COP16 Colombia, a newcomer’s reflection

By Yadvinder Malhi

In late October 2024, the UN Convention on Biodiversity held its biennial large meeting (the Conference of Parties, or COP). This convention is a sister of the better known one on climate change, both birthed in Rio in 1992, but until the last few years has languished in relative obscurity. This all changed two years ago in Montreal, which produced the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an ambitious international agreement which aims to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, combining protection, restoration, finance and systems transformation. This rise in prominence reflects the rising profile of the ongoing global decline in biodiversity and the need to reverse it as an existential challenge on a par with climate change. Montreal has been called the “Paris-moment” for biodiversity, referring to the signature role the 2016 climate COP in that city had in solidifying ambitions for stabilizing climate and shaping goals of net-zero carbon emissions.

This COP was the opportunity to further develop mechanisms for how the Global Biodiversity Framework would work, as well for countries to present their national biodiversity pledges as promised in Montreal. This was an “implementation COP” focused on working out the delivery mechanisms of the Global Biodiversity Framework. It was always unlikely to catch major global press attention. Things are slow, but the meeting itself provides a stimulus for progress, such as a timeline for to announce targets and showcase pledges.

COP President Susanna Muhamad, Colombia’s Environment Minister, speaking at an event on reconciling western and indigenous approaches to nature recovery. It was remarkable to see such bold thinking at the highest political levels.

It is easy to be sceptical about these international meetings, their slow progress and insufficiently resourced ambitions, but what is gradually emerging and solidifying is a global framework for governance of biodiversity. The international UN process certainly can’t solve this on its own, but it does provide an essential global architecture. Ultimately, nations and businesses need to deliver against these targets, but a process is built to create targets and build international mechanisms for finance and monitoring. Multilateral negotiations and agreements are essential but deeply inefficient and frequently frustrating, but also provide a space for smaller countries, and for indigenous peoples and other groups to have a voice at the table.

This year, the meeting was held in the city of Cali in Colombia, tucked in the forest-clad eastern foothills of the Western Cordillera of the Andes, fittingly one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Lush tropical montane forest stretches above the city, a tree-lined river runs through like a throbbing green vein, surging after the frequent and heavy tropical downpours. This stunning, friendly city has a troubled history and it was gamble for the Colombian government to locate it here, a gamble which I believe paid off admirably. I came to support the activities of the London Natural History Museum, of which I am a Trustee, and to also better understand this emerging global biodiversity architecture and how our activities at Oxford University (including our Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery) can address and support these goals.

I have been to some climate change COPs previously, but to newcomers these COPs can be overwhelming. COPs are split into a Blue Zone, accessible only to negotiators and to a limited quota of observers from sectors such as NGOs, academics, media and business, and a Green Zone freely open to all. In Cali the Blue Zone was in a lovely conference area semi-open to views of the lush green hills, a welcome antidote to the nature-free, soul-sucking sterility of many large conference venues. The Green zone was in the heart of the city, in a range of venues clustered around a pedestrianized area joyously hugging the river.

What was achieved in this COP?

Only a small fraction of countries (44 out of 196) have submitted their detailed national biodiversity pledges (National Biodiversity Strategies and Application Plans – NBSAPs in the jargon loved by the negotiations). A larger number (119) have produced less detailed national targets. How biodiversity action can be financed in ways that transfer resources from the resource-rich Global North to the biodiversity-rich Global South, always the thorniest question, still needs to be fleshed out. The meeting ran out of time before all business was completed, with the aim of completing unfinished business in the next two years.

There were two big outcomes:

  • Firstly, an agreement on Digital Sequence Information that sets a principle and precedent for companies (such as pharmaceutical companies) that use genetic information to ensure small fraction of their revenue is shared fairly with the people living where the resources were discovered, including Indigenous groups, supporting the conservation of such biological wealth.
  • Secondly, the creation of a permanent body to represent the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities within the framework.
An informal event in the Blue Zone, with COP President Susanna Muhamad and Brazilian Environment Minister Marina da Silva discussing novel mechanisms for funding tropical forest protection

The negotiations are important and essential and there is some excellent coverage of them and their outcomes (I highly recommend the comprehensive analysis and summary by Carbon Brief). Rather than repeat those summaries, here I will focus on two other aspects of the conference that I think get less international attention or understanding by non-participants. In effect, there are at least two other processes going on in parallel to the negotiations.

Yadvinder with UK Secretary of State Steve Reed

One is essentially a conference on biodiversity that brings together governments, policymakers, NGOs, academics, journalists, indigenous peoples, activists, businesses and finance in a somewhat overwhelming flurry of events that stretch from the Blue Zone right across the city. These don’t get the coverage of the main negotiations because they are so amorphous and hard to track. But this is where a lot of the detailed consequences of the Global Biodiversity Framework, and wider thinking about the biodiversity challenge, are being worked out. For example, I attended one session on how researchers are rising to the challenge of developing a global biodiversity data architecture that brings together multiple sources of data and will support and simplify how countries can track and report changes in their biodiversity.

