During three days, the doctoral students, coming from 11 different institutions were asked to think about global changes in terms of current issues such as challenges and opportunities regarding agriculture, forestry and general conservation. The aim was to find potential solutions for sustainable land uses and long-term conservation of species and ecosystems, focusing mainly on central Europe.
Working in different groups, according to their background, the highly motivated students went through intense discussions, receiving also inputs from the five experts from ETH Zurich (Martin Hartmann), WSL (Yann Vitasse and Martin Gossner), FiBL (Sibylle Stöckli) and the Swiss Ornithological Institute (Nicolas Strebel).
Despite their different scientific backgrounds, the students all came up with the fact that public awareness and effective communication are the main keys for the future. For instance: to promote behavioural changes in food consumption and thus, food production; to think “long-term”, especially with forests whose response to changes may occur decades down the road; to change the public perception of nature, to raise biodiversity conservation awareness so that policy changes can be made.
Finding consensus on conservation strategies and sustainability among the scientists is an important challenge as to deliver a clear message to all stakeholders.
The complete output of this workshop, written by the students is available Sybille Stöckli
Link
naturwissenschaften.ch: Output of this workshop "Ecosystems under pressure: Agriculture, forestry and conservation under global changes"