From seeds to needs: Regenerating ecosystems services to halt the biodiversity crisis: Where can interdisciplinary collaborations with engineering solutions make the largest impact?
Royal Academy of Engineering
The goal of the symposia is to facilitate introductions and collaboration between outstanding researchers, innovators and practitioners working in the international development field.
Whilst working jointly on concepts for engineering for development, attendees share new techniques and approaches across disciplinary boundaries and build lasting connections. Delegates will be approximately 0-20 years post-doc, or have equivalent experience in industry, presenting a great opportunity to establish valuable contacts with the next generation of engineering leaders and beyond.
Symposium content and themes
We face a global biodiversity crisis, with unprecedented and accelerating rates of species extinctions and degradation of habitats. This will have grave impacts on the worlds human population dependent on the ecosystems services they provide. However, biodiversity is a broad theme with many challenges encompassed within it. There is a need to simultaneously identify the major challenges faced (such as those defined by the Sustainable Development Goals) and the areas where interdisciplinary environmental engineering and science can have the greatest impact to maximise the benefits gained relative to costs – “maximising the bang for the buck”.
It is recognised that the global biodiversity emergency affects lower- and middle-income countries the hardest. There are potential conflicts between conservation efforts and resource exploitation that can often negatively impact the communities in LMICs and undermine efforts of development.
This symposium will scope out those challenges that would most benefit from engineering solutions, as part of interdisciplinary collaborations, and explore this within the context of the themes: Marine, Freshwater and Terrestrial.
Each theme will be explored from a research, policy and industry perspective, facilitating dialogue from a wide range of disciplines, including engineering, environmental science and management, social sciences, and economics and governance.