Another session I attended was on how ecosystem restoration activities can be scaled up to meet the target of restoration of 30% of degraded lands by 2030. And another on whether novel approaches based on the intrinsic rights of natural entities (rivers, mountains etc.) can be effective and integrated into national laws and legal systems. And there was a plethora of smaller but hugely significant events such as Brazil launching its plan to restore 12 million ha of its ecosystems by 2035, and presentations of a new mechanism to finance tropical forest protection and restoration. And, even more amorphous, sprinkled in every day were multiple conversations and serendipitous encounters, new agreements to collaborate together on something, new plans being hatched. And the meetings and conversations stretch across disciplines – as an academic I know of no other forum where I can engage so effortlessly with governments, activists, NGOs, journalists and filmmakers.

To the outside this “conference of biodiversity” may seem superfluous to the main negotiations, especially in an age where air travel is rightly being questioned and many have taken the decision to not travel. But I can’t see the speed of activity and collaboration required to address the biodiversity challenge happening in any other way, especially when creating partnerships across countries.

Yadvinder with the British Ambassador to Colombia, George Hodgson, and a team from the Natural History Museum in London, at the launch of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition in Cali

The third element that matters is the use of the event as an opportunity for mobilization of public awareness, activism and enthusiasm. This was evident in the UK around the Glasgow climate COP in 2021. Biodiversity has languished compared to climate change, but in the last few years it has stepped up a notch with “nature” being a prominent part of public conversation, both in the UK and internationally. But there is so much more to be done. The Colombian government made this explicit in declaring this “the people’s COP”, and they truly delivered. The Green Zone, in the heart of the city,  on the pedestrianized streets straddling the Cali river, was packed with stalls and  information stands and humming with joy and music ranging from salsa through Afro-Colombian choirs and Andean flutes. Throughout the COP this zone teemed with the public, enjoying the event but also learning and celebrating biodiversity and the natural world. And there were many other events.

I joined the British Ambassador to Colombia in opening the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition. It was free and easy to walk into off the street: every time I passed by it was full of people enjoying this celebration of the wonders of the natural world.  The media coverage in Colombia was intense and joyous, and also there was good coverage in Brazil, and I believe in other parts of Latin America. As an ecologist it was truly wondrous to see such a public and joyous celebration of nature and its importance. It was disappointing there was less media coverage in the UK, something that is needed if we are to better mainstream nature and biodiversity into the public conversation.

The magnificent forests above Cali harbour extraordinary biodiversity and protect the city’s water

At the end of the meeting, I took a trip out with a local conservationist to the lush cloud forests in the mountains above Cali, and to the tropical dry forests and wetlands to the north of the city. Everywhere was brimming with life, a celebration of the abundance and exuberance of the living world. It was also filled with stories of hope and progress. A forest that had been protected and restored for the protection it supplies to the city’s water supply, and is now found to be home to one of the planet’s rarest birds, discovered only in 2019 (we got to see this charismatic little bird that struts and swings its torso like a salsa dancer – hence its nickname of the “salsita”) and an abundance of gorgeous plants and insects. City ecologists who are implementing ambitious plans for green corridors and public access to nature. A river with multiple tragic stories from past violence but now a focus of community-led projects for reconciliation and reconnection. But also sobering reminders of wider challenges: a bird-rich wetland experiencing two years of continuous drought, hill-sides razed by cattle-gazing and fire, intensive sugar-cane monocultures stretching across the valley.

Amongst the local people (“Caleños”) that I met there was immense pride and joy that Cali was being celebrated as a city of biodiversity, and lending its name and legacy to global efforts to protect and restore the natural world. Biodiversity and nature recovery are ultimately always local and intimate, but they cannot only be local. Somehow, we need to bridge the  scales from local to national to global, to try and shift not only global nature governance and finance, but also the values of our modern civilizations, to rebuild our connections with nature,  and retell and build new stories about how the natural world is not primarily a commodity, a source of resource extraction to power our economies, but the nurturing matrix from which we emerge and which sustains us. This was apparent in the cosmovisions of many of the indigenous peoples who spoke at the meeting. The whole meeting had the strap-line of “paz con la naturaleza”, peace with nature. The President of the COP, the inspiring Colombian Minister of the Environment Susana Muhamad, spoke of the need to live in synchrony with the cycles of nature. The UN secretary general spoke of ending a war with nature.

After spending ten days in the company of people, both delegates and locals, with so much love for the natural world, in a beautiful, seductive, magical country that is sadly far too familiar with conflict but also with reconciliation and peace-making, I come home energized and empowered. This felt significant. There is so so much to do, but I feel this was an important moment in addressing the huge challenge of creating civilizational and just peace with nature.

Stakeholder Engagement Best Practice – Nattergal’s Ten-Point Approach

This month sees the publication of The Nattergal Report on Stakeholder Engagement Best Practice for Landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects. Developed for the Boothby Wildland Landscape Recovery project, and funded via the DEFRA Landscape Recovery Development Phase, the report was led by the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) at the University of Gloucestershire and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Agile Initiative projects at Oxford University, with the objective of establishing a framework for enhancing and embedding stakeholder engagement into nature restoration.

