Golf Features at COHAB Conference

Jonathan Smith, Golf Environment Europe

At the recent International Conference on Health and Biodiversity, which took place in Galway, Ireland from Monday 25th to Thursday 28th February, Golf Environment Europe presented a feature on golf entitled “A Sectoral Approach to Environmental Sustainability”.

The conference, organised and run by the "Co-Operation on Health and Biodiversity" initiative, aimed to:

• advance dialogue and collaboration across sectors on issues linking biodiversity with human health and well-being
• highlight practical cross-sectoral and holistic approaches to addressing the issues

Representatives from all of the leading global players in the field of resource, ecosystem and biodiversity conservation were in attendance, including the World Resources Institute, Convention for Biological Diversity, IUCN, European Commission and United Nations Environment Programme.

GEE presented a focus on the golf sector’s environmental programmes within a workshop session entitled ‘Business and Ecosystems’. Our presentation emphasized the way the golf sector in Europe was mobilizing itself to deal with issues of sustainability and environmental protection. The presentation also strove to highlight some of the ecosystem services that golf benefits from.

A very interesting outcome from the workshop was the promotion of a new methodology which will help businesses in identifying and evaluating their dependence and impact on often unrecognized services that ecosystems provide.

GEE feel that this is an area that warrants further research and development, and is now looking to set the GEE Innovation and Technology Network agenda towards identifying and evaluating golf’s relationship with ecosystems.

The COHAB Initiative is an international programme established to respond to the gaps in awareness and existing policies on issues linking biodiversity with human health and well-being. The Initiative aims to establish an international, inter-disciplinary collaborative framework to support existing activities on international development, biodiversity conservation and population health, and to support the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).