International Conference “Beyond Economic Valuation: Alternative Ways to express the Value of Biodiversity in Science and Policy”

This high-level event will bring together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, senior science policy advisors, stakeholders and practitioners, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of these innovative institutional governance arrangements, in the field of natural resource management and sustainable agriculture. The Conference will take place at the Natural Science Museum in Brussels.

A variety of initiatives and policies have been proposed that are going beyond “economic valuation”, and aim to reveal more effectively the broad range of biodiversity values that motivate actors and involve stakeholders promoting these values. Prominent methods that have grown in importance for revealing biodiversity values are participatory assessment and scenario building or deliberative multi-stakeholder meeting amongst others. Various governance arrangements that build networks of state and non-state collective actors in implementing biodiversity policies have equally come to forefront of the policy debate. To address those issues, the conference organizers contemplate a one day international conference event including “state of the art” sessions by high level key-note speakers, a lunch debate on “transdisciplinary research”, contributions from stakeholder representatives on “lessons learned” and a panel discussion with senior EU staff, stakeholder representatives and academic experts.