innovations to ecosystem services – design or risk assessment? Geoff Squire Human interventions affect life forms that mediate ecological processes that deliver outputs or ‘services’
Which is the best direction of enquiry? The case of GM crops
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CECHR Meeting, 11 February 2015
direction of enquiry ES to innovation – ecological design system to innovation
ecosystem services
ecological processes
life forms
innovation to system
innovation to ES – risk assessment
innovation (GM crop and management)
Defra/SG/BBSRC: 1993-2006 geneflow, persistence Defra/SG: UK’s GMHT crops trials 1999-2005 EU SIGMEA: 2003-2007 Europe-wide, impacts and geneflow EU AMIGA: 2012-2015 Risk-benefit, maize and potato
GM herbicide tolerant cropping flow / diffusion of impacts from innovation to services intervention
functional life forms wild relatives ferals
crop variety
hybridisation & seed dispersal
volunteers
crop plants
primary production: solar energy capture
GMHT pesticide & timing
ecological processes
weeds (broadleaf, grass)
food web inverts
feeding, dispersal, energy exchange
Many transmissions are ‘damped out’ Some are enhanced after temporal and spatial iterations Mostly small impact compared to other effectors
ecosystem services R: invasiveness, disease P: farm profit, output, saleability, product quality
S, R: carbon storage S: trophic functions (pollination, biocontrol)
GM risk-benefit analysis • an alternative approach to (GM) risk assessment – design led • the best comparator? – an ecologically safe system (which may not exist) – the baseline state – trajectory and dynamics / time and spatial scales
• what is the background change over these time scales • what would an important GM effect be in relation to the background? • need ecological reference points – safe limits *
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