Ambitions for nature recovery in the UK involve profound changes to land use that will shift the ecological composition and appearance of different landscapes. Recovery commonly involves a transition from worked, agricultural landscapes towards those in which natural processes are given more autonomy. It aims to move from landscapes characterised by low biological abundance and diversity, linear landscape features, and tightly controlled processes towards those marked by biological abundance and diversity, complex landscape features, and unpredictable landscape dynamics.
Some British citizens care deeply about the appearance of the landscape and resist radical changes to land use and landscape composition. Although the rural landscape has undergone radical transformation in the last few centuries, there are powerful, conservative cultural ideals of the countryside as a timeless source of aesthetic, moral and political value that is threatened by change. Imagined archetypes with ecological and cultural baselines in a desired past persist into the present. These archetypes have been central to the history of the conservation of cultural landscapes in the UK.
The lowland English countryside and the Scottish Highlands offer two important examples of these archetypes. The first is exemplary of the English Pastoral and second of the Romantic Scottish Sublime. We anticipate that these two aesthetic ideals help frame the landscape preferences of key players in our two case study regions – rural Oxfordshire and the Scottish Cairngorms. They create the popular and powerful archetypes that are both shared and contested by many farmers, foresters, traditional conservationists, tourists, stalkers, and other rural publics. We expect that there is a good chance that they may both configure and restrict the ambitions of those planning and implementing nature recovery projects across the UK. They shape perceptions of responsible land management and of mess and messiness.
This project aims to test this hypothesis to answer the following research questions:
What are the common aesthetics of UK nature recovery?
How do they contrast with the pastoral and sublime, as expressed in Oxfordshire and the Cairngorms?
How might different publics and stakeholders be engaged in deliberating the aesthetics of nature recovery?
Is there are middle ground between the aesthetics of recovery and the aesthetics of pastoral and the sublime – for example in the aesthetics of regenerative agriculture?
Why study aesthetics?
Aesthetics involves the study of perception and the generally pleasant experience of a sight, sound and smell or taste. There is much debate about the degree to which aesthetics are socially constructed or innate. But research shows that aesthetics underpins both environmental ethics and politics. Aesthetics shape the emotional attachments people form with species and landscapes. It propels relations of curiosity, care, and protection, as well as dislike and disgust. Landscape aesthetics also reflects the predominant social order. They express powerful ways of seeing that may serve to naturalise the status quo. These ways of seeing are contextual and contingent and are thus contested. As a consequence, past and current debates about what is natural and right for the UK countryside are strongly shaped by aesthetic, as well as ecological and economic considerations.
Youth-led Nature Recovery
In this Social Sciences Engagement Fellowship project, we are partnering with the youth-led nature recovery organisation Youngwilders to explore the strategies, policy frameworks, collaborations, and funding opportunities that can support the participation of young people (aged 18-30) in nature recovery-related activities. The project also seeks to enhance the partner organisation’s ability to support this participation by identifying and co-developing new engagement activities and co-designing their approach to impact evaluation.
The main ongoing activities of the project are:
Working with landowners and young people across 6 small-scale nature recovery sites across England and Wales to develop and pilot a year-long ‘project officer’ programme in which young people are placed into paid decision-making roles within an active nature recovery project, co-design management plans and interventions for the sites, and engage in monthly seminars and knowledge-sharing activities with their cohort of young project officers.
Assisting Youngwilders with reviewing their activities and impacts to date, written up into an Impact Report for dissemination to partners and funders, and co-designing their long-term impact evaluation approach.
Working with the European Young Rewilders network coordinated by Rewilding Europe to develop knowledge exchange activities, including a ‘Readwilding book club’, to build shared understanding and new networks among young nature recovery practitioners working across Europe.
Launching a special issue of ‘Routes: The Journal for Student Geographers’ on young people and rewilding together with journal editors Dr Jonathon Turnbull and Dr Liam Saddington
Community values in accessible urban green spaces and planning: An Oxford case.
Connections between inequality of income and green space accessibility (1), and between green spaces and the benefits they realise for human well-being and the natural environment (2), especially to the most social-economically deprived tiers of society and their lived areas (3) have been investigated and established.
This project takes an intra- and inter-community comparative approach across three urban areas of Oxford characterised by different indexes of multiple deprivation (IMD), with the most deprived one identified as priority neighbourhood by the active programme in the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery on ‘Equitable distribution of nature-rich accessible green space: An Oxfordshire case study‘ led by Martha Crockatt.
By employing a mix method approach, the study investigates community values in urban green spaces through walked interviews (Walk&Talk) in parks and green spaces participants use the most in their own lived area and considers the imaginary of the ideal green space residents have in mind when engaging in such conversations. Residents’ imaginaries are captured through a sketch-based method supported by the artist Harmanpreet Randhawa. Eventually, it considers the equity of local urban green governance in Oxford in the forms of Neighbourhood Plans or Re-generation plans.
Not only it is important that communities are consulted and engaged in planning of urban green spaces to facilitate a re-localisation of these and the development of a sense of stewardship. Community engagement should be done in a way that celebrates the plurality of values and preferences of the bio-culturally diverse society in Oxford. The project design and community engagement strategies employed have been developed in a place-based approach with the support of a network of local NGOs, community and resident associations, and local representatives.
