Future farming in the UK: global implications for society and biodiversity

Thanks to all who attended or were involved. The Symposium programme and a compilation of presentation summaries can now be downloaded.

Suggesed actions

Delegates were invited to provide recommendations to address the potential impacts of future farming on society and biodiversity. Suggestions were written on a post-it-note and stuck to a wall for all delegates to see. Delegates were then asked to vote for those they support by adding a dot to the post-it-note. The list of 18 suggested actions is now available for download.

Presentations:

The 2008 CCF Annual Symposium was a great success, having been attended by over 80 people. The programme included both full length and speed presentations on many aspects of the varied work of CCF member organisations, ranging from ecological networks and climate change through biodiversity and agriculture to the continental shelf.

Some presenters are making their presentations or summaries available:

• Rhys Green (Dept of Zoology & RSPB): Agriculture and biodiversity
• Tim Sparks (CEH): Hedgerows and wildlife: nothing more to learn?
• Daniel Owen: The UK's continental shelf: aspirations beyond 200 nautical miles
• Graham Tucker (Ecological Solutions): Can ecological networks help species adapt to climate change?
• Malcolm Ausden (RSPB): Habitat restoration: does it work?

More will be posted here as soon as we have them

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
  

Biodiversity offsets are conservation activities intended to compensate for the residual unavoidable harm to biodiversity caused by development projects. There are many ad hoc precedents for biodiversity offsets in the UK , but they are legally and institutionally more developed in the US . They are likely to become much more widely applied in the future. For example, they are emerging globally in the voluntary corporate responsibility programmes of several multinationals who wish to demonstrate "no net loss" to biodiversity in their operations. Three presentations provided background and examples as a basis for subsequent discussion:

• Jon Ekstrom, BirdLife International - An overview on why, how and where biodiversity offsets have been used (Powerpoint - 721KB)
• Tony Whitten, World Bank - Setting up a biodiversity offset in the Annamite range of Lao PDR to compensate for losses should the Nam Theun 2 dam go ahead
• Graham Tucker, Ecological Solutions - The potential application of offset approaches to development impacts in the UK (Powerpoint - 630KB).