Fourth day of ESPA Conference
By Paul van Gardingen, ESPA Director
The last day of the ESPA Conference was focused on the shortlisted Consortium Projects and helping their members to adapt their ideas and plans to respond to ESPA’s very ambitious and challenging agenda for research excellence and development impact.
Two presentations described ESPA’s new reporting requirements and the proposed ethics procedures that projects will be required to adopt. The teams then had an opportunity to discuss their projects with representatives of the ESPA Directorate, the Secretariat and the Programme Executive Board.
Team members commented on how their interaction with other ESPA researchers during the conference, in particular those from ESPA’s Framework Projects, had helped to advance their understanding of the way that ESPA’s science is designed and implemented.
It was good to see the growing list of potential links between projects, including between some of the shortlisted consortia. Final announcements about the Consortia are expected early in 2012, and participants at the Conference also heard about plans to launch a new call for additional consortium projects early in 2012.
Next year’s conference will be used to highlight the new science that has been generated by ESPA’s Framework Projects, the 2011 Evidence and Impact Research Grants and to provide more information about the new Consortium Projects.
I am already looking forward to that opportunity, which will be the first time globally that a scientific conference focuses entirely on the question of “How and when do ecosystem services contribute to poverty reduction”. In a year that includes the Rio+20 summit and the establishment of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) it is indeed pleasing to know that ESPA’s researchers will be ready to provide evidence making that link.