Ben Hart, Head of Operations at Nattergal said: “As part of our Landscape Recovery Phase 1 Pilot development project for Boothby Wildland, we reached out to Dr. Caitlin Hafferty at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR), and Josh Davis at the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) to help us to understand how to develop and deliver an exemplar best practice programme for our first Nattergal nature restoration project. Josh, Caitlin, and their colleagues did an amazing job of reviewing all available guidance and frameworks on the subject and condensed them into a digestible 10-principle approach that we could implement on site.

Our team have been following the guidance to deliver a fantastic programme of engagement, which has been greatly appreciated by our stakeholder community, and enabled richer and more supporting communication between all parties. The long-term impacts of this work will be highly beneficial not just for Boothby, but for all Nattergal projects as we scale, hopefully setting the groundwork for generational engagement programmes as we aim to deliver nature restoration in perpetuity.”

Effective stakeholder engagement is key to improved land-use decision-making, natural resource management, and achieving mutually beneficial outcomes for individuals, communities, and places.

Our intention is that not only will we apply the principles across the Nattergal portfolio, but, in line with our core value of collaboration, we can help other organisations engaged in nature recovery to deliver enhanced benefits for their stakeholders. The report sets out ten evidence-led recommendations for improving stakeholder engagement in nature recovery projects. Below are working examples of how we are implementing these recommendations at Nattergal – and collaborating on community benefit best practices across the UK Natural Capital market.

Nattergal’s Ten-Point Approach

     1. Treat engagement as an ongoing process, not a ‘one-off’, ‘add-on’, or ‘tick-box’ activity.

At Nattergal we aim to manage our sites for nature in perpetuity, and as such, we need to maintain positive stakeholder engagement for decades, and across generations.

Creating programmes that work for immediate needs, whilst laying the foundations for long term engagement is key to the success of each project. We recognise that programmes need to be flexible, adaptive and continually evolving through the lifetime of a project. Accordingly, regular reviews are being built into our plans to ensure these needs are met.

     2. Prioritise understanding of the local context, purpose, and rationale for engagement.

An early stakeholder mapping exercise undertaken by Louise Arkles, which has since evolved and grown.

A clear early priority for any nature recovery project is identifying the individuals, groups and organisations through a stakeholder mapping exercise. These include both ‘communities of place’, i.e. the groups and individuals in our local geographical area, as well as ‘communities of interest’, being stakeholders with an interest in the project but not living in close proximity. At Boothby Wildland this was a critical part of an independent stakeholder analysis we commissioned Louise Arkles to conduct as part of her MPhil in Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge. Louise spent three months embedded within the Boothby team during the summer of 2023, attending community events, engaging face-to-face with local people, and undertaking surveys and interviews.

Key outputs included a summary of census data, an initial map of actual and potential stakeholders as illustrated below, a living spreadsheet of engaged stakeholders, and an Impact-Influence Matrix of all stakeholders. These formed the basis of early engagement planning at Boothby Wildland.

      3. Engage stakeholders in dialogue as early as possible in decision-making processes.

Boothby Ranger Lloyd Park presenting at the consultation – February 2024

A key nature recovery objective at Boothby Wildland is the restoration of the West Glen River, with the aim of reconnecting to its floodplain, creating wetland habitats, and alleviating downstream flooding. After expert consultation, baseline monitoring and modelling of different restoration options, we identified that drainage removal and the enclosed release of beavers would be key to success. Given the potential controversy around beaver reintroductions, it was incumbent on us to engage with stakeholders before taking any action.

The Nattergal team at Boothby Wildland held three consultation sessions attended by over 80 local stakeholders to present proposals, answer questions and log all feedback for consideration. The sessions were promoted extensively across social media, through local posters and by emailing our established contact database. They included an in-person meeting at the local Village Hall, a live online session and a walk & talk at the Wildland. Feedback questionnaires were distributed at each event, whilst a letter box drop for local villagers and online copies were also made available. We reviewed the outcomes, considered the feedback and have committed to ongoing follow-up conversations. A report of this consultation, which received overwhelmingly positive support, was included in the application to Natural England for an enclosed beaver release.

   4.   Integrate local knowledge alongside scientific expertise for robust decision-making

A critical element of our approach has been the creation of two co-design groups at Boothby Wildland, combining a diverse range of stakeholders with both scientific and local knowledge.

Specialist Advisory Group: This group is formed of representatives from specialists local NGOs, Consultants, Academics and Public Bodies and provide specialist advice to Boothby on the policy, technical and logistical aspects of our plans. Sub-groups will be formed for specific initiatives such as river restoration as and when needed.

Local Stakeholder Group: The Boothby community group is made up of a broader set of  people (including our direct neighbours) and organisations, where we make every endeavour to ensure this is representative of the local context.  ‘Sprint’ subgroups may also be formed to focus on specific, time sensitive issues as and when they occur.

     5. Understand and manage power dynamics effectively, building trust and encouraging two-way dialogue

We have been working hard to foster relationships with our local community including surrounding farmers and landowners, as well as extensive collaborations with NGOs, academic institutions, research partners and commercial organisations locally, nationally and internationally. Our activities- including hosting regular walks with interested parties, through to weekly volunteering days – enable us to meet face to face to discuss the project directly with people and any concerns that arise. We also offer a site email address that is regularly contacted with questions for the team.

