Principal Policy Analyst and Head of Agriculture and Land Management Programme
Email: ballen@ieep.eu
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7340 2682
Ben has a Ph.D. in the field of land use and spatial ecology and 10 years experience of working on agriculture, land use and bioenergy policy at the UK and EU level. He joined the IEEP Agriculture and Land Management team in September 2010, having spent the previous five years working as a policy adviser on agri-environment, CAP and bio-energy issues for Natural England and English Nature. Immediately prior to joining IEEP Ben worked on secondment to the National Trust as their senior officer on sustainable land use and management policy, developing their portfolio of work on the CAP and looking at the future of land and water management in the UK. At IEEP, Ben has led and contributed to a range of projects related to land use, bioenergy and agriculture. He has played an integral role in developing the institute’s thinking on EU bioenergy and biofuels policy from a land use perspective, with links to the wider bio-economy and covering both European and global implications.
IEEP and the European Biogas Association hosted a session at the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2019. The following reflections recollect discussions on the governance of sustainable bioenergy and biogas in the EU.
This report explores how the EU farming sector could look like in a net-zero world, what roles it would play and what is needed to make the transition by mid-century.
Anthropogenic climate change is a product of our patterns of behaviour and the choices we make; whether as consumers or, in the case of farmers, as land managers and producers. This session convened by IEEP at COP24 of the UNFCCC identified the common threads that could help in changing our behaviour and in the transformation of the agricultural sector. Read more and download presentations here.
On 7 December (10:30-14:30), IEEP will be convening a discussion at COP24 of the UNFCCC on the role of agriculture in delivering net zero emissions by 2050. IEEP is collaborating with CCCA, FEEDBACK, AGRICORD, IIED, SNV, Joanneum Reasearch, IFFA, and the FAO’s Forest and Farm Facility to deliver a wider ranging discussion on agriculture’s role in climate action.
Half a degree may not sound that much but it can be a matter of life or death in the context of climate change. This is one of the headline messages of the recent IPCC special report, “Global warming of 1.5 °C”, which is based on the assessment of the latest scientific literature. The report confirms the urgency to act in order to avoid often irreversible consequences for human well-being, ecosystems and sustainable development. But what does this mean for agriculture in general and for the EU farming sector in particular? What kind of challenges would the sector face in a 1.5 °C or 2 °C world? And how can the farming sector contribute to keeping global temperature increase below 1.5°C?