Publications

Nature Seminar Series. Holistic Management: Claims are not supported but are there social lessons to be learnt?

Heidi Hawkins – The Savory Institute claims that Holistic Management (HM) increases production of plants and grazing animals while also increasing soil organic carbon under all conditions in all habitats. Claims have been heavily marketed and popularized in the media including via the now-famous TEDTalk. However, peer-review literature, including our meta-analysis, and a recent review focussed on farm-scale studies, do not support these claims. In this talk we will present this evidence, while addressing some of the criticisms levelled against scientific studies by HM supporters. Finally, we will discuss the social dynamics within HM communities and what lessons these might provide.

Supporters of HM criticize small-scale studies (less than 2 ha), reasonably proposing that production and climate benefits only emerge on large working farms (2-66 ha or larger, our size definitions). In response, we reviewed 22 farm-scale studies from across the globe, and the few social and soil carbon studies available. The review supported the findings of previous meta-analyses, i.e., HM’s intensive grazing approach either has no effect or reduces production, thus negating the claim by HM proponents that there is a difference between ‘the science and the practice’. Seven peer-reviewed studies show that the potential for increased carbon sequestration with changed grazing management is substantially less (0.13-0.32) than the 2.5-9 t C ha-1 yr-1 estimated by non-peer-review HM literature. Interestingly, five studies show that HM provides a social support framework for land users. The social cohesion, learning and networking so prevalent on HM farms could be adopted by any farming community without accepting the unfounded HM rhetoric, and governments could allocate funds to train extension agents accordingly. A future focus on collaborative adaptive farm management and other innovations will be more helpful than any further debate about grazing density.

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 recovery of ecosystem complexity in a changing environment. David Moreno Mateos

How long does it take for an ecosystem to recover after it is disturbed or destroyed by human activities? How do we know when an ecosystem has recovered? In this lecture, restoration ecologist

David Moreno Mateos discusses the traditional methods used to assess the recovery of terrestrial ecosystems—such as changes in biodiversity or soil carbon levels, highlighting their limitations. He makes a case for more comprehensive & long-term approaches to understanding & measuring ecosystem recovery, highlighting their potential for enhancing environmental policies & large-scale restoration strategies.

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. In search of the holy grail – the one true biodiversity metric. E.J. Milner-Gulland

Signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Biodiversity Framework promised to work towards halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity by 2030 – a bold mission, and one which has a plethora of sub-targets and indicators associated with it. How these indicators will scale from local to global and how they can be aggregated to track progress, let alone guide action, is an open question. Further, there is an increasing push towards Nature Positive at the organisational level – which also requires metrics to track and report biodiversity impacts, positive and negative, and for the nascent associated biodiversity credits market. Amid this complexity, where is our lodestar target and metric equivalent to 1.5 degrees and tCO2? Is it even feasible to think that such a metric could ever exist for something as spatially and temporally heterogeneous and complex as biodiversity? In this talk I explore these issues and share some ideas about ways forward.

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. A virtual rainforest – Professor Robert Ewers, Imperial College London

Ecologists study living organisms and their interactions with the physical environment, but as ecologists we seldom attempt to understand ecosystems in their entirety. This seminar will present a system-level overview of the ecological processes operating in a Malaysian rainforest, and explain how we are converting this knowledge into a digital twin ecosystem – the virtual rainforest.

Nature Seminar Series. Nature is Culture: The Deep Global History and Transformative Future of Nature-Sustaining Landscapes. Erle Ellis

Global historical reconstructions of human transformation and use of landscapes confirms that most of terrestrial nature as we know it, including Earth’s most biodiverse landscapes, are cultural legacies of centuries to millennia of sustained human use. Efforts to build a better future for people and the nature begin by recognizing that cultural natures, including those sustained by indigenous peoples for millennia, not natures without people, are the greatest planetary opportunities for recovering and sustaining Earth’s biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Even the most intensively used working landscapes on Earth, including cities and farms, are central to a nature positive future.

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/Biodiversity Network, or their researchers.

Nature Seminar Series. Can we have it all from the land? Dustin Benton, Green Alliance

Over the past half decade, the UK has set a net zero goal and nature restoration targets, both of which require very substantial land use change. However, the UK uses 70% of its land surface, and an equivalent area overseas, to produce the food we eat. On the face of it, the UK is headed for land use conflict, and it is not alone: most countries face the same climate-nature-food challenge.

