Beaulieu Café: Natural, Capital, Future

Nature, Capital, Future

In spite of efforts at different governance levels (global, EU, national, local) we continue to lose biodiversity and our ecosystem services are continuously being degraded. The loss of ecosystems means losing an important natural structural system, whereas the loss of biodiversity equals to losing a vital component of that structure. The ecosystems loss has direct human, social and economic costs while the biodiversity loss is often more subtle – it makes ecosystems less stable and more vulnerable to collapse. In addition to the ethical and moral arguments for protecting biodiversity, losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services have enormous economic and social costs that we are only starting to fully understand and appreciate. Much has been done already for integrating nature and biodiversity policy into other key sectoral policies. However, despite the integration efforts up to now the overall progress could be seen as modest.

Which are the key drivers of negative trends? How to reverse them? Should we put price tags on every nature item? What could be done better? What could be done differently? Is the EU level the right level for action? Shouldn’t there be more bottom-up approach? Where is the influence of civil society?

These are questions that will be discussed in the 1st Beaulieu Café, which is dedicated to natural capital policy and its challenges.

See information and register in: http://www.cc.cec/dgintranet/env/cafe.htm

Guest speakers:

Pavan Sukhdev, Founder-CEO of GIST Advisory, and coordinator of TEEB.

Patricia Zurita, Chief Executive of the BirdLife International Partnership.

Hans Hoogeveen Director General Agriculture and Nature at the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands.

Image