Researchers at Oxford University join the United Nations Development Programme to propose an optimistic, practical approach to inspire stronger action on nature.

As the world faces an escalating planetary crisis, a new paper published today in Nature offers something we don’t often hear – hope. Rather than focussing on what we’re doing wrong, the paper proposes a bold new way forward; a global framework that measures how well people and nature are thriving together.

The paper, titled “An Aspirational Approach to Planetary Futures,” is the result of a groundbreaking international collaboration led by the United Nations Development Programme and researchers, including Oxford University’s Professor Yadvinder Malhi and Samira Barzin from the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, Peter Frankopan, Molly Grace, and Oxford Martin School Fellows Erle Ellis, Sandra Diaz, and Hannah Ritchie.

The team calls for the creation of a “Nature Relationship Index” to sit alongside the Human Development Index (HDI). The aim is to track how countries are improving human relationships with the rest of life on Earth, including a thriving and accessible nature, using natural resources responsibly, and protecting ecosystems – turning these into measurable goals for progress.

Their message is simple yet radical: the way we talk about and measure progress must change, because current measures like GDP, and even the HDI, do not account for how we relate to the rest of life on Earth. Without raising the bar for progress to include all life on Earth, nature’s decline will continue, with consequences for all of us.

“For decades, the human development approach has inspired global progress by focusing on people’s abilities to lead the lives they value and have reason to value: living longer, healthier lives with access to knowledge, and enjoying a decent standard of living,” said Pedro Conceição, Director of the UNDP Human Development Report Office, and contributing author. “However, in the face of today’s dangerous planetary change, we must raise our ambitions, and that means envisioning progress and development to include healthy and mutually beneficial relationships with the living world.”

At the core of this vision is a bold new idea: the Nature Relationship Index (NRI)—a global metric designed to complement the HDI, and capture the quality of a nation’s relationship with nature. It would assess how well countries are caring for ecosystems, ensuring equitable access to nature, and protecting it from harm. In other words: countries investing in shared spaces for nature and people, clean air and water, and restoring ecosystems could see its NRI rise, rewarding positive action rather than just recording decline.

The NRI is being developed with the aim of debuting in the 2026 Human Development Report, with the long-term goal of regular country-level updates, just like the HDI. The hope? To turn the tide—from reacting to ecological collapse, to actively building a future where both people and the planet can flourish.

“This isn’t the usual environmental messaging about limiting the damage or staving off disaster,” said Erle Ellis, lead author of the paper and professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and Oxford Martin School Fellow at the University of Oxford. “What we’re proposing is a shift from narratives of environmental harm and failure to stories and evidence that our societies have the capabilities to produce better futures for all life on Earth – and that in many ways we already have. By expanding human development to include healthy relationships among people and the rest of life on Earth, we hope to motivate whole new levels of collaboration and innovation across the planet.”

Rather than leaning solely on fear-driven warnings of environmental doom, the paper urges a shift to storytelling and strategies grounded in human potential—our shared aspirations for clean air, thriving wildlife, green spaces for everyone, and connection. These, the authors argue, are powerful tools for unlocking global action.

Yadvinder Malhi, co-author and Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at the University of Oxford, highlighted the urgency and opportunity behind the initiative:

“There is a need for clear-eyed but hopeful and actionable visions of the future. The planetary crisis is profound, but it’s also an invitation. An invitation to rethink our relationship with the Earth, not as relentless consumers of a commodified and exploited nature, but as integral participants in our mutual co-flourishing with the rest of the natural world.”

This new framework could mark a crucial turning point for global development. By embedding this aspirational vision into policies and everyday decisions, the authors call on all of us—governments, communities, and individuals—to take real, measurable steps towards making life on this planet better for all of us. Because the future we want depends on what we do today.

A future where people and nature thrive together is possible. The question now is: will we make it happen?

The Nature Relationship Index at a glance

• Expands the aspirational space of development to include thriving human-nature relationships.
• Provides a globally accepted, values-based metric to guide and celebrate progress toward more sustainable futures.
• Aims to shift focus from avoiding environmental harm to fostering aspirational, positive relationships with nature.
• Seeks to empower societies to pursue a future where people and nature thrive together.
• Inspired by the HDI, the NRI tracks open-ended progress.
• Measures how well societies balance human development with caring, sustainable interactions with nature.
• Three Core Dimensions of the NRI:
  • Nature is Thriving and Accessible: Measures extent and access to natural areas.
  • Nature is Used with Care: Evaluates the sustainability of resource use and impacts like emissions.
  • Nature is Safeguarded: Assesses legal and institutional commitments to protecting nature.

Read the full paper here 

Allegra Bundy, MSc student in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, reflects on the participatory process and key findings of her dissertation project, ‘From Urgency to Participation: Navigating Complexities in Nature Recovery in the Scottish Highlands’. The project, which was awarded a distinction, was supervised by Dr Caitlin Hafferty and supported by the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery.