1. Lovell et al., 2020; Smith, Hafferty and Seddon, 2023; Twohig-Bennett and Jones 2018; van den Berg et al., 2015
2. Aerts, Honnay, and Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2018; Sandhu et al., 2022.
3. Brown et al., 2016; Croackatt et al., 2023; Maas et al., 2009; McEachan et al., 2016; Smith, Hafferty and Seddon, 2023; Sudimac, Sale, and Kühn, 2022.
Expanding native forest in Scotland: small-scale mechanisms, landscape-scale responses
Forest expansion is an increasing UK priority and Scotland, which was historically extensively forested, receives a significant proportion of this. Mature forest remnants in the Scottish Highlands support rare specialist species and many have been continuously forested for millennia. However, current policies and grants incentivise forest creation by planting, leading to under investment in protection of and expansion from forest remnants. Using a combination of designed experiments and data collection across natural gradients, this project will explore aboveground processes of forest establishment and interactions with belowground communities and soil properties, providing evidence on outcomes of forest expansion by natural regeneration vs planting.
In collaboration with Trees for Life, we are collecting data on soil communities and properties across a landscape-scale network of plots within Trees for Life’s Caledonian Recovery Project and Wild Trees Survey. Trees for Life’s pioneering work provides detailed information on the status of mature forest remnants across Scotland and the dynamics of natural tree regeneration within and around these remnants. We will link data on tree regeneration and forest status to a set of variables on soil communities, soil physical properties, and soil chemical properties. Soil communities both facilitate tree establishment and respond to the establishment of trees, driving subsequent changes in soil physical and chemical properties.
Data collection across the natural gradient of forest status represented by Trees for Life’s network of survey plots will be complemented by experimental work in collaboration with Highlands Rewilding. We have co-designed experiments with Highlands Rewilding, exploring mechanisms of forest establishment and soil property/community responses. Experiments consider natural regeneration and tree planting as mechanisms of native forest creation in a clear-fell plantation (Bunloit Estate) and grassland context (Beldorney Estate). In the Bunloit experiment we have an additional treatment assessing the efficacy of mycorrhizal inoculation of tree establishment.
The role of regenerative farming for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
Regenerative farming stands at the forefront of a transformative approach to agriculture, redefining our relationship with the land and challenging conventional farming practices. Unlike traditional methods that often deplete soil health and rely heavily on external inputs, regenerative farming is a holistic approach that seeks to restore and enhance ecosystems. At its core, it emphasises sustainable practices that prioritize soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem resilience.
Through regenerative techniques such as cover cropping, rotational grazing, and minimal tillage, farmers aim to not only produce food but also regenerate the vitality of the land. This innovative approach not only mitigates the environmental impact of agriculture but also holds the promise of fostering resilient, thriving ecosystems for future generations. As the world grapples with the urgent need for sustainable food production, regenerative farming emerges as a beacon of hope, offering a path toward a more harmonious and regenerative coexistence with the planet.
Our project focuses on pastureland under different management regimes from passively restored and regenerative practices to intensively grazed grasslands. Our main goal is to determine the role that regenerative farming plays for nature recovery. While regenerative farming is notoriously difficult to define in specific terms, we have replicated study areas across two sites (Park Farm and Northfield Farm) and different habitat conditions where grazing intensity naturally varies due to winter floods. Across the regenerative farming sites mob grazing is the standard practice.
At the core of the project sits a plot layout which enables standardised monitoring across the grazing intensity gradient (passively restored to intensively grazed pasture). A wealth of monitoring is already underway in the plots including microclimate (soil moisture, soil temperature, ground temperature, and ambient temperature), soil quality, invertebrates (flying, ground- and soil dwelling), ground flora, mycorrhiza, and bioacoustics. We have installed three deer posts (15cm diameter, 2m high) diagonally across each plot (40m x 40m) to enable equipment to be mounted above ground.
Projects that focus on the entire gradient or those with a narrower focus are welcome.
Evenlode Landscape Recovery
The UK’s natural landscapes and environment face unprecedented threats.
While agricultural land blankets approximately 70% of the UK, until now, farmers lacked a clear path to engage in meaningful environmental restoration while sustaining food production. Landscape recovery offers a different path, and a bespoke landscape recovery plan, crafted and spearheaded by farmers, is even more promising. The Evenlode Landscape Recovery project-lead by the North East Cotswold Farming Cluster (NECFC), funded by DEFRA as one of the current ELM schemes, and partnered with the Leverhulme Center for Nature Recovery among others, is a broad collective of innovative farmers across the Cotswolds who believe that farming, combined with the restoration of natural landscapes, is the future. By restoring landscapes, nurturing wild habitats, enhancing soil health, and cleansing waterways on a grand scale, farmers will be at the forefront of mitigating the impacts of climate change without sacrificing food production.