This talk, which draws on analysis done for in the National Food Strategy and subsequent work done at Green Alliance, a leading UK environmental think tank, will show how land use in the UK and other European countries can change to give us everything we want from land, and what trade-offs policymakers will have to make to enable land to change rapidly enough to meet our goals.

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/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.

DLUHC Science Seminar Series Sheds Light on how to build Trust and Inclusion for Thriving Communities

In an enlightening seminar titled “How to build standards of trust, accountability, and inclusion for sustainable places,” Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Agile Initiative researchers Dr. Caitlin Hafferty and Dr. Mark Hirons shared their insights with the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Community (DLUHC). The seminar, part of the DLUHC 2023 Science Seminar Series, aimed to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world application in the realm of urban planning and regeneration, housing, sustainable communities, and the Levelling Up agenda.

The DLUHC Science Seminar Series, led by the Chief Scientific Advisor’s Office, seeks to incorporate scientific evidence into DLUHC’s areas of research interest and priorities. Caitlin and Mark’s presentation, which took place on the 21st July 2023, showcased the best available social science evidence on how participatory processes can lead to better quality decisions, contributing to more sustainable and equitable outcomes in planning and development.

Key takeaways from the seminar included:

1. The importance of engagement: Caitlin and Mark emphasized the significance of engagement in building trust, inclusion, and integrity in decision-making processes. They presented evidence that shed light on the necessity of involving stakeholders and the general public in shaping decisions about places and communities.
2. Digital tools for engagement: The researchers discussed the use of digital tools in the engagement process, offering insights into both technical and ethical considerations related to their application. Digital tools can enhance the accessibility and effectiveness of public involvement in planning and decision-making, but there are also ethical risks (like lack of digital literacy and infrastructure) which need mitigating.
3. Embedding a culture of engagement: The presentation touched on the importance of creating a culture of engagement within DLUHC. Building capacity and capability to deliver best practice in engagement processes is key to ensuring that decisions align with sustainability and community needs.

More infomation about the presentation here

Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Nicola Stevens, Erika Berenguer (2023). Valuing the functionality of tropical ecosystems beyond carbon. Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

Land-based carbon sequestration projects, such as tree planting, are a prominent strategy to offset carbon emissions. However, we risk reducing natural ecosystems to one metric – carbon. Emphasis on restoring ecosystems to balance ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and carbon sequestration is a more appropriate strategy to protect their functioning.

Andrew Hector (2023). Positive effects of tree diversity on tropical forest restoration in a field-scale experiment. Science Advances.

Experiments under controlled conditions have established that ecosystem functioning is generally positively related to levels of biodiversity, but it is unclear how widespread these effects are in real-world settings and whether they can be harnessed for ecosystem restoration. We used remote-sensing data from the first decade of a long-term, field-scale tropical restoration experiment initiated in 2002 to test how the diversity of planted trees affected recovery of a 500-ha area of selectively logged forest measured using multiple sources of satellite data. Replanting using species-rich mixtures of tree seedlings with higher phylogenetic and functional diversity accelerated restoration of remotely sensed estimates of aboveground biomass, canopy cover, and leaf area index. Our results are consistent with a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the lowland dipterocarp rainforests of SE Asia and demonstrate that using diverse
mixtures of species can enhance their initial recovery after logging.

The potential contribution of revenue from Biodiversity Net Gain offsets towards nature recovery ambitions in Oxfordshire

There is a major funding gap for delivering the UK’s nature recovery ambitions, including meeting the national and international ‘30×30’ target (30% of land protected and managed for nature by 2030). This work aimed to investigate the potential revenue that could be generated over the next ten years through purchase of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) offsets by developers in Oxfordshire, and the extent to which this could contribute to the estimated costs of nature recovery.

We compare potential BNG revenue with the costs of creating sufficient areas of semi-natural habitats in strategic locations (e.g. within Oxfordshire’s Nature Recovery Network) to meet the 30×30 target, and maintaining those habitats for 30 years. These costs are estimated at £800 million, but this excludes the costs of protecting and monitoring the sites, and any additional costs for organisations that wish to purchase land or compensate landowners for lost opportunity costs. Also, these are not the full costs of nature recovery in its broadest sense, as they do not take account of the cost of restoring species populations to sustainable levels. In particular, this analysis does not consider the cost of recovering any species and habitats lost as a result of the development that gives rise to the BNG revenue, i.e. it is assumed that the compensatory habitats created through BNG will successfully replace those lost and will prevent any loss of associated species. The estimates are simply intended to help organisations involved in nature recovery to understand the potential size of the BNG market, to inform future investment plans.