Past events

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Climate Change and Rural Livelihoods in Ghana: the impacts, adaptations and barriers

Event ended: 17 May 2024

Climate change poses considerable threats to socioeconomic development and ecological systems across Africa. This is particularly critical for smallholder farming communities in dryland agroecosystems where climate change interact with non-climatic stressors and shocks to exacerbate the vulnerability of rural livelihoods. Ghana is already suffering from significant climate change impacts and is projected to experience increased […]

Recording available

Boldly reimagining our approaches to nature recovery

Event ended: 10 May 2024

In this provocative talk Justin will argue that while the increased awareness and understanding of the decline of biodiversity is to be welcomed. Our current approaches and responses at both the global and local levels are woefully inadequate. We are stuck in a cycle of incremental gains that are failing to address the roots causes […]

Recording available

Global Ecological Shift: for the protection and restoration of biodiversity

Event ended: 02 May 2024

Abstract: Ecologist Thomas Crowther underscores the vital role of nature conservation and restoration in combating biodiversity loss and climate change. In his talk, Crowther will highlight recent scientific advancements, such as the groundbreaking evaluation of global forest carbon potential, and the launch of the SEED, a biocomplexity index, which enables us to understand the variation […]

Recording available

Restoration Social Science: Understanding how and why people restore landscapes, and what the impacts of that restoration is on human well being.

Event ended: 26 April 2024

Restoration is emerging as a global priority, as exemplified in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the Bonn Challenge to restore 350 Mha by 2030, and a wide variety of regional, national, and private efforts. As described in these documents, restoration is primarily conceived as an ecological process, in which ecosystems are restored to a […]

Recording available

Bending the curves – balancing nature, economy and society, from the bottom up

Event ended: 12 April 2024

Abstract: Bending the curve of biodiversity decline, ie. halting and reversing loss, has been adopted as the mission for the Global Biodiversity Framework. While conservation and restoration are necessary to achieve this, they are not sufficient and this talk focuses on the two sets of actions that need far greater attention – a) bending and […]

Recording available
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Building collaborations with Indigenous and Local Communities using Extreme Citizen Science

Event ended: 15 March 2024

This talk will describe the work of the Extreme Citizen Science Research Group designing and testing solutions for building effective collaborations with Indigenous People and local communities in the context of local conservation initiatives, extractive industry, human rights abuses, or to address the impacts of climate and environmental change on local livelihoods. Jerome Lewis works […]

Recording available

AmazonFlux: disentangling biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship through an energy flux perspective

Event ended: 12 March 2024

Human-made disturbances have triggered multiple changes in biodiversity, with unexpected consequences for ecosystem functioning. Yet, we still miss a mechanistic comprehension of the relationship between biodiversity change and ecosystem function. Considering that species’ response to disturbances will depend on, or are mediated by, their interaction with other species, this information gap might lead to erroneous […]

Soil Ecology from the microbe’s eye view

Event ended: 08 March 2024

Abstract: Soil is arguably the most complicated biomaterial on the planet. It is the largest terrestrial carbon sink, and the most species rich habitat on earth. Microorganisms driving biogeochemical cycles live and interact in the soil’s intricate pore space labyrinth, but they difficult to study in realistic settings because of its opaqueness. We recently developed […]

Recording available

Does science impact nature conservation policy? Stories of success and failure. Hugh Possingham

Event ended: 08 March 2024

Hugh in semi-retirement has 3 jobs: Biodiversity Council’s Co-chief Councillor, Chief Scientist of Accounting for Nature and The University of Queensland. He was the founding Director of The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, the National Environmental Science Program Threatened Species hub and an Australian Research Council Professorial, Laureate and Federation Fellow. […]

Recording available

The transformative art of kissing frogs

Event ended: 23 February 2024

Tim Smit -The Eden Project Abstract: A talk about the symbolism of transformation that breathes hope into communities based on my love of transforming poisoned and degraded land and watching behaviour change resulting from demonstrations that second chances are possible. This is the basis under which I create projects. Bio: Sir Tim Smit read Archaeology […]