Last Friday I went to the True-Cost Accounting in Food and Farming conference in London, organised by the Sustainable Food Trust.
Last week I also went to the Living With Environmental Change event in Birmingham - this is a partnership of organisations that fund and use environmental research and as you can guess covers a huge range of topics, from flooding to climate change.
Last week I went to Birmingham to meet with my communications colleagues from other initiatives who are working broadly in the area of communicating the value of ecosystem services.
No I wasn't awake at 5.45am this morning but if you were, you might have heard BBC Radio 4 farming today discussing the reforms to the EU Common Agriculture Policy.
Sounds a bit techical? Well if you can cut through the jargon there is an important decision to be made on how the money is spent and how much of it will be used to protect the environment. Something of interest to both farmers and environmentalists!
Last week I had a great trip to Bangor in North Wales for the Network of European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils (EEAC) Conference. I was there to talk about the Valuing Nature Network and you can see me talking here.
How much natural resource can a company use? How do they take into account environmental limits, community needs and meet regulations whilst remaining profitable?
Yesterday I took part in a very enjoyable workshop, alongside business leaders from well-known brands, to understand how businesses can use practical tools from the ‘Right Value for Externalities Collaboration’ to help answer these questions.
Pollinator decline is a complex challenge. There are many interacting threats, differing patterns of decline, and no obvious single solution. But here are FOUR actions for pollinators that we can all agree on.
I'm very much looking forward to going to Bristol on Wednesday to take part in a workshop organised by the lovely people at the Ecosystems Knowledge Network on 'Applying payments for ecosystem services in practice'.
Along with my collague Professor Brett Day from the UEA, we're going to talk to people from wildlife trusts and local councils about the project that we ran last summer down in Cornwall, with South West Water and the Westcountry Rivers Trust.
The Welsh Government has published its draft Action Plan for Pollinators. This is a brilliant initiative and one that I really hope other Governments will emulate. Here is my view on its best points and areas for improvement.
Summary
Yesterday (26 March 2013), Defra published its field research on the effects of neonicotinoids on bumblebee colonies (Thompson et al 2013). Here is my understanding of the results.