Nestled in the rocky mountains and sandy plains just north of the Orange River, Natural State’s new Namibian project is setting the stage for an ambitious conservation initiative. In partnership with the Orange River Karoo Conservation Area (ORKCA), Natural State is working to develop a rewilding credit—a groundbreaking financial mechanism designed to safeguard this arid yet ecologically rich landscape.
Together with local farmers and communities Natural State and ORKCA plan to connect and restore an area larger than Yellowstone National Park. They have five ambitious goals for this project: 1) to ecologically restore this fragile semi-arid ecosystem; 2) ensure a four-fold increase in the number of native grazers and predators; 3) restore wildlife migration patterns; 4) secure 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and; 5) triple employment in the region through increased capacity of the eco-tourism sector. With these goals achieved, this could be one of the largest rewilding projects in the world.
As part of an ongoing collaboration between Natural State and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, Natural State’s Lucy Smyth and LCNR Programme Director Yadvinder Malhi and Nikki Stevens embarked on a fieldtrip to visit the site. Nikki and Yadvinder were able to share their insights and ideas on monitoring biodiversity in arid and ephemeral regions and together they brainstormed how novel nature-based financial mechanisms can help to channel money into conservation.
Following this fieldtrip, Natural State has successfully completed its pilot survey, marking a key milestone in defining the structure of the rewilding credit. By increasing landscape connectivity, it aims to help wildlife move more freely between pockets of resources, fostering stability in a harsh but beautiful environment. Moving forward, Natural State will refine monitoring approaches to measure the credit’s impact, ensuring its effectiveness in preserving this vital ecosystem.
This collaboration is more than just a conservation project—it’s a pioneering approach to align financial incentives with ecosystem restoration. And with dedicated researchers and conservationists at the helm, the ORKCA landscape is poised for a sustainable future.
Exploring Kenya’s Savannas: Insights from Megha Ojha’s Fieldwork
Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery postdoctoral researcher, Megha Ojha, recently embarked on an inspiring journey to Kenya. Here she visited the Natural State Research Centre, a non-profit organization actively working in the Kenyan savannas, a region of unparalleled ecological significance.
Megha is a postdoctoral researcher in the Ecosystems Lab in the Environmental Change Institute, where she is working on the development of a biodiversity intactness index for tropical savannas. Her research focuses on understanding the ecological health of savannas, particularly in relation to herbivory intensity and various management interventions.
The primary goal of Megha’s field trip was to immerse herself in the ongoing collaborative efforts between Natural State and Oxford. Her visit focused on gaining deeper insights into their long-term research initiatives and practical conservation work. Megha explored several long-term monitoring plots spread across diverse conservancies, offering her a glimpse into the intricate dynamics of savanna ecosystems and nature recovery efforts in these areas.
During her time in Kenya, Megha had the opportunity to observe the dedicated field team in action. She watched as they skillfully deployed camera traps and AudioMoths—innovative tools for monitoring wildlife and acoustic landscapes. Additionally, she joined ornithologists conducting bird point count surveys, an essential method for assessing avian biodiversity in the region.
Megha (left) accompanied by an armed game ranger to ensure her protection during fieldwork. These rangers are uniquely trained to safeguard animals from poaching and humans from the dangers of poachers and wild animals
Looking ahead, Megha is preparing for an exciting return to Kenya this June. The upcoming trip will be part of a month-long functional trait campaign, involving a large, multidisciplinary team from Oxford, Kenyan conservancies, and Natural State. The project’s aim is to quantify plant functional traits across different management sites, providing invaluable data to better understand and protect these ecosystems.
Megha’s work exemplifies the collaborative spirit and dedication necessary to address global ecological challenges. Her experiences underscore the value of field-based research in driving impactful conservation strategies.
Improving data pipelines for monitoring nature recovery in Africa
Nature recovery is advancing globally and Natural State is ensuring that Africa is not left in the dust. Over the past two months, the University of Oxford has hosted Natural State’s Dr Lucy Smyth, to work with Dr Nikki Stevens, Oxford’s Trapnell Fellow in African Environments, to develop a novel way of recording and monitoring carbon and biodiversity data collected at Natural State’s nature recovery sites in Africa.
