On 21 February 2008 Secretary of State for Transport Ruth Kelly invited the Renewable Fuels Agency to undertake a Review of the Indirect Effects of Biofuels. This was done in the light of new evidence suggesting that an increasing demand for biofuels might indirectly cause carbon emissions because of land use change, and concerns that demand for biofuels may be driving food insecurity by causing food commodity price increases. The Government has made clear that it would like the RFA to report back as soon as possible in order to be able to have the best opportunity of influencing EU negotiations on future biofuel targets.

Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable Development — Reflections on Theory and Practice (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

edited by Pieter Glasbergen, Frank Biermann, Arthur P.J. Mol

With contributions of: James E. Austin, Jennifer Brinkerhoff, Derick W. Brinkerhoff, Neill Gunningham, Barbara Gray, James Meadowcroft, Philipp Pattberg, Steve Waddell, Bas Arts, Sander Chan, Aysem Mert, Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers

This volume discusses the emerging partnership paradigm in governance for sustainable development. Current debates on (global) environmental governance focus on the role and inclusion of private actors in policies for sustainable development and partnerships are one mode and conceptualization for such non-governmental involvements in initially state-dominated practices. Scientific research on partnerships within the context of governance theory is fairly new, and there is a clear need to systemize our knowledge base to further define the international research agenda on this topic.

Sometimes you read a book that makes you enthousiastic and makes you want to share it with others. If YOU have any such books that you would like to share, then please write a short book review of it and send this to e-news@sense.nl. This way you may also get feedback and exchange on your reading!

A book that has inspired me recently is called: Wikinomics - How mass collaboration changes everything. Follow the "read more" link below for my ultra short book review of it .. a new -omics on the block?

Ir. René Rozendal has made his SENSE A2 project effective by organizing a mini-symposium in the field of his research: microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology. One of the key players in this research field, Prof. Bruce Logan from the Pennsylvania State University (USA), was coming to Europe and had asked René Rozendal whether is was possible to visit Wetsus in Leeuwarden, i.e. the institute René Rozendal works for.

Again we may congratulate SENSE scientists with an article in Science! The tile: Biodiversity Effects on Soil Processes Explained by Interspecific Functional Dissimilarity, the authors: D. A. Heemsbergen, M. P. Berg, M. Loreau, J.R. van Hal, J. H. Faber, H. A. Verhoef The loss of biodiversity can have significant impacts on ecosystem functioning, but the mechanisms involved lack empirical confirmation. Using soil microcosms, we show experimentally that functional dissimilarity among detritivorous species, not species number, drives community compositional effects on leaf litter mass loss and soil respiration, two key soil ecosystem processes. These experiments confirm theoretical predictions that biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning can be predicted by the degree of functional differences among species. pdf file