Publications

Thomas White, Talitha Bromwich, Ashley Bang, Leon Bennun, Joseph W. Bull, Michael Clark, E.J. Milner-Gulland, Graham Prescott, Malcolm Starkey, Sophus zu Ermgassen, Hollie Booth (2023). The Nature Positive Journey for Business: A research agenda to enable private sector contributions to the global biodiversity framework.. OSF Preprint.

As a group of researchers and consultants working at the interface between business and biodiversity, we propose a conceptual model through which private sector contributions to a Nature Positive future could be realised and use it to identify priority research questions.

Nature Seminar Series. Fixing our broken relationship with nature. Miles Richardson

This talk will consider our broken relationship with nature and introduce the science of nature connectedness, why it matters and how to improve it in order to unite both human and nature’s wellbeing.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners. The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, the Biodiversity Network, or their researchers.

This paper, co-authored by Andy Hector, Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery Theme lead notes that satellite observations of one of the world’s biggest ecological experiments on the island of Borneo have revealed that replanting logged forests with diverse mixtures of seedlings can significantly accelerate their recovery.

The experiment was set up by Professor Andy Hector and colleagues over twenty years ago as part of the SE Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP). This assessed the recovery of 125 different plots in an area of logged tropical forest that were sown with different combinations of tree species. The results revealed that plots replanted with a mixture of 16 native tree species showed faster recovery of canopy area and total tree biomass, compared to plots replanted with 4 or just 1 species. However, even plots that had been replanted with 1 tree species were recovering more quickly than those left to restore naturally.

Read the paper in Science Advances here 

Nature Seminar Series. Quantifying & predicting resilience from individuals, to populations, to whole communities. Rob Salguero-Gómez

Understanding and predicting the responses to natural systems to disturbances has been a fundamental goal of Ecology since its birth as a science. Still, the study of resilience has been plagued with discussions and disagreements regarding how to define this term, which have ultimately limited progress in the area, let alone developments to integrate resilience across levels of biological organisation.

In this talk, I will overview key works developed in my lab aimed at integrating how individual responses to disturbances scale up to changes in population trends and community assembly. The approaches used, contrary to the status quo in the discipline, do not make assumptions about ecological systems being at or close to stationary equilibrium, and so they offer a more realistic depiction of how nature operates and responds to the human-led disturbances they are current experiencing. I will also discuss how novel technologies (autonomous robots, UAVs, LiDAR) can help vastly expedite our assessments and predictions of nature resilience towards a more cost-effective recovery.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. Climate change and nature recovery from global thinking to local action – Mike Morecroft

The links between the climate and nature crises are clear. Climate shapes patterns of biodiversity at all scales from global to local; ecosystems are key to the global carbon cycle and often mediate the impacts of climate change on people.

The latest IPCC reports show how the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and biodiversity are now being reported around the world; they also show that habitat degradation and fragmentation increases vulnerability of both people and nature to climate change. It is possible to adapt to climate change and to build resilience, but there are limits to this which would become increasingly apparent at higher levels of global warming. Nature-based Solutions, which provide benefits for people and biodiversity are an essential element of climate change mitigation and adaptation. It is however essential that they are planned and delivered in ways that are scientifically robust, draw on local knowledge and are equitable and inclusive.

Mike will give an overview of the global issues based on his experience as an IPCC Coordinating Lead Author and present research that he is leading at Natural England, to test the effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions for climate change in practice and to learn how to implement then to deliver their full potential.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. The Jewel Box: How moths illuminate nature’s hidden rules – Tim Blackburn

Every morning, ecologist Tim Blackburn is inspired by the diversity contained within the moth trap he runs on the roof of his London flat. Beautiful, ineffably mysterious organisms, these moths offer a glimpse into a larger order, one that extends beyond individual species, beyond lepidoptera or insects, and into a hidden landscape. Just as Michael Faraday’s iron filings arrange themselves to articulate a magnetic field that would otherwise be invisible, Tim shows us that when we pay proper attention to these tiny animals, their relationships with one another, and their connections to the wider web of life, a greater truth about the world gradually emerges into focus. In THE JEWEL BOX, Tim reflects on what he has learned in the last thirty years of work as a scientist studying ecosystems and demonstrates how the contents of one small box can illuminate the workings of all nature.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. The search for a healthy environment – Michael Depledge

It has long been recognised that the environments in which we live have an enormous influence on our physical and mental health. Equally, it has become clear to all in recent years that human activities can have profoundly damaging impacts of natural ecosystems and the biodiversity they support.