It is important to try and understand where different groups are coming from, and that many will have conflicting ideas and concerns. There are louder voices (both positive and negative), that it’s easy to engage with, but there is a wide range of other, less vocal stakeholders that we feel should have a chance to feed in. Our aim as we grow is that additional capacity in the team will help us reach out to those groups, who may need different areas of support to help them become more involved in the project.

We believe that undertaking this level of engagement provides value for all involved. From opportunities to learn and volunteer, to being involved in site development, we hope to create a sense of community, pride and agency in the Boothby Wildland project.

     6. Recognise there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to engagement

As part of our planning process, we mapped out a Spheres of Influence Matrix to understand the level of engagement needed by each stakeholder type. In the Spectrum of Engagement model (below), we then identified examples of engagement methods that could be applied across each level, as appropriate to the people and the situation. We have implemented many of the engagement methods including newsletters, social media engagement, open days, guided tours, public meetings, establishing a local community group, consultations, our interactive Boothby WildMap and volunteering opportunities.

Boothby Wildland’s Spectrum of Engagement

     7. Prioritise monitoring and evaluation of social impact to inform future practice

It is recognised that whilst imperative, monitoring and evaluating stakeholder engagement can be challenging for a variety of reasons. For example, having robust, repeatable methodologies for monitoring and the capacity to carry these out, is a goal we continue to work on.

We track social outcomes such as employment from the project, site visits, uptake of volunteering and student research. Evaluating the quality of our social impact and using qualitative methodologies is more challenging with a small team. Nonetheless, we review activities such as volunteering annually with questionnaires and feedback forms and have used printed and online feedback forms for our consultation process.

We remain open to conversation with all our stakeholders and try to actively encourage feedback of all types – for example, starting community workshops at Boothby Wildland with a SWOT analysis exercise to capture thoughts on the project’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. These identified factors are then regularly monitored and evaluated to ensure stakeholder engagement outcomes are realised, whilst also identifying risks and issues as they arise.

     8. Act Local, to ensure ambition is rooted in the local community

One of Nattergal’s core values is ‘Act Local’.  This begins by working with local stakeholders to ensure that each of our Wildlands is embedded in the respective local community. Employing people from the surrounding area was a first step towards this at Boothby Wildland, and the team adopted a spirit of co-design to help form plans for the site.

In September 2023, we held a series of community workshops at Boothby, attended by over 50 local representatives. Small groups were asked to visualise desired outcomes from Boothby Wildland in the form of the front cover of a local newspaper in 2073. We were heartened to see such creativity and ambition from our local community and the exercise helped to kick-start our work on a collaborative footing.

Since then, we have developed an interactive WildMap to keep our growing list of stakeholders updated on our progress and shared vision as it develops. Navigating each square of the map you can interact with a wealth of content, from scientific research findings and camera trap footage to future vision illustrations. This way we can apply cutting-edge science and global best-practice to a plan conceived and developed locally. The WildMap also presents an opportunity to share community projects, for example the work submitted by supporters in our recent 2024 ‘Summer of Art’.

 

Boothby Interactive WildMap – Summer of Art

     9. Develop organisational capacity for engagement through training, resources, and human capital

Our local team at Boothby includes Communities Co-ordinator Lizzie, Ranger Lloyd, and Boothby Manager Lorienne. Together with support from the wider Nattergal team, they work incredibly hard to deliver all elements of the Stakeholder Engagement Plan.

Through the FIRNS (Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland) Community Benefits Standard for Nature projects, we will be undertaking training workshops with the team in Q1 2025, reviewing what is working at Boothby and what could be improved, as well as feeding into the standard development. Our aim is to be the first English project to obtain the new Community Benefits Certification Mark when this is released.

As one of 22 first-round Landscape Recovery pilot projects, part of the broader Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, we have been encouraged and supported to develop our Stakeholder Engagement and Site Access Plans for Boothby Wildland. This support has been critical to delivering the research and resources associated with this work. We are now in the process of negotiating longer-term ELMs support which will enable us realise our ongoing ambition. These plans include expanding the Boothby team with at least 3 additional positions, which would provide increased capacity for continued and more in-depth stakeholder engagement.

    10. Frameworks for best practice engagement should be institutionalised – embedding accountability and inclusivity at the centre of nature recovery efforts

We are working to foster an environment where equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded. We acknowledge that we must better match the demographics of our engaged stakeholders to the broader demographics of the local area. For example, we will look to identify and proactively approach ‘hard to reach’ and/or under-represented individuals of our community. We have also applied for funding to secure the infrastructure needed to host local schools and youth groups. If successful, this includes an Education Officer, group shelter, restrooms and an accessible path into the Wildland.

The figure below, taken from the report, shows the cyclic nature of Stakeholder Engagement. By embedding this process, we aim to consider engagement in everything we do across all Nattergal projects.

The Stakeholder Engagement Cycle – from the Best Practice Report

Nattergal is also a partner in the Nature Finance Certification Alliance (NFCA) ‘Community Benefits Standard for Nature Projects’. Funded by the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS), Nattergal is the only English partner in the project, which is aiming to “establish a consensus on community benefits best practice across the UK Nature Investment market.” In turn, this is feeding into the British Standards Institute (BSI) Nature Investment Standards, so lessons learnt at Boothby Wildland will have international impact.