Within the Evenlode Landscape, we are developing profiles of floral and invertebrate biodiversity across several farms. This feeds into our LCNR-funded project “stress-testing the biodiversity metric using DNA metabarcoding” in which we are assessing how well valuations made under Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) reflect real world measures of invertebrate biomass, richness, and community composition. To achieve this, we are using pitfall traps to sample beetle, spider, and other ground invertebrates, which are then identified using DNA metabarcoding technology. The project will also give farmers in the NECFC data on invertebrate diversity on their sites and biodiversity uplift potential under BNG.
With an over-twenty-year lifespan for the project, the Evenlode Landscape Recovery project will offer an opportunity to plan, enact, and monitor long-term, large-scale landscape restoration across the Evenlode catchment.
Rewilding The City
How are different groups taking active steps to make cities wilder? By elucidating the meanings and practices of rewilding in the city, this project asks how rewilding is refracted by the urban, and how the urban is refracted by rewilding. It investigates the role of cities in nature recovery more broadly and centres the importance of maintenance and repair in the production of urban wilds, bringing together contemporary literatures in political economy, posthuman geographies, and urban ecologies.
To this end, several case studies are harnessed to conceptualise urban wilds. Currently, these include: beaver reintroductions in the UK and Germany; forms of “low maintenance” gardening in Newcastle; and peregrine falcons. Further work will be conducted on less charismatic creatures and processes obscured from the rewilding discourse.
Jonny is currently conducting fieldwork on beaver reintroduction sites in Enfield and Ealing, London in collaboration with Dr Thomas Fry and Professor Jamie Lorimer. Alongside a series of illustrative journal articles, this research is designed to inform a monograph on rewilding cities.
Rethinking the role of state institutions in nature recovery
The English government (environmental policy is largely devolved) has ambitious plans for nature recovery, but its proposed strategy positions the government as a relatively passive player whose job is to create compliance markets and de-risk private investments in nature to ensure they deliver appealing returns. However, there are whole host of risks and negative unintended ecological and social consequences that could arise (Chausson et al. 2023).
There is a strong case for states to take a more proactive, mission-driven approach to guiding nature recovery (Mazzucato 2021; Kedward et al. 2022).
This LCNR-funded award allowed the PIs to hold a workshop with senior figures from government, eNGOs, finance and academic to explore the public policy programme that would underpin a mission-driven approach to driving nature recovery.
Equitable distribution of nature-rich accessible green space: An Oxfordshire case study
There are well known links between health and spending time in green spaces[1], as shown by the increased interest in social prescribing[2]. However, there is evidence that the most deprived communities have least access to green space, that more deprived communities receive greater benefits from green space1, and that not all green spaces have similar impacts, with more biodiverse areas providing greater benefits[3]. Oxfordshire’s Local Nature Partnership wishes to understand the equality of access to green space, in terms of quantity and quality, across the county to help prioritise effort and funding.
Working in collaboration with LCNR health, ecology, and society work packages, the Oxford Martin School’s Agile Initiative and Oxfordshire’s Local Nature Partnership, the project will investigate the distribution and biodiversity characteristics of accessible green space in relation to socio-economic factors in Oxfordshire, a LCNR case study area.
The project has identified neighbourhoods that are relatively deprived according to socio-economic measures and lack access to greenspace on a number metrics (including amount of greenspace, greenspace crowding and private gardens). These neighbourhoods, predominantly in urban areas, are presented as priorities for greenspace funding and effort. Although it is often virtually impossible to create new greenspaces in densely populated urban environments, existing greenspaces can be improved and protected from development, and innovative ways of increasing green infrastructure can be considered, such as greening active travel routes and pocket parks. In approaching such efforts, it is important that local communities are consulted and engaged in decision making, to ensure that local greenspace works for those using it. Recommendations for Oxfordshire greenspace based on the report have been developed with local government officers and NGOs with responsibilities and / or interest in the subject.
[1] Smith et al. 2023. Agile Initiative Research Brief: Embedding nature recovery in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill.
[2] Sandhu et al., 2022. https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp22X721445 3Aerts et al., 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldy021
Extension service provision facilitating landscape-scale nature recovery
Context and rationale
Different landscapes present a series of varying physical and social challenges to nature recovery, resulting in efforts requiring localised and targeted approaches. The UK Government Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) initiative represents one such approach for providing strategic catchment-scale farm advice. The initiative predominantly focuses on mitigating agricultural water pollution but there is potential to expand the CSF’s remit to facilitate farmer collaborations and deliver further landscape-scale nature recovery. With the Government’s Landscape Recovery Scheme roll-out, this project contributes crucial evidence to inform effective policy by answering the following research questions:
What are the current niches of different organisations providing farm advice (also known as extension services) in facilitating landscape-scale nature recovery?
What and where do gaps in advice provision exist?
How can agri-environmental policy best support agricultural advice for nature recovery?
Activities and outputs
We conducted qualitative and statistical analysis of data collected through semi-structured interviews gathered during winter 2022/23 from 133 farm advisors across government, industry, and non-profit organisations in England.
The two project outputs are:
Technical Report containing details of our analytical framework to examine existing advice provision.
Policy Briefing summarising results from applying the analytical framework to our interview data at the regional and national scale to compare advisory niches of different sector organisations for nature recovery.
