St Mary's Academic Chairs Special Session at British Ecological Society Annual Meeting

Lecturer in Physical Geography at St Mary’s University, Twickenham Dr Iain Cross co-chaired a special session with Dr Alina Congreve, University of Hertfordshire, at the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting in Edinburgh. During the session, titled Integrating ecosystem services into spatial planning decision making, a number of leading academics and practitioners spoke, including Professor Georgina Mace from University College London, Dr Lucy Shuker from the Environment Agency and Dr Juliette Young from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. The talks focussed on how land-use strategies can be developed to better account for the complex relationship between social, economic and environmental processes. Dr Cross said, “Historically, the many benefits that society derives from healthily functioning ecosystems, such as carbon storage and flood regulation, have been undervalued when decisions about land use have been taken. This has led to the loss of these services and degradation of the environment. “Our special session provided the opportunity to understand how policy makers can be better informed of the multiple benefits derived from ecosystems, and how this knowledge can be used to make more effective choices over land use. The recent flooding across the UK, ongoing drought in some of the world’s most deprived societies, and predicted challenges associated with climate change suggest that there is a pressing need for policy makers to take decisions that recognise the value of ecosystem services more effectively.” Future research aims to undertake detailed studies in England, Wales and Scotland, to analyse examples of successful policy integration. A short article written for the Institution of Environmental Sciences by Drs Cross and Congreve can be found here https://www.the-ies.org/analysis/putting-freshwater-ecosystem .