Conclusion

By grounding decisions in best practice evidence, organisations like Nattergal can create effective strategies that maximise beneficial outcomes and manage risk, build trust and legitimacy, and promote a culture of continuous improvement.

Our work is ongoing, but we have made great progress and remain fully committed to delivering ever-better engagement across all key stakeholder groups as their needs evolve.

You can download the full report and the Executive summary in our outputs section.

References

*Davis, J., Hafferty, C., Ingram, J., & Short, C. (2023). The Nattergal Report on Engagement Best Practice for Landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects. Carried out by the Countryside and Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire, UK.

For further information:

Lorienne Whittle | Boothby Wildland Manager | lorienne.whittle@nattergal.co.uk

Ben Hart | Nattergal Head of Operations | ben.hart@nattergal.co.uk

Dr. Caitlin Hafferty | Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Social Science Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR) | caitlin.hafferty@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Josh Davis | Environmental Sciences PhD Student at the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI), University of Gloucestershire | joshuadavis@connect.glos.ac.uk

 

Blog preproduced by kind permission of Nattergal. Originally published here

Mapping land use in the 1950s for a nature recovery site in Ghana

Our Kwahu nature recovery partners, Nature Conservation Research Centre, Ghana and Ostrom Climate  called us for help in assessing historical forest cover around the 1950s, which is critically important for its field forests restoration plan. Learn more about the Kwahu restoration site here.

Researchers initially checked LandSat Satellite, which is available up to the 1980s with coarse resolution. Unfortunately, forests were severely degraded around 1980s, thus we needed to track further back in time.

In Ghana, local collaborators have seen several aerial photos taken by the Royal Air Force in 1946, and topographical maps drawn based on these aerial photos, by an organisation called the ‘Directorate of Oversea Surveys’. They believed that a ‘nearly’ complete collection was being held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and asked us to help search for these precious materials and decipher the forest cover in the 1950s.

With amazing input from the Bodleian Librarians, researchers at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery found the necessary maps. They are safety kept in the library and taken very good care of. Despite being printed 70 years ago, they are still glossy and in great condition. Forest symbols are marked clearly on the printed sheets which reveal forest cover in 1950s.

Vegetation information recorded on these maps

Then, AI experts from the Leverhulme Centre for nature Recovery, Steven Reece and Olga Isupova created an excellent tool to convert this information into a digital form that could be used for GIS analysis. The tool turned out to be a great success and recognised symbols on these maps with a 98% accuracy.

In the Bodleian library, Dr Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng is reading details on the ‘Directorate of Overseas Survey’ archival maps, printed around 1950s.

More importantly, the 1950s forests cover map derived from these materials have very high fidelity to field and household surveys, and the original forest range maps were then discussed with local farmers and the extent of the previous forest cover agreed.

Part of a 1950s historical map showing study site Kwahu at the centre, before AI reading (left) and after AI land use type recognition (right)

 

Looking to the future, scientists from the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery will be carrying on applying these AI tools to more countries with ‘Directorate of Oversea Survey’ maps available, with Sierre Leon, Belize, South Africa just to name a few!

 

Oxford researchers find African forests even more productive than Amazonia.

Whilst most studies on the ecosystem functioning of tropical forests have focussed extensively on Latin America or Asia, researchers at the University of Oxford say comparing findings with studies in Ghana has produced interesting and differing results showing that more studies need to be made in Africa.

Tropical forests cover large areas of equatorial Africa and play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. Scientists from the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, in close partnership with collaborators at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG), have been looking at the carbon budget in both the Amazon and West Africa by undertaking detailed field assessments of the carbon budget of multiple forest sites.

The researchers monitored 14 one-hectare plots along an aridity gradient in Ghana. When compared with an equivalent aridity gradient in Amazonia that they had previously studied using the same measurement protocol, the studied West African forests generally had higher productivity and more rapid carbon cycling.

Their findings have been published in Nature Communications: Contrasting carbon cycle along tropical forest aridity gradients in West Africa and Amazonia.

Lead author Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre, said:

“Tropical forests are so diverse that we are constantly surprised when opening new study sites. I became  fascinated with West African forests because of this study, but I am sure there are more fascinating tropical forests yet to discover.”

“When we’re talking about carbon budgets, you can’t just study a stand of forests and imagine that applies to even nearby forests. Carbon budgets vary greatly from wet to dry regions in the tropics.

“Having studied the carbon budget in the Amazon it was interesting to see that West African forests are more productive, have more photosynthesis and absorb more energy. And we don’t quite understand why this is the case. This is an important region and shouldn’t be ignored. Our new findings were able to tell us a different story than our previous studies in the Amazonia, and has stimulated new questions and new research.

The work carried out is part of the Global Ecosystem Monitoring network (GEM), an international effort to measure and understand forest ecosystem functions and traits, and how these will respond to climate change. GEM was created 2005 under the leadership of Prof Yadvinder Malhi. The GEM network describes the productivity, metabolism and carbon cycle of mainly tropical forests and savannas.