Lucy is a conservation scientist for Natural State, an organisation that is actively building the foundation for nature-based solutions in the Global South. The Natural State Research Centre lies at the base of Mt. Kenya in the Laikipia County and is surrounded by open grassland, shrubland, dense forest, and wetlands where diverse, natural populations of plants and animals thrive in this unique landscape. There are a range of land management methods being utilised in this landscape, including pastoral community conservancies, smallholder agriculture, community forest reserves, and private protected areas. Multiple organisations are currently testing innovative conservation and restoration initiatives in the region, providing an opportunity to monitor nature-based solutions in Africa. The Natural State Research Centre has the most advanced carbon lab in Northern Kenya which allows its team to advance conservation and restoration approaches in the region.
Natural State Research Centre at the base of Mt Kenya in the Laikipia County. Photo credit: Natural State
This is where Lucy and Nikki first met. Lucy had recently joined Natural State as a conservation scientist, to help develop robust and scalable ways of monitoring change in biodiversity, so that restoration projects with positive outcomes can be recognised. Nikki was visiting the research centre to advise on the setup of Natural State’s long-term carbon and biodiversity monitoring plots. Given Nikki’s vast experience as a savanna ecologist and her role as a Trapnell Fellow in African Environments at Oxford, she provided a unique link between Natural State’s work on monitoring change in savanna systems and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery’s work globally. Through this connection Natural State has become a case study for us, and to help increase collaboration between the two groups Lucy worked from Oxford for two months.
While visiting the University of Oxford, Lucy and Nikki have been developing data streams to allow field data on carbon and biodiversity to flow seamlessly through a series of checks and balances and be displayed on Natural State’s Impact Monitoring dashboard. These data pipelines are unique because they ensure data provenance, allowing changes in carbon or biodiversity to be used to inform financial mechanisms for nature. In addition to developing these data pipelines, Lucy and Nikki have been brainstorming exciting ideas about how biodiversity can be monitored and valued, particularly in the context of savanna systems where too often carbon is optimised to the detriment of biodiversity. While virtual meetings offer great opportunities for international collaboration, the face-to-face time that Lucy and Nikki have had has greatly developed their research and will be instrumental to Natural State’s ongoing biodiversity and carbon monitoring.
Ensuring gold standards are followed for green spaces to help create healthier, more sustainable, and climate-resilient communities
A new paper published in Frontiers in Environmental Science describes a comprehensive menu of standards for green infrastructure in England to help deliver green space that is accessible, connected, multifunctional, and reflects local character.
Here Alison Smith, a Senior Researcher with the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, who helped compile the standards, explains how following them can improve overall wellbeing and environmental quality.
Green infrastructure (GI) such as street trees, parks, green roofs and raingardens can play a vital role in keeping our towns and cities clean, cool, safe and healthy. However, GI needs to be carefully planned to make sure we have enough green space for people and nature to thrive. To help local authorities deliver high quality, multifunctional GI that meets local needs as well as national priorities, Natural England has been developing a framework of GI Principles and Standards in partnership with a broad range of researchers and practitioners.
I’ve been working with Natural England to help curate existing standards and guidelines into a comprehensive framework consisting of a ‘Core Menu’ and five ‘Headline Standards’. The Headline Standards have already been released, and now a new paper has been published describing the draft Core Menu to support the delivery.
The Core Menu moves beyond simplistic metrics such as total green space to deliver GI in line with Natural England’s 15 principles.
• Plans should meet the five ‘What’ principles by being accessible, connected, locally distinctive, multi-functional and varied.
• In turn, this should deliver places that meet the five ‘Why’ principles by being nature rich and beautiful, active and healthy, thriving and prosperous, resilient and climate positive, and with improved water management.
• And finally, it should be delivered using the five ‘How’ principles, bringing together a partnership of stakeholders across different sectors to strategically plan GI that is evidence-based and designed to meet local needs, with effective management, monitoring and evaluation.
The paper also shows how these draft standards provide flexibility to help balance national targets on climate, nature and health with the need to meet local needs, constraints and priorities. Crucially, the standards sit within the wider GI framework of supporting tools, advice and guidance, to help planners with limited resources deliver more effective and robust green infrastructure with multiple benefits.
The paper was co-authored by Alison Smith, also affiliated to Agile, Nature-based Solutions Initiative, and Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at the University of Oxford, with colleagues from Birmingham City University, the University of Manchester, Natural England and Peter Neal Consulting.
Beyond ‘technical fixes’: Digital Dimensions of Nature Recovery conference provokes debate at the interface between theory and application
Noemi Duroux, Lotti Jones, Caitlin Hafferty, and Jonathon Turnbull reflect on the 2024 Digital Dimensions of Nature Recovery conference, which created a vibrant, interdisciplinary space for knowledge sharing, posing difficult questions, and forming constructive alliances across science, policy, and practice in the UK and internationally. The following sections explore four interlinked themes around equity and justice, aesthetics and encounters, nature recovery in anthropogenic spaces, finance and governance.
The Digital Dimensions of Nature Recovery conference, held at the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College, Oxford, explored the intersection of digital technologies and nature recovery. Supported by the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery alongside the Agile Initiative, Tech Life Lab, the University of Nottingham, and the European Research Council’s BoS project, the conference welcomed an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners conducting nature recovery work at the interface of theory and application. The conference was co-organised by a team of early career researchers at the Digital Ecologies research group, led by LCNR researchers Dr Jonathon Turnbull and Dr Caitlin Hafferty.
Seven panels—spanning agriculture, monitoring, visualisation, remediation, urban nature, equity and justice, and financing—brought together diverse voices including farmers, engineers, biologists, economists, geographers, and artists. A key theme across these panels involved understanding the potential of digital technologies for repairing and restoring natural systems as existing within a complicated web of power relations.
As such, the tension between utopian and dystopian visions of technology were central to many discussions. Are digital technologies opening up, or closing down, possibilities for nature recovery? Such questions catalysed vibrant interdisciplinary dialogue around different (often contrasting and conflicting) interrogations of how digital tools, and processes of digitalisation, change and contribute to broader nature recovery efforts.
While digital tools were understood to inaugurate diverse relationships between different groups of people, and between people and nature—some positive, some negative—participants agreed that it is the work of practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and corporations to develop the appropriate political mechanisms to facilitate the fair and sustainable use of digital technologies for delivering nature recovery at scale.
The Digital Dimensions of Nature Recovery conference created important space for moving beyond polarising debates regarding ‘technical fixes’, where technology is either positioned as the ultimate solution or a barrier to nature recovery. During the event, attendees commented on the value of having this conference space to encounter radically different understandings and approaches to the digitisation of nature, challenging disciplinary and institutionalised assumptions, and provoking difficult questions at the interface between academic research and real-world applications.
Conference participants emphasised the importance of equity and justice in digitally enabled nature recovery. Tom August (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology), Hope Steadman (University of Oxford), and Charlotte Chivers (Countryside and Community Research Institute) demonstrated how citizen science and citizen-led smart governance tools can be used to empower local communities, while Mark Hirons (on behalf of Eric Mensah Kumeh, University of Oxford) and Janet Fisher (University of Edinburgh) explored co-production techniques that integrate traditional knowledge and Indigenous science into digital mapping and restoration efforts. Martha Crockatt (University of Oxford) unpacked many of these issues in a practical, on-the-ground community mapping case study in the UK. Such approaches challenge prevalent notions that digital technologies lead to repressive forms of surveillance and gesture to how they may be hacked to prioritise inclusivity and human rights in nature recovery efforts.
At the same time, ethical concerns about digital technologies were discussed, particularly through speculative projects like Mana’olana, an AI interface that enables virtual conversations with other-than-human species—here, a whale. While thought-provoking, these tools raise questions about who designs and controls the algorithms that shape how digital technologies are used and experienced, and the biases and hegemonic power relations that may be encoded into them. Algorithmic justice was thus raised as an important concern for how digital technologies shape nature recovery practices, but also how they shape the stories we tell about nature and whose voices are included (or not) in such stories.
Bill Adams’ (University of Cambridge) presentation raised concerns that digital technologies can be employed for nefarious ends by those wishing to monitor or conduct surveillance on marginalised communities. Bill also extended his concern to how wildlife itself is tracked, managed, and controlled in an objectifying manner by many digital technologies, yet remained open to how technologies can be deployed otherwise. Chris Sandbrook’s (University of Cambridge) keynote talk similarly raised important questions about the role of AI in shaping equitable versions of nature recovery. While AI may make many conservation decisions more efficient, Chris raised a series of risks and unintended consequences that practitioners will have to face when using AI in nature recovery projects to ensure their fair and equitable use.
Another recurring theme raised by our presenters was the importance of aesthetics in shaping the politics of digital nature recovery. Whether through Eleanor Thomson’s AI-enhanced habitat mapping at Gentian Ltd., or Theo Stanley’s (University of Oxford) exploration of “technical wilderness” in natural capital projects, the presentations highlighted how digital tools generate powerful aesthetic visions that shape how ecologies are viewed by publics and professionals, opening new avenues for intervening and managing them.
Gillian Rose’s (University of Oxford) analysis of the online circulation of biodiversity data and images revealed how digital technologies blur boundaries between the real and the virtual, creating hybrid ways of seeing nature that are infused with the power dynamics encoded into algorithms. Far from tangential to nature recovery, then, aesthetics was understood by our participants as an important sphere wherein different ideas and visions of nature recovery are rendered palpable matters of ethical and political concern.
Jessica El Mal’s (University of Leeds) participatory art-research project, Forest of Cultures, demonstrated how digital platforms can embed culturally-specific and embodied connections with nature, illustrating how different, perhaps marginalised perspectives on nature can be rendered visible online. Our co-organiser Jennifer Dodsworth’s presentation used a range of digital methods to examine the dominant aesthetics associated with Cumbrian sheep farming online. Challenging some of these romantic representations, Jenny drew from her own experience as a sheep farmer and her research with other farmers to show how other aesthetics are possible on apps like Instagram where she curated a more situated vision of rural life.
Camille Bellet’s (University of Manchester) exploration of farmers’ tactile interactions with surveillance cameras showed how technologies can mediate sensory relationships with nonhuman animals beyond the screen. Jenske Bal (University of Liège) examined attempts to remediate biodiversity through nature-inclusive farming practices. And finally, Francois Thoreau’s (University of Liège) creative and poetic exploration of the aesthetics of AI-generated imagery raised critical questions about how these tools challenge traditional notions of pristine forms of nature that remain so powerful in nature recovery imaginaries.
Nature Recovery in Anthropogenic Spaces
The varying spatialities of nature recovery were also raised across a series of panels. Cities were highlighted as a neglected space of nature recovery policy and practice, while the role of agriculture was brought up in both rural and urban environments as a major driver of nature recovery. These panels challenged perceptions of where nature recovery can take place and with whom.
Elliott Newton from the NGO Citizen Zoo spoke about his rewilding practice in London, where he has reintroduced beavers to the capital (for the first time in 400 years). Ed Baker and John Tweddle presented on their work at the Natural History Museum in London where a host of technologies are being deployed to digitise nature across contexts, including in the Museum’s own grounds, providing a resource for researchers, practitioners, and the public. Tash Barnes (OnePlanet.com) played with the idea of the glitch to think about how rewilding might be done in urban spaces and enhanced by using technologies to foster communities of care and connection between people and place.
In relation to farming, Adam Searle from the University of Nottingham outlined work on high-rise agriculture (i.e., vertical farms) in Singapore, raising a host of questions regarding the hype and promise imbued in certain technologies that are sold as solutions to urgent agricultural questions. Adam highlighted how such ecomodern visions are mobilised otherwise by communities that envision alternative forms of nature recovery. Charlotte Chivers (Countryside and Community Research Institute) focused on citizen-led soil and water health monitoring, which is using a digital platform to record findings, while Jo Furtado (University of Exeter) looked at how participatory mapping and modelling on upland common land in the Lake District can aid in planning the management of land for nature recovery.
Finance and governance underpin and continuously shape the encounters, spaces, and equitable dimensions of nature recovery, provoking both excitement and scepticism from the panellists and audience. Debates around financing nature’s recovery are frequently (and to an extent, unhelpfully) focused on a binary formulation of top-down neoliberal powers versus bottom-up, localised resistance. On one hand, financing mechanisms can either be over-emphasised as a solution to the biodiversity and climate crisis at the expense of other approaches (often with significant equity implications) or on the other hand can be downplayed, or entirely overlooked, through approaches that centre alternative approaches outside of neoliberalism. Moving beyond this, the panellists recognised a more complex and constructive reality involving diverse economies that involve collaborative associations, multi-level governance arrangements, negotiation between different priorities, and building capacity for shared outcomes between scientists, businesses, and communities.
Tom August (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) began the discussions by highlighting how technology is leveraged for biodiversity monitoring through eco-acoustics, computer vision, and the power of citizen science. Despite considerable optimism towards the potential of technological innovation for monitoring, purely technological approaches cannot deliver nature’s recovery and face challenges regarding managing large volumes of data and interpreting results meaningfully. Grounding these issues, Molly Biddell (Knepp Estate) reflected on Knepp Estate’s pioneering approach to landscape restoration and data monitoring in the Weald to Waves recovery corridor and the River Adur Recovery project. Molly explained how new technologies and increasingly precise data collection is essential to ensuring that emerging carbon and nature markets are high-integrity in that they deliver multiple benefits, while mitigating greenwashing and ensuring social safeguards. High-integrity UK carbon and nature markets should also deliver co-benefits for people and nature, highlighted by Rosie Everett (Scottish Rural College) who noted that despite these aspirations, current finance mechanisms often overlook local communities and new approaches are needed to ensure direct community benefits for wider equitable outcomes.
Stepping back, the finance panel acknowledged that although technology holds great potential for unlocking new pathways to funding nature’s recovery, they cannot on their own solve deeper challenges in carbon and nature markets. Sophus zu Ermgassen (University of Oxford) brought these debates together, first outlining the opportunities for the voluntary carbon market and Biodiversity Net Gain in solving real-world problems, then diving deeper into their historic shortcomings that continue to lead to market failures. Sophus attributed these issues to governance weaknesses, arguing that technological innovation is a less important part of the solution and calling instead for broader reforms in political economy and governance structures.
Future Plans
The diverse themes raised across our panels are promising for the future of both scholarship and practice regarding the digital dimensions of nature recovery. Our participants opened important avenues for thinking beyond common binaries and tropes related to the use of digital technologies in the nature recovery sphere and among conservationists. For the most part, they resisted forms of both techno-utopianism (which champion digital technologies as technofix solution to all biodiversity issues) and techno-dystopianism (which paint technologies as severing humans from nature and being involved in forms of repressive surveillance). Equally, these critical concerns were not sidelined, but held in tension with the need to evaluate the use of technologies in diverse situated contexts.
Going forward, we hope to continue these interdisciplinary conversations, connecting policymakers, practitioners, and academics. We are currently developing the proceedings of the conference to be published as a special issue of People and Nature, a journal, we hope, will allow the insights generated at our event to be received by a broad scholarly audience and beyond.
For questions about the event, future plans, and how to get involved, please get in touch with Caitlin and Jonathon.
Beyond the Sensor: Building Blocks for Equitable Nature Recovery
Remote sensing has been around for almost 150 years, with the earliest forms of remote sensing dating back to the 1800s. The first aerial photographs were taken in 1858 by Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, also known as Nadar, using a hot air balloon.
Remote sensing is important because it provides a way to collect data from areas that are dangerous or inaccessible, and it can be used to monitor change over time. It contributes to scientific knowledge by providing valuable information about the Earth’s surface. This includes data on location, depth, biomass, temperature, moisture content, and more. Researchers are using this information to understand various environmental processes better.
The term “remote sensing” was first used in the 1960s. Today, remote sensing platforms include satellites, airplanes, drones, and robots. In this blog, Eric Mensah Kumeh explains why we need to look beyond sensors.
Digital technologies, including remote sensing, now offer exciting opportunities to frame, implement and monitor nature recovery projects at scale. From identifying priority areas to benchmarking vegetation and monitoring change, remote sensing plays an integral role in the design and delivery of numerous nature recovery projects worldwide. Yet, preliminary findings from our equitable nature recovery project in the mosaic landscapes of Ghana emphasize the need to approach these technologies with caution and to look beyond the sensor if nature recovery is to be equitable for both nature and people in project areas.
