A year in review: CeSAMs activities in 2023
As the days are slowly getting longer, we take a moment to reflect on our achievements from last year.
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Research highlights
Amongst the research highlights of 2023 were the start of two projects (Actionable and Become), which focus on building sustainable socio-ecological communities, and Biosphere Reserves as effective conservation measures. Both projects are led by Alicia Donnellan-Barraclough and involve multiple other CeSAM affiliates.
CeSAM collaborators were involved in two major grant proposals: a new FME areal with collaborators from NINA and the energy sector, and the Mohn Mountain Centre. We also contributed to organizing multiple events, such as the First Biosphere day in Nordhordland, and a Youth visions workshop in relation to a large meeting of IPBES contact points meeting in Bergen in December.
Our researchers published numerous papers; for example discussing the Nature crisis, space for semi-natural landscapes, how changing land use affects ecosystem services, and mapping historical food plants and human indicators through pollen analysis.
Jarrod Cusens successfully defended his doctoral thesis “‘Mapping the connections’; an integrated approach to mapping Nature’s contributions to people in a Nordic Biosphere Reserve”.
Lastly, we are looking forward to announcing a new CeSAM PhD student focusing on Ecosystem Services in Norway, supervised by Peter Manning (BIO) and Endre Tvinnereim (SV).
Policy and outreach
Last year was a big year for Impacts on Policy and outreach to the public, where especially Vigdis Vandvik represented CeSAM in many national and international arenas. As part of IPBES, she witnessed the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was adopted at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal. In the aftermath, she discussed what that deal means to Norway in numerous radioshows, podcasts, articles and tv appearances; and created a ‘cheat sheet’ to understanding the deal – which has been spread widely and even got integrated in a book.
Further, Vandvik has had a key role as one of the lead authors in the IPBES Invasive Alien Species Assessment, and recently also in the Naturrisikoutvalget.
Inger Måren represented UiB and CeSAM, giving input on two important reports to the parliament in response to the nature deal, and a climate report.
Finally, Dorothy Dankel leads UiB’s collaboration with documentary makers for Netflix, as scientific advisor for the upcoming series ‘Our Oceans’.