Professor Malhi said:

“Ecology is a global science, and equal long-term partnerships are essential to produce both better science and fairer science. This work is the product of decades of long-term partnership between Oxford and institutions in both Africa and South America, work that seen many local students trained and graduating and contributed to building local capacity in environmental science.”

The study is also a fruit of successful collaboration with the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana – CSIR, many scientists from which made fundamental contributions to the study and are coauthors of the publication.

One of the lead Ghanaian collaborators, Said Akwasi Duah-Gyamfi, Senior Research Scientist, CSIR-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana, said:

“It was a wonderful experience to be part of the research team, and most importantly to explore and generate knowledge on topical issues about forests in Africa.”

Read the paper in full: Contrasting carbon cycle along tropical forest aridity gradients in West Africa and Amazonia

Read more about GEM: The Global Ecosystems Monitoring network: Monitoring ecosystem productivity and carbon cycling across the tropics

Why engaging with policy processes can help nature recovery

It’s not easy to work out the best way to give nature a real chance of recovery.  It’s complicated, with technical, ecological, legal, financial and social factors all making their contributions.

My work as the Knowledge Exchange specialist for the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery means that I have to try to find a way through this complexity. In particular, I’m interested in working with policy makers, as policy choices frame so much of what we can do for nature: be that new agricultural support systems or updates to planning rules.

In the UK context, a lot of nature-related policy is devolved to the four nations, which adds more complexity, but it’s also the chance to experiment with approaches better-suited to a particular physical or social context.

Research findings aren’t always an exact fit for what policymakers want at a particular time, so we have to be flexible.  Thus, I’ve been working to normalise a ‘responsive’ engagement strategy by getting involved with formal calls for evidence on nature-related policies.

My first foray into this area for the Centre came soon after I arrived in summer 2023, just as many researchers went on holiday! Fortunately, Sophus zu Ermgassen was around to prepare a great submission to the House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the ‘Role of natural capital in the green economy’.

This year we’ve responded to two calls for evidence: from the Welsh Government and from NatureScot. This has been a fabulous opportunity to look at the different approaches of these devolved nations.

The Welsh Government was looking for responses to its White Paper on environmental principles, governance and biodiversity targets. I worked with one of our researchers, Jed Soleiman to draft a response, focussing on the questions where the Centre had most evidence to offer, and proposed strengthening the White Paper’s Nature-Positive target, you can read it here.

Soon after, Nat Duffus got in touch to say that NatureScot was consulting on a biodiversity metric for Scotland, based on the one being used for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) in England.  This was an excellent opportunity to input evidence from several people in the LCNR community who have been working on BNG, and Nat did a brilliant job of co-ordinating all those ideas into a single, readable response which you can read here.

This is just part of the knowledge exchange work for the Centre, and it’s been great to have this chance to engage with policy processes, as well as exploring how to apply research findings to questions that they weren’t necessarily designed to answer.

Do get in touch if you have any comments or would like to discuss any aspect of knowledge exchange – kay.jenkinson@ouce.ox.ac.uk.

 

 

 

Oxfordshire’s Greenspace Deprived Neighbourhoods

Martha Crockatt

I’m writing this in mid-April; although there has been wind, rain and even hail in the last few days, hawthorn, tulips and forget-me-nots are blooming, bees are starting to buzz and the sun, when it does come out from behind a cloud, is warm – it’s a lovely time to be outdoors in parks, gardens or just walking. It’s easy to take these green spaces and what they offer us for granted, but not everyone has the same access to them. Publicly accessible greenspace refers to areas of mainly natural outdoor space that the public can visit at any time without cost, including parks, nature reserves, playing fields, canal paths, cemeteries and common land – the places that we visit to enjoy exercise, give children a place to play, meet friends, spend time in nature, and so on.

There is a wealth of evidence that spending time in greenspace is good for mental and physical health and wellbeing. We want these benefits to be freely available to everyone across all parts of society, but unfortunately, this is not always the case. There is evidence that the health benefits of spending time in greenspace are greater in more socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods, which typically have higher levels of poor health to start with than in more affluent areas. However, these more deprived areas can have less access to greenspace.

With this in mind, I started a project in collaboration with Wild Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership and Oxfordshire County Council, as well as colleagues in the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at the University of Oxford, to identify neighbourhoods in Oxfordshire that are both socio-economically deprived and lack access to greenspace. The aim in identifying these areas is to help support and prioritise funding and efforts to improve greenspace quantity and quality in these areas, which could benefit most from better access to greenspace.

Using data published by Natural England, we looked not only at how much accessible greenspace is present within local neighbourhoods, but also other factors that can make a difference to how much exposure people can get to greenspace and nature. This included the potential for overcrowding in greenspace, as well as the density of Public Rights of Way, how much of a neighbourhood is man-made surfaces and the area of private gardens within a neighbourhood.