With the medical sciences tending to focus principally on the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and environmental sciences concentrating on elucidating the workings of natural ecosystems and wildlife, the question arises, “Who is equipped to provide an integrated understanding of how to mitigate environmental threats to humans at the same time as capturing the opportunities offered by nature to foster health and wellbeing?”

This lecture will briefly review past and present efforts to understand the intimate interconnections between the environment, human health and wellbeing. Well known and emerging risks will be considered along with the health benefits of living in different kinds of sustainable ecosystems. Ways of addressing the “wicked problems” we face using transdisciplinary approaches will be also explored, together with the value of horizon scanning in informing policy actions.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. Phantom credits why rainforests offsets are not working – Patrick Greenfield

In January 2023, a joint investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Source Material found that the forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier and used by major corporations for climate claims are largely worthless.

Patrick Greenfield, one of the reporters on the investigation, will detail the story of their investigation and discuss its wider implications for conservation and corporate net-zero claims.

Patrick Greenfield is a reporter for the Guardian and the Observer. He writes about biodiversity loss and the climate crisis.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. Rewilding, we can’t live without it – Charlie Burrell

Charlie is the inspiration behind Knepp Wildland, a 3,500 acre estate in West Sussex and the largest rewilding project in lowland Britain. Switching to ‘process-led’ conservation, using free-roaming herds of grazing animals, Knepp is now a hotspot for numerous endangered species like turtle-doves, nightingales and purple emperor butterflies and has become a leading light in the conservation movement.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. Overcoming our societal addiction to growth to build a sustainable wellbeing future- Robert Costanza

Our global society is hopelessly addicted to a particular vision of the world and a future that has become both unsustainable and undesirable.

In this lecture Robert Costanza spoke about his new book, Addicted to Growth, which frames our current predicament as a societal addiction to a ‘growth at all costs’ economic paradigm. While economic growth has produced many benefits, its side effects are now producing existential problems that are rapidly getting worse. Robert considered lessons from what works at the individual level to overcome addictions and applies them to a societal scale. Costanza recognises that the first step to recovery is recognising the addiction and that it is leading to disaster; however, simply pointing out the dire consequences of our societal addiction is only the first step and can be counterproductive by itself in motivating change. The key next step is creating a truly shared vision of the kind of world we all want, and the book explores creative ways to implement this societal therapy. The final step is using that shared vision to motivate the changes needed to achieve it, including adaptive transformations of our economic systems, property rights regimes, and governance institutions.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. Nature Positive – fact or fiction? Joe Bull, University of Oxford

Biodiversity loss is one of the great global challenges of our time. If we are ever to address and ultimately reverse biodiversity loss, we must face the difficult truth that amongst its most substantial drivers are consumption and trade. As such, to arrest declines in biodiversity, we may all have to change the way we live and do business.

The idea of ‘Nature Positive’ builds on decades of scientific work and hard-fought environmental policy gains, and suggests that we can: (a) quantify the direct and indirect impacts of organisations on biodiversity; (b) substantially reduce those impacts; and, (c) reverse them, to the extent that we begin to see global biodiversity recovery. It is a great narrative – but is it fundamentally a fiction, or do the facts suggest it might actually be possible? In this talk, I will explore this question empirically, from the perspective of working right on the boundary between academia and industry.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. The role of the carbon sink in recovering degraded & secondary forest across the tropics. Viola Heinrich

In this talk Dr. Viola Heinrich discusses how tropical forests play a key role in climate change mitigation. Recovering, degraded and secondary forests are becoming more dominant in tropical landscapes and yet large uncertainties exist regarding their carbon sink and storage. Starting in the Brazilian Amazon, this talk explores how a variety of satellite datasets can be used to improve the spatial representation of the carbon sink in recovering forests. By combining satellite-based datasets of secondary forest age and aboveground carbon, she explains how the carbon accumulation can be modelled according to different environmental variables and disturbances. These disturbances were found to drive spatially distinct regrowth patterns, with repeated anthropogenic disturbances reducing regrowth by up to 55%. Expanding this approach across the major tropical regions, the second half of the talk introduces the regional carbon recovery in degraded and secondary forests across the Amazon, Central Africa, and Borneo. Between 1984 and 2018 recovering forests offset a quarter of carbon emissions from tropical forest loss, indicating the mitigation potential of protecting them, alongside old-growth forest conservation.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.  The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.