VALUES project scientific workshop - part of Eco Summit conference

The 5th International EcoSummit Congress, EcoSummit 2016 - Ecological Sustainability: Engineering Change, will take place at The Corum Convention Centre, Montpellier (FR) from 29 August – 1 September 2016. The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) will participate in the event and will be represented by the VALUES project team.

As part of the EcoSummit 2016, Benedetto Rugani, VALUES project leader at LIST will organise a scientific workshop on 30 August 2016 entitled: "Valuing ecosystem services for environmental assessment: State-of-the-art and prospective solution".

VALUES scientific workshop abstract

Identifying and modelling the complex and interlinked human−environment nexuses is one affordable way to assess the relationships between antroposphere and geobiosphere. Such an assessment shall support the establishment of environmental and nature conservation policies, and the life cycle sustainability development of technologies. The theory of ecosystem services (ES) turns out to be at the interface among these research and decision-making questions: assessing the value of ES means understanding and quantifying the very nature of coupled ecological−economic systems. While scientific effort intensifies in this domain, still relevant challenges underlie the implementation of integrated modelling frameworks, the analysis of future scenarios, and the interaction among different disciplines, such as methods of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), spatial analysis and system dynamics. This workshop intends to deepen the discussion on the multi-scale and multi-objective features that underpin the ES assessment, with a special focus on the latest developments in the field of LCIA combined with ecological modelling.

Topics of the workshop Agenda

Part 1

14h00-14h10 : "The Need for an integrated assessment of ecosystems services", Benedetto Rugani (VALUES project team, LIST, Luxembourg)

14h10-14h55 : "Sustainability scenarios for ecosystem service assessment: different angles of a same room". Three presentations made by Guy Ziv (School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK), Thomas Schaubroeck (Dept. of Sustainable Organic Chemistry and Technology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium) and Federico M. Pulselli (Dept. of Earth, Environmental and Physical Sciences, University of Siena, Italy

14h55-15h10 : "Routinising the spatial assessment in ecosystem services valuation", Joachim Maes (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Varese, Italy)

15h10-15h30 : "Final remarks and outlook, with a state-of-the-art on VALUES" (Benoît Othoniel and Benedetto Rugani, VALUES project team, LIST, Luxembourg)

Part 2

15h30-16h00 : Round-table discussion

Call for paper - Special Issue of "Ecosystem services"

Attendees of the workshop and any other interested expert in the fields of ecosystem services and life cycle assessment are cordially invited to submit their manuscripts to a call for papers to be published as special issue of the workshop in the “Ecosystem Services” journal. The Call for Papers, entitled “Human-Nature nexuses: broadening knowledge on integrated biosphere-technosphere modelling to advance the assessment of ecosystem services”, is already open and available on journals.elservier.com (submission deadline: Feb 15, 2017).

 >> Get all information about the conference > www.ecosummit2016.org