Integration Research Theme
Developing a novel Analysis and Decision Platform to integrate nature recovery into land-use and infrastructure planning, and exploring scenarios that can deliver local, national and international commitments to nature, climate change and sustainable development.
About
The emerging proliferation of nature recovery actions need to be coordinated, and the vast amounts of data need to be analysed, in a way that satisfies the wide range of aspirations and values that people and organisations have for nature recovery. We also need to support the delivery of local, national and international ambitions and commitments to nature, health, human rights, food production and climate change mitigation. These commitments have synergies and overlaps, but also trade-offs that need to be exposed and navigated.
To tackle this challenge, we will build an Analysis and Decision Platform that integrates the scientific insights and societal considerations developed though our Ecology and Society Themes, with large and complex data developed through our Scale Theme. State-of-the-art AI tools will help design new approaches for collective decision-making within and across landscapes.
The knowledge system will first be applied and tested in detail in our Case Studies. The system will enable us to connect human insights with multi-scalar datasets to inform local decision making and integrate local outcomes with global drivers and targets. This will allow us to investigate the design features of new forms of collective intelligence and will, thus, become a testbed for governance and finance innovations for nature recovery.
In this theme we will also explore how synergies and conflicts between nature recovery, other social and cultural values, and other development objectives that compete for land (agriculture, urbanisation, infrastructure) can be integrated at different spatial scales. We will also explore how different elements of nature recovery combine and scale, leading to integrated strategies for nature that match local and organisational contexts and goals, building resilience for ecosystems and society, while also contributing to national and international goals.
Projects
Theme outputs
- Integration
- Integration
- Integration
Leading from the front. The Role of the Public Sector in Delivering Nature Recovery
This report sets out an expert opinion on how Government should approach the issues of funding and financing nature recovery in England.
The research takes as its starting point the essential importance of nature recovery and the headwinds so far experienced in achieving it. Taking account of the growing expectation that new nature markets will play a leading role in financing nature recovery, it then looks in detail at the risks and opportunities market mechanisms present and the steps the UK Government will need to take to oversee and regulate their use. Subsequent sections consider the essential and ongoing role of the public sector in supporting nature recovery and its under utilised potential to drive change.
Commissioned by the Woodland Trust, the research is intended to draw out key issues for policy makers and to stimulate thinking and debate.
Nature Series Seminar: Making nature-markets work in the 21st century: evidence from England, Australia, and the EU
There is a global biodiversity funding gap, and rapid efforts to mobilise private funding to fill this gap. Attempts to commodify biodiversity to create markets and harness return-seeking investment into conservation have now been practiced for half a century. What have we learned about how or whether private finance can become part of the solution, rather than a systemic driver, of biodiversity loss? In this talk I’ll give a tour of a few biodiversity markets we’ve studied in England and Australia and highlight what we’ve learned about how to make nature-markets work for nature.
Mattia C. Mancini, Rebecca M. Collins, Ethan T. Addicott, Ben J. Balmford, Amy Binner, Joseph W. Bull, Brett H. Day, Felix Eigenbrod, Sophus O.S.E. zu Ermgassen, Michela Faccioli, Carlo Fezzi, Ben Groom, E.J. Milner-Gulland, Nathan Owen, Diana Tingley, Emma Wright, Ian J. Bateman (2024). Biodiversity offsets perform poorly for both people and nature, but better approaches are available. One Earth.
Highlights
• Local planning constraints deliver poor biodiversity net gain (BNG) offsets
• Removing those constraints results in significant BNG improvements
• Alternatively, offsets can deliver gains in environmental access
News & events
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Leading from the front. The Role of the Public Sector in Delivering Nature Recovery
3 December 2024This week we are talking to Andy Allen, the Lead Policy Advocate on Land Use at The Woodland Trust. The Woodland Trust has today launched a new report entitled: Leading from the front. The Role of the Public Sector in Delivering Nature Recovery, which was compiled by Sophus O.S.E. zu Ermgassen, Katie Kedward, Robert J. […]
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Businesses need ambitious, evidence-based strategies to align with Nature Positive goals
16 August 2024The private sector is facing increasing pressure to align with global goals to halt and reverse the loss of nature – to move beyond just mitigating any damages caused by their operations and supply chains, towards contributing positively to nature recovery on a societal scale (i.e., ‘Nature Positive’). Transformative change is needed to realise this. […]
news Scientific paper -
Risks and Opportunities of using LCA-based approaches for Biodiversity Footprinting
13 August 2024This article, written by Thomas White and Talitha Bromwich, is a summary of a preprint available at Open Science Framework As businesses start on their nature positive journey, a range of tools and approaches are emerging to help assess risks and impacts on biodiversity. Sustainability frameworks like the CSRD and TNFD ask companies to take […]
news Scientific paper