Scotland is at the forefront of ambitious nature recovery efforts. Key policies, such as the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and Nature Positive Scotland, alongside initiatives such as Scotland: The Big Picture and Rewilding Nation reflect a strong commitment to large-scale restoration. Additionally, the growing role of harnessing private finance in natural capital approaches, whose importance is reflected in the Scottish Natural Capital Market Framework, is shaping how some of these projects are funded.

This research explores how participation is framed and experienced and how particular strategies for governing nature recovery influence democratic participation and local community engagement.  Based on interviews with diverse nature recovery practitioners and community groups in the Central Scottish Highlands, the dissertation shares a key message to key actors and experts in promoting nature’s recovery: against a backdrop of urgency to respond to climate and biodiversity crises, it is crucial that nature recovery efforts are also able to slow down to embrace genuine participation.

The dissertation prioritized a collaborative and participatory approach, working alongside Dr. Caitlin Hafferty, another MSc student, Colombe Stevens, with support from a broader Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery project on participatory governance.

Overall, the dissertation project reflected on the tensions that emerge when the interlinked biodiversity, climate and human well-being crisis is framed primarily through urgent timescales and a purely scientific and technical lens, overlooking key social dimensions such as community engagement, participatory governance and equity. The research identified the following tensions:

1.      Tensions between the urgency to respond to the climate and biodiversity crisis and the slower, more deliberate processes required for meaningful participation as part of a “just transition” through nature recovery. This can restrict the time required for genuine participation and the inclusion of local perspectives, generating a condition where truly democratic processes are limited in favour of consensus and scientifically-driven decisions that are perceived to contribute to faster acting change.

2.      The drive for harnessing private finance for nature recovery through market-led mechanisms increases the focus on quantifiable measurements of landscapes (such as biodiversity and carbon credits), which risks promoting narrow economic assessments of landscapes at the expense of considering broader, less tangible social benefits and power dynamics.

3.      Varied interpretations of what participation means in theory versus in actual practice in nature recovery projects. While nature recovery efforts often claim to provide benefits to local communities, underlying factors – including instances of tick-box community engagement and patterns of concentrated landownership with narrow or single visions of the landscape – risked limiting truly meaningful participatory governance.

Top-down and science-driven approaches to nature recovery are important and not inherently negative. However, they can become problematic when they overshadow alternative and community-led strategies. When one approach to nature recovery is prioritised, this risks excluding local voices, reinforcing power imbalances, and limiting long-term engagement. However, these approaches do not have to be at odds. Stronger partnerships between technical experts and local communities can create more inclusive, effective, and lasting nature recovery efforts. Collaborative models, such as partnership working, community benefit-sharing, and collaborative natural resource management can help bridge the gap between large-scale initiatives and grassroots efforts.

For nature recovery to be just and equitable, landowners, project managers, scientists, and other key decision-makers must pause to reflect on whether fast-faced, urgency-driven solutions are always needed, and what impact they have on the consideration of alternative approaches. While urgency is often emphasised in the face of climate and biodiversity crises, the findings of this study suggest that slowing down, taking the time to foster relationships, and embracing genuinely democratic processes is crucial for effective, long-term impact.

For questions or to request a copy of the dissertation, please contact Allegra Bundy (allegra.bundy@gmail.com) and Caitlin Hafferty (caitlin.hafferty@ouce.ox.ac.uk).

 

Scotland is at the forefront of ambitious nature recovery efforts. Key policies, such as the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and Nature Positive Scotland, alongside initiatives such as Scotland: The Big Picture and Rewilding Nation reflect a strong commitment to large-scale restoration. Additionally, the growing role of harnessing private finance in natural capital approaches, whose importance is reflected in the Scottish Natural Capital Market Framework, is shaping how some of these projects are funded.

The Scottish Highlands, often seen as a “wild” and uninhabited landscape, are a prime focus of large-scale land restoration. However, some initiatives have faced criticism of “green lairdism”, or perpetuating similar patterns of top-down control reminiscent of the Highland Clearances that occurred between 1750 and 1860.

This research explores how participation is framed and experienced and how particular strategies for governing nature recovery influence democratic participation and local community engagement. Based on interviews with diverse nature recovery practitioners and community groups in the Central Scottish Highlands, the dissertation shares a key message to key actors and experts in promoting nature’s recovery: against a backdrop of urgency to respond to climate and biodiversity crises, it is crucial that nature recovery efforts are also able to slow down to embrace genuine participation.

The research prioritized a collaborative and participatory approach, working alongside Dr. Caitlin Hafferty, another MSc student, Colombe Stevens, with support from a broader Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery project on participatory governance. This ensured that the MSc research was not an isolated study but contributed to a longer-term work which aimed to develop lasting relationships with participants and positive impacts beyond academia, offering a more place-based and participatory approach to research.

