Risky Nature RecoveryCase study

Nature recovery, at its core, recognises the intimate interconnections between humans and the living planet. It aims to establish processes to create healthy and resilient ecosystems that benefit both people and nature. However, with growing urgency to address the climate and biodiversity crisis, there are concerns that an increasing focus on emergency politics can end up compromising sustainability transformation by sidelining wider justice, democracy, and well-being goals. Complexity and uncertainty can be considered obstacles to urgent change that need to be mitigated against, and democratic participation something that needs to be “put on hold” in times of crisis.

This project explores how risk and uncertainty impacts the ability of nature recovery efforts to meet multiple goals for people, nature, and climate. It examines the tension between the desire for certainty and urgent action in nature recovery, and embracing the complex and uncertain reality of transformations towards sustainability. This issue is particularly relevant among calls for increasing private investment through market-based mechanisms, which can prioritise more precisely measurable, predictable, and verifiable processes and outcomes for financing nature recovery.

The transdisciplinary project conducts theoretically-informed research which is solutions-focused and can deliver real-world impact. It will work closely with project partners and interest groups to co-design key aspects, ensuring relevant and actionable outcomes for policy and practice. Building on previous work, the research will focus on case study landscapes in the Scottish Highlands and consider these issues within wider UK, European, and international contexts. Project partners include the Loch Abar Mòr (LAM) restoration partnership. Lochaber is a vast region of the west Highlands, covering 4,600 square kilometres, from the shores of the deepest sea lochs to the summit of the UK’s highest mountain. Led by SCOTLAND: The Big Picture, Loch Abar Mòr is a partnership of landholders, stewarding more than 95,000 acres across Lochaber, who have made a 50-year commitment to restore nature, as a solution to climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.

The main activities focus on engaging with practitioners, policy-makers, and financiers involved in the governance of nature recovery at multiple levels:

• Practitioners: Working closely with nature projects and partnerships in the Scottish Highlands to understand how risk and uncertainty is identified, understood and managed within the context of broader goals and priorities.
• Financiers: Examining the risks related to achieving multiple objectives through high integrity nature and carbon markets, how risks are shaped by private finance mechanisms, and how they are mitigated.
• Policy-makers: Investigating how risk and uncertainty is framed in current policy debates focused on scaling up private investment in nature recovery and what this means for achieving multiple goals for transformative change.