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.
This IEEP blog reflects on the future role of the bioeconomy in society.
It considers what the 2018 EU’s Bioeconomy Strategy revision needs to achieve to promote an equitable, environmentally responsible bioeconomy that delivers economic benefits and empowers rural actors.
Leading up to IEEP's Think 2030 conference, experts express their views on Europe's most pressing sustainability issues in the Think 2030 blog series, Pathways to 2030.
The seventh edition of Pathways to 2030 features IEEP Head of Agriculture and Land Managment, Ben Allen, and Executive Director, Céline Charveriat, who discuss issues around a just transition in the livestock sector.
In line with the theme of this year’s World Environment Day “Beat Plastic Pollution”, IEEP has produced a briefing under the iSQAPER project to shed light on the issue of plastic and microplastic pollution in soils, the sources and implications as well as policies to address the associated challenges.
European countries have developed a wide range of policies to encourage climate mitigation through land use “sinks”; but as the land use sector is brought fully into the EU’s climate targets, policies will need to be more ambitious, and more focused on results.
The European Parliament’s first reading opinion on the recast of the Renewable Energy Directive, moves some steps forward in the debate on sustainable use of biomass for energy in Europe. However, the devil is in the (considerable) detail set out in the adopted text.