Cambridge Conservation Forum

CCF summer symposium:  ’Climate Change adaptation in the International Year of Biodiversity’

Over 80 people  attended the CCF Summer Symposium, which was held on Monday 21st June,  to  hear a range of interesting speakers reflect and challenge current thinking on climate change adaptation in the International Year of Biodiversity.  The programme is available here.  Many of the presentations are available in pdf form here and a summary of the discussions in the ’speed date’  session is available here.

Global Analyses of Protected Area Impacts

This seminar was given by Lucas Joppa of Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University / Microsoft Research on November 10 2009, at UNEP-WCMC. The talk discussed methods for estimating the effectiveness of protected areas in preventing land use change, making use of global land cover datasets and the World Database on Protected Areas.

This is a pre-publication version of a paper, “Re-assessing the forest impacts of protection: the challenge of non-random location and a corrective method” to be published in the inaugural issue of the journal Ecological Economics Reviews.

Downloads

  Presentation slides (PDF – 7.4MB); Associated paper “Re-assessing Protected Area Impacts” (PDF)

Discussions on Valuing Ecosystem Services

The papers supporting these discussions are available here.

A paper on climate change impacts in the Fens is also available here.

7th CCF Annual Symposium – Climate change: biodiversity impacts and mitigation measures

CCF took the unprecedented step of focusing its Annual Symposium on the subject of Climate change: biodiversity impacts and mitigation measures. The aim of the symposium was to review current predictions of the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and the potential mitigation measures that we can take to minimise them. The specific subjects covered included the evidence for climate change and the contribution of human activities to such changes, current predictions of climate changes and impacts on habitats and species, strategies for minimising climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and possible adaptation measures that may reduce biodiversity impacts. The issues were discussed in relation to international and national impacts, and generic lessons that are applicable to each will be identified.

Sir David King gave the keynote opening speech at the symposium and reviewed the need for global action on climate change. Other climate change experts that gave presentations were Dr Pam Berry (Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University), Professor Peter Cox (CEH), Dr Dave Hole (Durham University), Dr John Hopkins (English Nature), Professor Brian Huntley (Durham University), John Lanchbery (RSPB) and Professor Ian Swingland (DICE and Sustainable Forestry Management Ltd).

There were also four workshop discussion sessions on climate change research, carbon offset schemes, the UK climate change bill and climate change adaptation measures. Summaries of the outcomes of these sessions will be provided on this website shortly.

The following presentations are available for download in Adobe PDF format:

• Sir David King – The need for global action from the science of climate change (1.1MB)
• Professor Peter Cox – Climate change and eco-systems (9MB)
• Dr Pam Berry – The sensitivity and vulnerability of UK biodiversity to climate change (0.4MB)
• Dr Dave Hole – Impacts of climate change on Africa’s Important Bird Area network and potential mitigation measures (4.8MB)
• Dr John Hopkins – Climate change adaptation measures for UK biodiversity (0.8MB)
• John Lanchbery – An overview of climate change mitigation policies (including Kyoto, EU and UK policies) (0.25MB)
• Professor Ian Swingland – The business of sustainability (2.1MB)
• Oliver Blakeman – Carbon offset schemes (0.24MB)

Poster paper abstracts (Word documents)

• Rob Marchant, Jon Lovett and Colin McClean – The York Institute of Tropical
  Ecosystem Dynamics
• J. H. Sommer, W. Küper, J. C. Lovett, W. Barthlott – The future of Africa’s
  plant diversity – Potential effects of climate change on species distributions

Workshop notes (Word documents)

• Current CCF research on climate change and research priorities
• Biodiversity adaptation measures – medium and long term requirements