Autore: ecolinfa

In the last years Ecolinfa has strengthened its activities abroad. We have prepared several international projects and have actively participated in some of these. In particular, our experiences in LIFE Projects, in Europe, and in UN Projects, in Africa, represent important results of our professional life.

Thanks to our efforts and to the support of our main partner SETIN, , we significantly extended our network and this newsletter is a way to keep in touch with you.

Many challenges will be waiting for us  in 2017 and we are ready to face them.

Ecolinfa wishes you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Alessandro and Giacomo

The last LIFE Programme call, launched the last spring, was recently closed. Many public officers, practitioners and researchers have designed hundreds of project proposals, with significant effort.

The total budget for project action grants for this call is €337 536 184. Of this amount, €273 936 184 has been allocated to the sub-programme for environment and €63 600 000 has been allocated to the sub-programme for climate action. At least 55% of the environment allocation will be dedicated to projects supporting the conservation of nature and biodiversity.

Ecolinfa and SETIN have designed or co-designed 7 project proposals on different topics. SETIN is also associate beneficiary in 3 of these project proposals.

The Antwerp Declaration on Ecosystem Services was launched during the European Ecosystem Services Conference 2016.

The declaration, with the scope to deliver societal impact, is based on 3 pillars: refocus on principles of sustainability, reclaim the notion of value and expand collaboration.

One of the explicated needs is “Bring business and researchers together to encourage innovation and creation of new flexible business models that integrate ecosystem services”. Ecolinfa is very active in bring business and scientific aspects together, to give value to nature and ecosystem service and find innovative approaches to encourage new financing and governance models.

You can support the declaration by signing it online.

http://antwerpdeclaration.info/sign

Giacomo was the chair of the session “Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Development Goals from around the globe”, with the co-host SoEun Ahn, from the Korean Environmental Institute.

At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030.  The SDGs aimed at an array of issues that included slashing poverty, hunger, disease, gender inequality, sustainable cities and communities, sustainable terrestrial and aquatics ecosystems and access to water and sanitation.

Ecosystem Services (ES) studies and analysis can play an important role in the implementation of the SDGs, in different contexts, including developed and developing countries. The inclusion of ES in national and international policies, in fact, can support governments, international institutions, academia, civil society, national and local stakeholders to better understand and give value to nature and ecosystems.

This session, took place during the international peace’s day[G1] , proposed discussions on the contribution of ES to the challenges launched with the 2030 Agenda. The session hosted case studies and speakers from Europe, Asia and Africa. The presentations included topics such as agriculture, ecosystem services evaluation, freshwater ecosystem services assessment, and others.

This presentation intends to provide an overview of the guidelines to apply the Economic Environmental Evaluation (EEE) in Guinee-Bissau, one of the poorest countries in the world, with a very low Human Development Index (HDI).

Recently, the Government of Guinee-Bissau and the United Nations have assigned the Partnership Framework 2016-2020 (UNPAF), the UN integrated system’s contribution to the National Development Plan, considering the principles of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Currently the UN is assisting the Government in applying the impact assessment procedures in the Country, providing technical and legal tools. The EEE guidelines are one of these tools, elaborated considering the ecosystem services paradigm.

The EEE in Guinea-Bissau integrates the procedures of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and its main goal is measuring the economic value of nature, before and after a human intervention, to avoid and mitigate the negative effects on the local population and contribute to the sustainable and equitable management of natural resources, considering also the public and democratic participation.

The methodology is based on the assessment and evaluation of goods and ecosystem services, before and after the execution of the works (in the case of the EIA) or the actions relating to the Policies/Programmes/Plans (in the case of SEA), considering the peculiar characteristics of the natural capital and its economic value in Africa and, particularly, in Guinee-Bissau. The proposed methodology is divided into different stages and different methods are considered to identify the economic value of environmental impacts.

The European Ecosystem Services Conference 2016 was held in Antwerp, Belgium, from the 19th to the 23rd of September. More than 600 participants attended the conference, organized in cooperation with the OpenNESS , OPERAs and ECOPLAN projects, the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP), at the University of Antwerp.

The theme Helping nature to help us focused on the important role that healthy ecosystems play in supporting human well-being and the protection of nature

The Conference included about 60 sessions, with hundreds of presentations, plenary sessions with keynote speakers, poster sessions, excursions and a conference dinner.

The parallel sessions were divided in clusters on the basis of the topics: Biome sessions, Capacity building/networking sessions, Generic/regional based sessions, Policy and business related sessions, Sessions related to projects/processes, Thematic sessions, Other sessions.

The European Ecosystem Services 2016 conference will be held in Antwerp from the 19th to the 23rd of September. The theme Helping nature to help us focuses on the important role that healthy ecosystems play in supporting human well-being and the protection of nature.