A novel part of the methodology was co-interviewing, where multiple researchers participated in interviews, and joint interviewing, where multiple participants were interviewed together. This approach helped mitigate research fatigue, which has been identified as a growing issue in the Scottish Highlands, where local communities and practitioners often feel overburdened by extractive or ‘helicopter’ research that takes up participants’ time without tangible benefits in return. To help mitigate these issues, the research team integrated co-interviewing methods within a participatory approach to reduce time demands on participants, sought to give back by offering ‘time for time’ (e.g., the research team providing useful insights and resources for participants, as well as participants giving their own time and expertise), volunteering with local nature recovery projects (such as helping to clear bracken in a community forest), and sharing early reflections on emerging research findings.

Overall, the dissertation project reflected on the tensions that emerge when the interlinked biodiversity, climate and human well-being crisis is framed primarily through urgent timescales and a purely scientific and technical lens, overlooking key social dimensions such as community engagement, participatory governance and equity. The research identified the following tensions:

1.  Tensions between the urgency to respond to the climate and biodiversity crisis and the slower, more deliberate processes required for meaningful participation as part of a “just transition” through nature recovery. This can restrict the time required for genuinely participatory and democratic governance, generating a “post-political” condition where truly democratic processes are limited in favour of consensus and scientifically driven decisions that are perceived to contribute to faster acting change. This can lead projects to prioritise certain types of scientific expertise over local and place-based knowledge, and to view participation as messy, complicated, and delaying important rapid progress.
2. The drive for harnessing private finance for nature recovery through market-led mechanisms increases the focus on quantifiable measurements of landscapes (such as biodiversity and carbon credits), which risks promoting narrow economic assessments of landscapes at the expense of considering broader, less tangible social benefits and power dynamics. Smaller-scale and community-led initiatives can also have a harder time tapping into private finance mechanisms, creating an imbalance in access to resources.
3. Varied interpretations of what participation means in theory versus in actual practice in nature recovery projects. While nature recovery efforts often claim to provide benefits to local communities, underlying factors – including instances of tick-box community engagement and patterns of concentrated landownership with narrow or single visions of the landscape – risked limiting truly meaningful participatory governance. Some nature recovery initiatives were moving away from the term “rewilding” due to perceived connotations with increasing historic patterns of top-down, concentrated land use governance.

Top-down and science-driven approaches to nature recovery are important and not inherently negative. However, they can become problematic when they overshadow alternative and community-led strategies. When one approach to nature recovery is prioritised, this can risk excluding local voices, reinforcing power imbalances, and limiting long-term engagement. However, these approaches do not have to be at odds. Stronger partnerships between technical experts and local communities can create more inclusive, effective, and lasting nature recovery efforts. Collaborative models, such as partnership working, community benefit-sharing, and collaborative natural resource management can help bridge the gap between large-scale initiatives and grassroots efforts.

This dissertation project highlighted issues that need careful consideration in nature recovery projects and also identified clear, hopeful pathways for the future. Networks such as the Community Landownership Academic Network (UHI CLAN) show how collaboration can strengthen research impact, making findings more accessible and useful to practitioners, policymakers, and local communities. In addition, the Scottish Government issued the Land Rights and Responsibility Statement (LRRS) urging for collaboration regarding decision about land. Similarly, the Scottish Land Commission plays a key role in addressing land reform challenges in Scotland, for example landowners can sell land to community groups (such as the Glengarry Community Woodlands), participate in delivering community benefits from the land and be transparent about their decision making protocols and land use.

For nature recovery to be just and equitable, landowners, project managers, scientists, and other key decision-makers must pause to reflect on whether fast-faced, urgency-driven solutions are always needed, and what impact they have on the consideration of alternative approaches. While urgency is often emphasised in the face of climate and biodiversity crises, the findings of this study suggest that slowing down, taking the time to foster relationships, and embracing genuinely democratic processes is crucial for effective, long-term impact.

True participation is not just about inviting interested groups to the table but requires a willingness to embrace disagreement and move beyond rigid, top-down approaches that can focus on representing “single visions” of a landscape. Key actors in nature’s recovery must be willing to embrace multiple perspectives, disagreement, and embrace messy participatory processes as an essential part of the solution.

As Strengers and Muecke (2018 p.120) comment, it is important for “scientists to accept that which is messy is not defective but simply that which we have to learn to live and think with”.

For questions or to request a copy of the dissertation, please contact Allegra Bundy (allegra.bundy@gmail.com) and Caitlin Hafferty (caitlin.hafferty@ouce.ox.ac.uk).

 

 

1 Stengers, I., & Muecke, S., (TRANS.) (2018). Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science. Polity Press.