Bioenergy pilot project
The goal of halting the loss of biodiversity constantly faces new policy challenges. Increasing use of bioenergy, i.e. the utilization of agricultural or forest biomass in energy production, is an example of such an emergent challenge. Bioenergy can be produced from wastes or harvesting remains, and in future to increasing extent from energy crops and short-term rotation forests.
More and more researchers are working on biodiversity issues in the context of bioenergy. However, because the field is still young, the exchange of information between researchers might have been limited so far.
To advance an interdisciplinary research community, ALTER-Net has chosen to make a synthesis of knowledge needs related to interlinkages between bioenergy and biodiversity. This activity is a pilot for a framework to tackle with new, unexpected challenges affecting biodiversity. There is a great need for this kind of a framework for synthesizing rapidly research outputs for decision making. The synthesis on the interlinkages between bioenergy and biodiversity will be distributed to both policy makers and researchers.
This ALTER-Net activity is led by staff at the Finnish Environment Institute, SYKE, who maintain separate web pages with more information.
Related publication
A loss of biological diversity continues in spite of the existing, and in some respects, rather elaborate and heavy attempts at management and protection. It has been argued that one of the reasons for the lack of success is the unmet and challenging knowledge needs. Meeting the needs requires integration of various sciences and expertise, since attempts to manage biodiversity gives rise also to many emerging, complex and political questions. Integration of the disciplines needs practices that are able to overcome practical, institutional and cultural obstacles. ALTER-Net, a European network for research on biological diversity under the 6th framework programme, has aimed to undertake further interdisciplinary research that will feed into the addressing of societal needs.This book presents a framework which creates possibilities for communication between research and decisionmaking. By using the framework, relevant topics for discussion are brought up, emerging research needs are reacted to for elaboration into concrete research projects, and finally research findings are conveyed to support decision-making. To achieve this requires organised and open collaboration between research. |
Some of ALTER-Net's work in this area has been published in a book by Eeva Furman, Riku Varjopuro and Taru Peltola, Find out more
- Visit SYKE's web pages about this pilot project
- This bioenergy study is a part of an ALTER-Net project on the Governance of Ecosystem Services
- Contact for more information: Taru Peltola, senior researcher
Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
[email protected] [taru.peltola]
