and sustainable agriculture.

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A variety of initiatives and policies have been proposed that are going beyond “economic valuation”, and aim to reveal more effectively the broad range of biodiversity values that motivate actors and involve stakeholders promoting these values. Prominent methods that have grown in importance for revealing biodiversity values are participatory assessment and scenario building or deliberative multi-stakeholder meeting amongst others. Various governance arrangements that build networks of state and non-state collective actors in implementing biodiversity policies have equally come to forefront of the policy debate. To address those issues, the conference organizers contemplate a one day international conference event including “state of the art” sessions by high level key-note speakers, a lunch debate on “transdisciplinary research”, contributions from stakeholder representatives on “lessons learned” and a panel discussion with senior EU staff, stakeholder representatives and academic experts. 

Please find below a short presentation and draft program of the conference. Full information on the conference and registration for the event will be made available 15th of February on the conference website.

Short conference Program

9:30 Introduction to the conference: Addressing Motivations for Nature in Biodiversity Governance

Birgit de Boissezon, Head of DG Research and Innovation, Unit I1 – Horizontal Aspects (To Be Confirmed)

10:00 -12:00 General key-notes: “Building motivations for Nature into Biodiversity initiatives: motivational drivers and deliberative and participatory governance approaches”

1. Joachim Spangenberg, Sustainable Europe Research Institute SERI Germany, HQ, Faculty Member
2. Linda Steg, Professor of Environmental Psychology, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands)
3. Arild Vatn, Professor of institutional and ecological economics at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences

12:00 – 12:45 Alternative ways to express the value of biodiversity in EU Research and its impact on policy (from FP7 to FP8)

1. Adrian Peres, DG Research and Innovation, Unit I3 – Management of Natural Resources
2. Strahil Christov , DG Environment , Unit B2 ‐ Biodiversity

12:45-14:15 Science-Policy-Society Lunch Debate on transdisciplinary research for biodiversity and natural resource management (BIOMOT policy brief #3)

14:15-15:45 General key-notes: “lessons from practitioners, projects and governance initiatives”

1. Annica Sandström. Associate professor of political science at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
2. Dolly Jørgensen, Senior Researcher at the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Sweden
3. Rob Bugter, Alterra, team Biodiversity and Policy, Wagening University
4. Nico Beun, Innovation Network, Program Manager: Nature, Landscape and Space

16:15 – 18:00 Science-policy-society panel on “After value; why putting a price tag on biodiversity doesn’t work and the need for alternatives” (BIOMOT policy brief #1)