The RESTORE Project’s mid-term conference took in Dortmund, Germany, where stakeholders from local and regional governments, environmental NGOs, community groups, the minerals industry and research institutes, across the project’s partner countries, contributed and discussed four themes related to mineral sites restoration, each with keynote speeches.
The need for partnership working; delivering public benefits; involving local communities, and using an ecosystem-services approach in successful restorations was emphasised in the talks given by a range of speakers from organisations such as Birdlife,
Keynote speaker Christoph Schröter-Schlaack from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research presented on public benefits and biodiversity. He explained that ecosystem services are useful to understand the relationship between nature and human well-being and that economic valuation can highlight the importance of nature‘s benefits to society and the value that people place on nature. However, economic valuation is more than just a monetary value, but is rarely enough to induce behavioural change.
He presented some Case studies to showcase an economic approach and successful examples, which included the Lusatia mines in Germany and flood protection on the River Elbe.
In the second main presentation, Stephen Redwood, Reserves Development Director at Cemex UK, spoke about best practices in restoration and gave an industry perspective. He described how restoration and creation of biodiversity are good for business and real gains can be achieved for nature by working in partnership, with an understanding of different parties’ perspectives and strong collaboration.
The third keynote speaker, David Payne of the MPA in the UK, presented on the topic Policy into Practice for the Work Package 1 (WP1) integrated policy seminar section of the conference.
He outlined the National Planning Policy Framework and the relevant biodiversity policy documents in England to demonstrate how policy differs in north-west Europe. He explained that the minerals industry is uniquely placed to deliver nature policy targets, for example priority habitats delivery and biodiversity offsetting.
The final keynote speaker was Coen van der Gugten, a representative of the population of Maastricht, in the Netherlands, where an active limestone quarry is being transformed into a place for nature and the local community to enjoy.
He outlined the history of the site and offered a key insight into the process of community involvement in the restoration of a site and how this led to the establishment of a foundation to represent the views of the community at this particular site.
The presentations are now available on the RESTORE website:
