Past events

Unlocking the power of engagement for nature recovery and nature-based solutions: Join our webinar!

Event ended: 20 February 2024

Are you passionate about driving collaborative, participatory, and democratic solutions for the world’s most critical environmental challenges? To celebrate the launch of new evidence-led guidance for engagement in nature-based solutions and nature recovery, we invite you to attend a free webinar hosted by the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and the Agile Initiative. This webinar […]

Captured sunshine: what can an energetic view of life on Earth tell us about nature decline and recovery?

Event ended: 16 February 2024

The biosphere was first described as “a planetary membrane for capturing, storing and transforming solar energy” (Vernadsky, 1926). Every living organism and organism function in the biosphere is united, and can be compared, by the cascade of captured sunshine that powers it.

Recording available
a dirt track with cactus growing at the side, behind is a gentle hilside with a few trees and grass

Land tenure, deforestation, and monocultures: Menaces to food and territorial justice

Event ended: 02 February 2024

Abstract: Land tenure, deforestation, and monocultures: Menaces to food and territorial justice Elena Lazos-Chavero (UNAM / Table Dialogues), lazos@unam.mx When we eat organic food or when we buy a fair-trade product is that enough for food and territorial justice? Or what’s behind organic food production? And what’s behind a fair-trade product? Who is getting benefits […]

Recording available

Embracing complexity to understand and predict the consequences of environmental changes on biodiversity.

Event ended: 26 January 2024

In the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in studies using models to understand and predict the impact of environmental changes on biodiversity. Typically, these studies begin by examining the relationship between species distributions and environmental variables, based on the assumption that the environment determines the limits of tolerance for species survival. […]
Sandy beach in the foreground with trees to the beach, blue sea and stormy skies above

Recovery of degraded coastal ecosystems requires so much more than protection – how restoration and conservation go hand-in-hand

Event ended: 19 January 2024

Abstract As the world races toward environmental targets, including the 2030 targets in CBD’s Kumming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the negotiated goals of the UNFCC COP 28, the objectives of the BBNJ Agreement, and even the largely ignored SDGs, the enormous emphasis on protection of intact nature and nature-based solutions belies the realities. Intact ecosystems […]

Recording available

We Are Guardians – Documentary screening and Q&A with the directors

Event ended: 01 November 2023

A Journey of Hope Amidst Crisis In the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, thousands of people are unlawfully encroaching upon protected lands, devastating centuries-old trees for export and exploiting rare resources. It’s a critical issue that impacts us all. Enter Indigenous Brazilian forest guardian Marçal Guajajara and impassioned activist Puyr Tembé. They stand as unwavering […]
Woman with red face paint across her face, feathered earrings and a red top stands infront of a blurred forest background

The Yawanawá Amazonian Indigenous People: Socio-environmental experiences of ecology, climate, health and territory

Event ended: 24 October 2023

In this Seminar the Yawanawá will share how their traditional practices and sacred knowledge including local ecology such as native medicinal plants have been key in overcoming challenges like COVID-19, but how climate change also poses a threat to these plants and practices.

Screening of the ‘Good Natured’ film festival

Event ended: 13 October 2023

Conservation Optimism and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery present a screening of inspiring and empowering stories from across the natural world. In the face of environmental erosion and human negligence, it is all too easy to regard our planet with despair. But nestled amongst the prevailing stories of loss and destruction, there are inspiring […]

A virtual rainforest

Event ended: 20 October 2023

Abstract: 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 […]

Recording available

Nature is Culture: The Deep Global History and Transformative Future of Nature-Sustaining Landscapes

Event ended: 27 October 2023

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 […]

Recording available