The UK Biodiversity Research
Advisory Group
The UK’s National Biodiversity
Research Platform
UK BRAG exists to:
- Identify, promote and facilitate
biodiversity research to support UK and individual country
biodiversity action plan commitments1;
- Coordinate effective and efficient UK
engagement with European biodiversity research issues, fulfilling
the role of a national biodiversity research platform;
- Contribute to effective biodiversity
research networking in the UK, leading to increased
interdisciplinary capacity;
- Support knowledge transfer activities in relation to
biodiversity research.
BES - BRAG event 2009 to focus on NEA
The British Ecological Society (BES) Science Policy Team,
and the UK Biodiversity Research Advisory Group (UK BRAG) will be
holding a joint workshop on Wednesday 9th September, at
the University of Hertfordshire, looking at the development of the
National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA).
The NEA is intended to;
- provide a synthesis of the state of the natural environment and
provision of ecosystem services, exploring future scenarios and
possible policy responses;
- create a compelling and coherent narrative on both the state
and value of natural environment and ecosystem services, to help
raise awareness of their importance to human well-being and future
economic prosperity;
- involve an inclusive process of interaction with stakeholders
and communities of interest to interact and share learning,
and in particular to foster better inter-disciplinary cooperation
between natural and social scientists.
The session will be an opportunity to look at
how the NEA is operating and to feed into how the research
community and policy makers would like to see it used. There will
be presentations and discussion from
11am – 12:30 pm, with lunch and networking for
participants, followed by a breakout into discussion groups and a
final report back from 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm. The detailed
programme will be announced once speakers have been confirmed.
The workshop is intended to facilitate
connections between those with an interest in biodiversity research
and policy, and those involved in developing the NEA.
See also the
BES and NEA
websites.
Latest publications:-
Marine biodiversity and the provision of goods and services:
identifying the research priorities.
Given the difficulties in sampling and
understanding the processes occurring in the marine environment,
comparatively little is known of how marine biodiversity
contributes to the delivery of goods and services relied upon by
people.
With this in mind a special sub group of the UK BRAG was
convened to look at Marine biodiversity and the provision of goods
and services. Their 2008 report is now available.
BRIG - BRAG workshop, December 2008. Report now available.
On December 4th and 5th 2008, the
Biodiversity Reporting and Information Group (BRIG), in conjunction
with BRAG, jointly held a workshop. This invitation only event was
to identify the key research and one-off survey signposting actions
required to take forward the conservation of Biodiversity Action
Plan (BAP) priority species. Peak Ecology Ltd was
commissioned to organise the workshop, which was managed by a
Steering Group comprising Ant Maddock and Paul Rose (JNCC), in
conjunction with Margaret Palmer (Wildlife and Countryside Link),
and Deborah Long (Scottish Environment Link). This Steering Group
represented the BRIG/BRAG research sub-group. The workshop was
generously hosted by Natural England at their Peterborough offices.
All the experts invited worked extremely hard to a very tight
schedule to make the workshop the success that it was. The event
fulfilled its aims of bringing together experts to endorse
proposals for research and one-off survey actions for priority
species, and to produce suites of actions that can be taken forward
in a logical way. The report
of the workshop (462 Kb), and accompanying
appendix (1.5 Mb) are now available.
Special session at the BES annual meeting, 4th September 2008,
London.
Following the success of UK BRAG's side event at the 2007 Annual
Meeting of the British Ecological Society, the Group once
again joined forces with the BES to organise a special session on
Ecosystem Services at the 2008 Annual Meeting at Imperial
College, London. The
programme can be downloaded, along with a report
of the special session. The speaker's slides can also be
viewed by going to the links below.
Dr Peter
Costigan (1.3 Mb)
Prof. Ed Maltby (1.9 Mb)
Prof. Roy
Haines-Young & Dr Marion Potschin (please note this is
a very large file of 9.3 Mb)
Dr Ruth
Swetnam (please note the large file size - 4.05 Mb)
Prof.Alastair
Fitter (2.15 Mb)
Prof. Andrew
Watkinson (3.1 Mb)
Dr. Dan
Osborn (0.3 Mb)
Dr. Peter Carey (3.0
Mb)
UK BRAG 3 Year Report
A summary of the important knowledge gaps, identified by
the UK Biodiversity Advisory Group 2003-2006, 'Research Needs for UK
Biodiversity', has now been published. Hard copies are
available from the UK BRAG Secretariat (
)
UK BRAG Leaflet
The UK BRAG Secretariat have produced a leaftet to summarise the
role, activities and work of UK BRAG; the leaflet can be downloaded
here. Requests for hard copies
should be made by email to
Terms of Reference
A review of UK BRAG took place in 2006, leading to a
refocusing of the Group’s aims and objectives. You can download the
revised
Terms of Reference.
Latest News
The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence is a partnership between scientists and managers working towards a sustainable global environment and the conservation of biodiversity.
The Natural Environment Research Council (UK) invites proposals for activities to strengthen research capacity to tackle the complex problems associated with the sustainable management of ecosystems for poverty reduction.
UK BRAG proposes to work in partnership with the Biodiversity Reporting & Information Group (BRIG), to form an expert group which will make recommendations on how to implement research actions for UK BAP species and habitats.
The UK Network of Environmental Economists (UKNEE) is pleased to announce that envecon 2008: Applied Environmental Economics Conference will take place on Friday 14th March 2008, at The Royal Society in London
Key External Links
BiodivERsA
Biodiversa is an ERA-net (European Research Area) project
where 19 European research funding agencies seek best practice as a
basis for cooperation in order to strengthen European
research.
BioStrat is a Specific Support Action (SSA) funded by the EU
Sixth Framwework Programme starting on the 1st of November 2006 and
coordinated by the Institute of Ecology and Botany of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. The project invoves 34 partners from 32
countries and aims to further develop the EU Biodiversity Research
Strategy making wise use of the existing structures.
The Environmental Research Funders' Forum brings together the
UK's major public sector sponsors of environmental science, aiming
to make best possible use of funding. ERFF concentrates on
activities that clearly add value; could not be done by a single
meber acting alone; and have the potential to advcane environmental
research in the UK and internationally.
The European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy is a
forum for scientists and policy-makers to ensure that research
contributes to halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010. Its
participants, fomr across Europe, meet to identify and promote
strategically important biodiversity research that will contribute
to policies and management to reduce biodiversity loss, and help to
conserve, protect, restore and make use of the components of
biodiversity sustainable.
UK Biodiversity Action Plan
The UK Biodiversity Action Plan is the UK Government's
response to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) signed in
1992. It describes the UK's biological resources and commits
a detailed plan for the protection of these resources.
The UK Global Environmental Change Committee is an
Inter-Agency Committee which provides a forum to coordinate UK
involvement in the science and technology of climate change and
other global environmental change, both nationally and
internationally. It reviews the effectiveness of the national
capacity, capability and performance in these areas and makes
recommendations, including identification of lead
agencies. A sub-group of the UK GECC specifically looks
at
Biodiversity.
1 UK BRAG will not
address research needs associated with individual HAPs and SAPs,
instead focusing on cross-cutting, generic issues.