Abstract:  In this presentation I examine whether ecosystem services concepts are helpful or useful for conservation and development. By looking at recent research I answer three inter-related questions:

• How and what can ecosystem services add to our science and knowledge on conservation and development?
• What changes when we take an ecosystem services approach?
• What happens when we apply ecosystem services approaches?

I discuss the key research challenges and opportunities, and potential applications for ecosystem services, particularly for international development and poverty alleviation, and for conservation and environmental change.

Biography: Katrina Brown is Professor of Social Sciences at the Environment and Sustainability Institute at University of Exeter, based in beautiful Cornwall in UK. Kate has a long-standing commitment to interdisciplinary analysis of environmental change and international development. Her research focuses on vulnerability, adaptation and resilience, and ecosystem services and poverty alleviation. She is interested in how people understand, perceive and respond to environmental and other changes, and her work takes a broadly defined political ecology approach. She works in different regions of the world and in different contexts, but with a focus on coastal and marine social ecological systems. Current projects include international collaborations on SPACES (Sustainable Poverty Alleviation and Coastal Ecosystem Services); MAGIC (Multi-scale Adaptations to Global Change in Coastlines); and an AXA Outlook award project, ‘You me and our Resilience: Cross-cultural insights into sources of resilience and vulnerability in coastal communities’.