Using these factors, we identified 16 neighbourhoods in Oxfordshire that are relatively socio-economically deprived, and lack access to green space according to multiple metrics. It’s important to point out that these neighbourhoods have been identified in a purely desk-based study; what the data tells us may not reflect people’s lived experiences, and the data may not be 100% accurate. Before making any decisions based on the findings, it’s vital to get out into the neighbourhoods, to understand how accurate the mapping is, as well as how communities use their greenspace and what they want from them. The neighbourhoods identified in the report are all urban–densely populated areas where it is usually not possible to create new parks. We need to explore how to make the most of existing greenspace, so that it works for local communities; we need to protect what greenspace we already have; we need to look for opportunities to increase green infrastructure (street trees, pocket parks, green roofs, etc.), and we need to do this strategically to increase connectivity of accessible greenspace for people and nature. You can read the full report here.

Is there a greenspace in your neighbourhood that you value, or have ideas for how to make it more user-friendly for the local community? Larger parks often have a “Friends of” group that you could get involved with. Check out the map on Wild Oxfordshire’s website and find out if there are any community nature groups near you. The website includes guidance on setting up a group if there isn’t one near you, examples of what others have done, sources of funding, and practical steps on how to create space for nature. It’s worth being aware that the County Council is responsible for Public Rights of Way, but that parks and play areas are typically (but not always) run by your local District, City, Parish, or Town council; visit the relevant council website and search for “parks” to find a list of areas that they are responsible for, or you could consider contacting your local councillor about a specific issue. For an interactive way to see where local green space is, visit the England-wide greenspace data on Natural England’s website. Your local council or nature group may also have events such as Community Walks that you can join in, such as these walks run by South Oxfordshire District Council and these in Kidlington. Sign up for Wild Oxfordshire’s monthly email Bulletin, and follow them on social media to hear all the news, training, events, and funding opportunities for nature; Community Action Groups (CAG) Oxfordshire’s newsletter is another great source of information on how you get involved in local community action.

However you do it, enjoy exploring your local greenspaces.

Harnessing the power of digital tools for community engagement in rewilding

Dr Caitlin Hafferty

Social science researchers from the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR) are collaborating with Highlands Rewilding to explore innovative digital technologies for enhancing community engagement in rewilding.

Highlands Rewilding, which aims to both re-wild and re-people the Scottish Highlands through Nature-based Solutions, is working closely with the LCNR to improve its strategy for community engagement that fosters meaningful partnerships for landscape-scale nature recovery, and works closely with residents and groups to deliver local benefits. These efforts are inspired by the belief that local communities must be closely involved in nature recovery, and that collaboration is key for finding ways to bring social, economic, and environmental benefits. Highlands Rewilding aims to engage communities on their plans for their land, and in developing joint projects which can help deliver on community aspirations in harmony with their vision for long-term nature recovery.

To help bring multiple partners together across the landscapes, Highlands Rewilding and the LCNR have co-developed three digital community engagement platforms using software called Commonplace. The Commonplace team provides innovative digital solutions for creating positive change for thriving and resilient places, powered by data and collaboration between diverse groups.

The Highlands Rewilding community engagement platforms – which have been specifically designed for their three rewilding sites, Tayvallich, Bunloit, and Beldorney – have been launched this week. The sites currently include a survey, led by the Highlands Rewilding team, on community joint ventures. The LCNR team is launching its research in Summer 2024.

Dr Caitlin Hafferty, Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Social Science at the LCNR, said: “This project is an exciting opportunity to change how nature recovery is done to deliver multiple benefits for people, nature, and climate within a participatory governance framework. By using digital tools to bring multiple actors together across landscapes, we aim to investigate the balance between fostering meaningful engagement at the local level while considering broader goals and incentives.”

Dr Calum Brown, Co-chief Scientist at Highlands Rewilding, said “These new approaches are very promising for involving more people, more deeply, in nature restoration. Alongside other methods, digital tools for community engagement allow us to explore how we can conduct socio-economic baselining to feed into broader decision-making processes around nature-based solutions. We’re looking forward to really constructive, practical outcomes from this project.”

The team is exploring the potential of innovative digital tools for the collection, analysis, and integration of community priorities and socio-economic data in rewilding governance. Collaborating with Commonplace has provided an exciting opportunity to transparently share information about rewilding projects, consult members of the community on specific land-use decisions, bring together different actors across the landscape to foster meaningful collaboration, and explore different pathways towards promoting an ongoing culture of engagement. Specific tools include project information pages, public forums, surveys, digital participatory mapping, photo elicitation, and using mobile apps to supplement in-person methods like interviews and focus groups.

Example of a previous Scottish project that used digital tools for engagement on Commonplace in landscape-scale collaboration. Source: Cairngorms Connect 2030
An example of one of the Highlands Rewilding and LCNR community engagement platforms on Commonplace.

View the new Commonplace websites for Tayvallich, Bunloit, and Beldorney

This work is part of Highlands Rewilding’s Engagement Roadmap, which outlines their broader and ongoing strategy for engagement and community benefits from rewilding. The Roadmap is based on evidence-led guidance called the Recipe for Engagement (RfE), which was developed by the LCNR and Agile Initiative at the University of Oxford.

World’s Most Productive Natural Forests Recently Discovered in West Africa

Whilst most studies on the ecosystem functioning of tropical forests have focussed extensively on Latin America or Asia, researchers in Oxford say comparing findings with studies in Ghana has produced interesting and differing results showing that more studies need to be made in Africa.

