| Benefits of Ecological Engineering |
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 The benefits of Ecological Engineering practices are manifold: water retention and flood protection, erosion control and nutrient provisioning, energy and resource savings, reduction of investment and maintenance cost, recreational opportunities, rural prosperity and poverty reduction, improved habitat for wildlife and endangered species etc. to name just a few. Ecological Engineering offers pragmatic low cost solutions for engineering services (i.e. wastewater treatment) and production techniques (i.e. bioenergy production), while at the same time providing multiple ecosystem services as an added value. Holding a multifunctional perspective Ecological Engineering can achieve synergies rather than trade-offs between economic benefits, ecosystem services and biodiversity protection. It integrates land-use practices with conservational approaches. Ecologically engineered solutions address major global issues and increasing demands imposed on the land surface, such as providing for energy, water and sanitation, nutrients, carbon sinks and education etc. By incorporating ecological knowledge into the design process from the beginning and allowing for participation more desirable social-ecological effects than undesirable side-effects can be achieved. Therefore Ecological Engineering is an effective tool for sustainable development. It is appropriate engineering for a "full-world". At Dec 3 2009 a workshop on "Benefits of Ecological Engineering Practices" was conducted by IEES at the Conference "Ecological Engineering - from Concepts to Applications" in Paris. The workshop program can be found here (PDF, 36 kB). The results presented at the final day of the conference can be found here (PDF, 956 kB). Please direct any comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . A corresponding paper will be published in Elsevier Procedia by December 2010. Pictures above are provided by Boojum Research, Aquatectura, WECF, Witteveen+Bos Consulting Engineers |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 31 March 2010 ) |