Aronia Research 2008—2011
Yrkeshögskolan Novia
2011
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-5839-32-6
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-5839-32-6
Tiivistelmä
In 2010, Aronia celebrated its first ten years of operation. The jubilee seminar was called “Managing the environment for the future”. This title sets focus on the urgent need for the scientific community to unite with the rest of society around the challenging future of mankind, or as one of the key-note speakers, professor Anthony Fox, succinctly expressed this sentiment in the title of his presentation, “Urbanisation, climate change and why we need applied ecology institutes now more than ever”.
From the start, Aronia´s activity has been based on a joint structure, with Åbo Akademi University and Novia University of Applied Sciences as maintainers. Our name, Aronia Research and Development Institute, indicates the merging of a strong academic unit for basic research with a dynamic portfolio of applied projects. Today our activity is mainly dedicated towards coastal ecology and natural resource management, with the Aronia Coastal Zone Research Team (ACZRT) leading the scientific research.
“The economic invisibility of nature is the main reason for why we are losing nature”(Pavan Sukhdev, study leader of TEEB, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). This citation eloquently summarizes the need to acknowledge that the value of most of the natural resources we depend on for our future well-being lie outside the current economic mechanisms of our society. In Aronia, we have responded to the need to address this problem in two ways. We have developed a research initiative focusing on the concepts of evidence-based conservation and ecosystem services and by building on a local Knowledge Cluster at Campus Raseborg. The Knowledge Cluster unites R&D, education, governmental and private sectors around a sustainable use of natural resources.
We are a local unit aiming at a local impact with broad potential application. True integration of the management of natural resources with local economics inevitably includes the question of resource allocation. Currently, funding for the planning and realization of sustainable resource use is in general inneffectively used. This is true at global, regional and local scales and is due mainly to lack of data and application in both the natural and social sciences. We are un dertaking assessments to identify needs both for more effective management tools and practices and also to meet the requirements of primarily municipal-level practitioners. Our GIS expertise is currently heading towards the broader concept of GeoDesign with the particular goal of integrating municipal planning with R&D in practice.
In the coming years, we will continue our research in ecology and evolutionary biology and apply results to development projects on integrated natural resource management. The pertinence to implement state of the art planning technology and other innovative tools to local community development is globally identified. We aim at sharing this responsibility both by conducting research to improve the quality of background data and by hands-on applications for real-world sustainable community development.
From the start, Aronia´s activity has been based on a joint structure, with Åbo Akademi University and Novia University of Applied Sciences as maintainers. Our name, Aronia Research and Development Institute, indicates the merging of a strong academic unit for basic research with a dynamic portfolio of applied projects. Today our activity is mainly dedicated towards coastal ecology and natural resource management, with the Aronia Coastal Zone Research Team (ACZRT) leading the scientific research.
“The economic invisibility of nature is the main reason for why we are losing nature”(Pavan Sukhdev, study leader of TEEB, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). This citation eloquently summarizes the need to acknowledge that the value of most of the natural resources we depend on for our future well-being lie outside the current economic mechanisms of our society. In Aronia, we have responded to the need to address this problem in two ways. We have developed a research initiative focusing on the concepts of evidence-based conservation and ecosystem services and by building on a local Knowledge Cluster at Campus Raseborg. The Knowledge Cluster unites R&D, education, governmental and private sectors around a sustainable use of natural resources.
We are a local unit aiming at a local impact with broad potential application. True integration of the management of natural resources with local economics inevitably includes the question of resource allocation. Currently, funding for the planning and realization of sustainable resource use is in general inneffectively used. This is true at global, regional and local scales and is due mainly to lack of data and application in both the natural and social sciences. We are un dertaking assessments to identify needs both for more effective management tools and practices and also to meet the requirements of primarily municipal-level practitioners. Our GIS expertise is currently heading towards the broader concept of GeoDesign with the particular goal of integrating municipal planning with R&D in practice.
In the coming years, we will continue our research in ecology and evolutionary biology and apply results to development projects on integrated natural resource management. The pertinence to implement state of the art planning technology and other innovative tools to local community development is globally identified. We aim at sharing this responsibility both by conducting research to improve the quality of background data and by hands-on applications for real-world sustainable community development.