Biodiversity loss and climate change are among the most pressing challenges
of our times, and are strongly interconnected. Not only will climate change
directly affect biodiversity but mitigation and adaptation measures taken by
society could also have significant effects, both positive and negative, on
biodiversity.
Conservation strategies will need to be adapted to cope with a changing
climate; there is a need to explore how this should be done, and share
experiences of putting adaptation principles into practice. There is also
growing awareness that addressing biodiversity loss and climate change in an
integrated manner can have a range of multiple benefits for society, including
synergies with sustainable development goals. However, considerable
uncertainties remain surrounding the two-way interactions of biodiversity and
climate change and good practice examples of ecosystem-based approaches
to mitigation and adaptation are still rare.
Against this background, the conference sets out to meet a growing demand
for sharing knowledge and experiences in the field of biodiversity and climate
change in Europe. Taking a transdisciplinary perspective, the aim of the
conference is to bring scientists, conservation practitioners and policymakers
together in order to improve both the integration of research outputs into
practical conservation projects, and the identification of further research
needs.
