ESP Update No.2014/03

ESP Update No.2014/03

March 27, 2014 

1.     7th ESP Conference in Costa Rica: 8 – 12 September 2014

Sessions

The final list of accepted sessions is online now.  In total there are 53 sessions, look at the conference site for details.

Abstracts for oral presentations and posters

We are now preparing the website for abstract-submissions. In case you are planning to submit an abstract for an oral presentation or poster, it should fit in one of these 53 sessions. Please note that not all sessions accept voluntary contributions. Look at the Abstract Submission page for more information.

Registration and further information

We will place more detailed information about the registration fee and procedure on the website soon. If you have questions about organisational aspects please contact conference@es-partnership.org, which is now managed by Martine van Weelden who has been hired as of March 15 to help with the conference organisation.

Please regularly check the ESP 2014 conference site for the latest updates and continue to announce the conference in your network(s). The promotion flyer is also available as download from the ESP2014 website. 

2.     ESP Governance and membership issues

Steering Committee

The list of ESP Steering Committee members is now online. Joachim Maes and Sander Jacobs have been elected as interim co-chairs of the Steering Committee. Together with the other members of the Steering Committee they will prepare a proposal for adjusting the bylaws and manage other governance issues. There will probably be a separate Steering Committee-meeting preceding the 7th ESP conference on Sunday-afternoon 7 September. More news from the SC will follow soon.

Reduced ECOSER subscription for ESP Members

One of the many benefits of an ESP membership is a reduced subscription fee to the Ecosystem Services Journal. As of 2014, paying ESP members can sign up for 30€/year (25 GBP, 4400 YEN or 41 USD).  See our ECOSER subscription page for more information.

Ecosystem Services Journal in 2013 and 2014

The Elsevier journal Ecosystem Services associated with ESP has done very well in 2013. It has really matured and in total 7 volumes have already been published since the launch in 2012. In 2013, ECOSER published 4 excellent issues, including 2 special issues: one on “Mapping and Modelling Payments for Ecosystem Services” and the other on “Payments for Ecosystem Services and their Institutional Dimensions”.  Currently there are three Calls for papers for special issues. You find more information on the 2013 statistics in the ESP News item on this.

3.     News from Working Groups, Regional Chapters, and National Networks

New ESP Guidelines and Toolkits SERVICE-team lead

Dr. Alejandro von Bertrab has offered to lead the ESP Guidelines and Toolkits Service team with the Department of Biodiversity, Forests and Natural Resources of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). This GIZ research team is leading the project “ValuES: Methods for integrating ecosystem services into policy, planning, and practice”. This project, and this ESP SERVICE-team, aims to bridge the gap felt by practitioners: there is an array of methods, techniques and models to identify, measure and value ecosystem services but there is insufficient know-how regarding the specific application of findings, their impact and integration into policies.

Calls for cooperation

Several ESP Working Groups and members have recently posted Calls for Cooperation. For instance:

• Call for grey literature on contribution of forest ecosystem services to food production.
• The Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership is looking for up-to-date valuations for marine and coastal ecosystems.

Request for Online course material on Ecosystem Service themes:

• Alexander Hellquist (co-lead of the ESP Education & Training Service) plans to organize a session on Education and Training at the ESP 2014 Conference in Costa Rica with the aim to develop guidelines for ES assessments on this topic. To this end he wants to develop a repository of existing online material from ES-related courses. If you know of good ES-related course material, please send it to Alexander Hellquist.

4.     Other news

• Deadline for submission of session abstracts for ACES 2014: 31 March 2014! The ACES 2014 conference "Linking Science, Practice and Decision Making", will be held at December 8-11 in Washington D.C, USA. The deadline for session, workshop, and town hall proposals is March 31. Click here for more information on submissions. Be sure to read the submission instructions thoroughly for each proposal type to ensure you're choosing the right format for your presenters.
• Call for papers: Special Issue ESS Policies Landscape dynamics.
• New book: Ecosystem Services: Global Issues, Local Practices.
• New publication: Envisioning Ways Forward for the Ecosystem Services Debate.  
• Free Online Course on Natural Capital Project  Approach.

See the growing list of News-items, Vacancies, Calls for cooperation and Upcoming events

on the ESP-website for new and previous messages, and interesting links.

As always, we look forward to hear from you!

The ESP Support Team