BEES and biodiversity

During the last few weeks I’ve been really lucky to have had a number of opportunities to attend and engage in several talks and activities on topics that interest me and skills I’m eager to learn. I recently completed my training for ‘BEES’ which stands for ‘Business Ethics and Environment Students'. BEES is a program that gives students the opportunity to work with local businesses to help improve sustainability in their practices. This will involve working in groups and going and meeting with the businesses, speaking to them and asking them questions on topics such as energy, waste and water management, employment conditions including pay and leave, transport and supply chain management.

While visiting the businesses we will also be taken on a tour of the site to gather further information for the audit of their ethical and environmental practice. We then take the information gathered from the audit to devise an action plan for the business to help them to implement new ethical or environmental practices or improve on things that they may already be doing but could make even better. Eventually, we’ll go back to the business and present this plan and hopefully help them to make positive changes within the workplace.

I think BEES is a great initiative with the potential to greatly benefit both the students and local businesses involved. It was also great to meet other students from a range of degrees who have an interest in sustainability. Having now finished my training I’m excited to get started on a project in the near future!

I’ve also had the opportunity to attend a number of interesting talks on topics closely related to some of my third year modules and third year project. One of these talks, called ‘Biodiversity: past and future trends and strategies to halt its loss’ was given by a guest speaker Dr Jörn P W Scharlemann from the University of Sussex. The talk focused on the use and effectiveness of protected areas as a conservation strategy to prevent biodiversity loss as well as the estimated costs involved in global conservation of species by down-listing each species. For example a species, would be moved from being classified by the IUCN Red List as being ‘critically endangered’ to ‘endangered’. Although the estimated costs seemed high, when compared to the benefits both from an ecological perspective but also an economic perspective, it provided a good case for increased investment into conservation.

A couple of weeks ago I also attended the Centre for Underutilised Crops (CUC) re-launch which gave an interesting introduction into the various research projects ongoing across the University of Southampton. These projects are helping to tackle major issues such as sustainable agriculture, food and energy security, amongst many more. Underutilised crops with unlocked potential that have yet to be domesticated, like the staple crops we find in our supermarkets, could offer huge benefits.

It was fascinating to hear about the work researchers at the University are involved in and the advantages these crops may offer to us. It’s been a n educational couple of weeks!

Kristin