Thursday 6 August 2009

1-2pm, in Fenner School's Forestry Lecture Theatre

How to avoid Canuteism, Philately and Neroism, and achieve the 2010 biodiversity target...

Professor Peter Bridgewater

Abstract

The global biodiversity community has been pursuing the holy grail of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss (in Europe, halting, even) ever since 2001. This commitment has been reaffirmed at the Convention on biological Diversity in 2002; later in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development and in 2006 became added as a target to the 7th of the Millennium Development Goal on Environmental Sustainability, by the UN general assembly.

And yet, as we are on the eve of 2010, it is clear these constant affirmations are just that – biodiversity loss if anything is accelerating. Globally our management of Biodiversity has become introspective, with an obsession on loss (Canuteism) , and not enough focus on change. There has also been too much effort and attention to species conservation (Philately) as being equivalent to biodiversity conservation, and too much unfocussed efforts at governance for biodiversity (Neroism).

In part because of:

• too much confusion on underlying science, and
• too little commitment to delivery at national level….
• and for citizens, too much complex language and lack of direction i.e. communication failure

While there are issues of science and research to be confronted, many of the problems can only be resolved by development of better science-policy interfaces, and better governance frameworks for biodiversity at global, regional, and, especially, national level.

Bio

Peter Bridgewater is currently Chair, UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is a Visiting Professor, Beijing Forestry University. Until July 2007 he was Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and prior to that Director, Division of Ecological Sciences, UNESCO. He was CEO of the Australian Nature Conservation Agency in the 1990’s finishing in Australia as Supervising Scientist and Chief Science Adviser in the then Dept for the Environment. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Resource Management University of New England, in1997 and has published over 200 papers and book chapters on biodiversity management and conservation, environmental governance and biodiversity issues.

The Fenner School Seminar Series is held in the Forestry Lecture Theatre, Forestry Building 48, Linnaeus Way (comes off Daley Road), ANU (Acton) campus, ACT

The seminar will start at 13:00 and finish at 14:00