Tropical forests cover large areas of equatorial Africa and play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. Scientists from the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, in the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), in close partnership with collaborators at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG), have been looking at the carbon budget in both the Amazon and West Africa by undertaking detailed field assessments of the carbon budget of multiple forest sites.

The researchers monitored 14 one-hectare plots along an aridity gradient in Ghana. When compared with an equivalent aridity gradient in Amazonia they had previously studied using the same measurement protocol, the studied West African forests generally had higher productivity and more rapid carbon cycling.

Their findings have been published in Nature Communications: Contrasting carbon cycle along tropical forest aridity gradients in West Africa and Amazonia.

Lead author Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre, said: “Tropical forests are so diverse that we are constantly surprised when opening new study sites. I became fascinated with West African forests because of this study, but I am sure there are more fascinating tropical forests yet to discover. When we’re talking about carbon budgets, you can’t just study a stand of forests and imagine that applies to even nearby forests. Carbon budgets vary greatly from wet to dry regions in the tropics.”

Having studied the carbon budget in the Amazon it was interesting to see that West African forests are more productive, have more photosynthesis and absorb more energy. And we don’t quite understand why this is the case. This is an important region and shouldn’t be ignored. Our new findings were able to tell us a different story than our previous studies in the Amazonia, and has stimulated new questions and new research.

The work carried out is part of the Global Ecosystem Monitoring network (GEM), an international effort to measure and understand forest ecosystem functions and traits, and how these will respond to climate change. GEM was created by the ECI in 2005 under the leadership of Prof Yadvinder Malhi. The GEM network describes the productivity, metabolism and carbon cycle of mainly tropical forests and savannas.

Professor Malhi said: “Ecology is a global science, and equal long-term partnerships are essential to produce both better science and fairer science. This work is the product of decades of long-term partnership between Oxford and institutions in both Africa and South America, work that seen many local students trained and graduating and contributed to building local capacity in environmental science”.

The study is also a fruit of successful collaboration with the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana – CSIR, many scientists from which made fundamental contributions to the study and are coauthors of the publication. One of the lead Ghanaian collaborators, Said Akwasi Duah-Gyamfi, Senior Research Scientist, CSIR-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana, said: “It was a wonderful experience to be part of the research team, and most importantly to explore and generate knowledge on topical issues about forests in Africa.”

Read the paper in full: Contrasting carbon cycle along tropical forest aridity gradients in W Africa and Amazonia

Read more about GEM: The Global Ecosystems Monitoring network: Monitoring ecosystem productivity and carbon cycling across the tropics

We are off: Research on equitable Nature Recovery in Southern Ghana
By Eric Mensah Kumeh

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR), together with its Ghanaian partner, the Nature Conservation Research Centre (NCRC), have launched a new programme of research in the Guinea High Forest region of southeastern Ghana.

The programme was launched with an interdisciplinary field visit to the Kwahu Landscape Restoration Project (KLRP). The KLRP aims to deliver nature recovery through green finance, cutting-edge science and participatory governance, all goals which align well with those of LCNR and make the KLRP an ideal case study landscape. The KLRP’s core landscape interventions include cocoa agroforestry, forest restoration and rewilding. Beyond using the LCNR-NCRC programme launch to develop a stronger understanding of the project, the LCNR team led by Yadvinder Malhi  and Constance McDermott, used the opportunity to provide critical insights into how the NCRC could work together to help strengthen the KLRP project, while generating cutting-edge insights into ecological and social aspects of nature recovery more generally.

LCNR’s commitment to the partnership was buoyed by the participation of our ecologists who conducted strategic drone flights (LIDAR and multi-spectral sensors) to generate information on vegetation to support the refinement of KLRP and serve as a baseline for future monitoring of impacts. The sustained engagement of our social science team laid a critical foundation for effective data collection on the ‘dronescapes’. The team has also been instrumental in observing and providing essential inputs towards Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) processes required to effectively set up the KLRP and improve the inclusion of local communities’ needs and concerns.

The launch was also instrumental in strengthening connections between various organisations involved in the project, including exploring strategic areas for collaboration. The LCNR team will produce an initial analysis of the dronescapes while finetuning multiple aspects of the research agenda in the Kwahu Landscape during the first quarter of the year. Further fieldwork is envisaged for the second quarter of 2024 and beyond.

Research to policy impact: strategies for translating findings into policy messages

Blog by Kay Jenkinson, Knowledge Exchange Specialist, Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, University of Oxford; and Dr Sarah Higginson, Knowledge Exchange Specialist, Innovation and Engagement, Research Services, University of Oxford

For academics seeking to bridge the gap between their research and policy-making, the journey to impact can be both challenging and rewarding. The impact process is often nuanced, and marked by slow progress with occasional unexpected bursts of action and achievement. Rather annoyingly, it can be the casual interactions at events or a small action arising from a meeting that can lead to the greatest impact.

However, some fairly simple planning can help to ensure that you know the people you need to contact, have the right materials to engage them and are well-placed to contribute your evidence to (policy) discussions and development.

Discover some useful hints and tips for your ‘journey to impact’ here in their blog