Drawing on high-resolution multi-spectral imagery of local communities situated at various distances from forest reserves in rural Ghana – where both government and private entities are implementing nature recovery projects – we conducted participatory mapping with local actors to understand their experiences with their land use systems. Our initial findings have been insightful, highlighting at least three key issues.
First, many carbon standards require nature recovery projects to last at least 40 years to meet permanence requirements. However, our participatory mapping shows that land tenure for nearly all land users – including cocoa farmers, vegetable producers, and plantain farmers – is often short-term and tied to the lifespan of the specific crops. These durations vary widely, ranging from six months to 25 years, from vegetable crops to tree crops like cocoa. The mismatch between the requirements of these standards and prevailing land tenure raises questions about who can participate in carbon-oriented nature recovery projects, such as agroforestry, and whether they will have sufficient incentives to stay engaged over time.
The second, related issue is the diversity of crops and land use. Many carbon-based projects are commodity-oriented. Across our study landscapes, cocoa is the main commodity around which carbon projects have been organized even when food crop and cocoa farming are often intermingled spatially. This raises concerns about who is involved in these projects, who is excluded, and on what terms. An alternative approach would involve tailoring carbon projects to pre-existing local land uses, rather than using a one-size-fits-all model that rewards only select groups of actors – even though contributions from all land users are necessary to prevent leakages and ensure additionality.
The third observation relates to local farmers’ existing innovations for meeting their needs while maintaining carbon sinks. In some communities adjacent to or within forest reserves, our participatory mapping revealed complex land use strategies where farmers successfully cultivate food crops, such as bananas, beneath the forest canopy without clearing standing forests. Although such land-sharing practices may technically be considered illegal due to their occurrence in forest reserves, this contrasts sharply with the growing conversion of forest reserves into single-species teak plantations under the rubrics of restoration and carbon. For whom and for what purpose land and nature recovery are implemented become important equity questions in such contexts.
Other interesting findings from the participatory mapping include collective action, where local communities use communal lands for food crops or cocoa farms to raise resources for local development projects, motivated by a perceived neglect in national development agendas and projects.
In summary, these insights underscore the importance of going beyond the sensor to better understand land uses, land users, and their priorities and systems when planning or implementing nature recovery interventions. Sensors provide valuable aerial perspectives on land use; however, a deeper, more engaged interaction with local communities is essential to appreciate their views and ensure equitable outcomes in nature recovery.
In the coming months, our team aims to delve further into the data, leveraging these insights to improve multilevel governance and financing structures, making nature recovery work more equitably for local communities.
In late October 2024, the UN Convention on Biodiversity held its biennial large meeting (the Conference of Parties, or COP). This convention is a sister of the better known one on climate change, both birthed in Rio in 1992, but until the last few years has languished in relative obscurity. This all changed two years ago in Montreal, which produced the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an ambitious international agreement which aims to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, combining protection, restoration, finance and systems transformation. This rise in prominence reflects the rising profile of the ongoing global decline in biodiversity and the need to reverse it as an existential challenge on a par with climate change. Montreal has been called the “Paris-moment” for biodiversity, referring to the signature role the 2016 climate COP in that city had in solidifying ambitions for stabilizing climate and shaping goals of net-zero carbon emissions.
This COP was the opportunity to further develop mechanisms for how the Global Biodiversity Framework would work, as well for countries to present their national biodiversity pledges as promised in Montreal. This was an “implementation COP” focused on working out the delivery mechanisms of the Global Biodiversity Framework. It was always unlikely to catch major global press attention. Things are slow, but the meeting itself provides a stimulus for progress, such as a timeline for to announce targets and showcase pledges.
COP President Susanna Muhamad, Colombia’s Environment Minister, speaking at an event on reconciling western and indigenous approaches to nature recovery. It was remarkable to see such bold thinking at the highest political levels.
It is easy to be sceptical about these international meetings, their slow progress and insufficiently resourced ambitions, but what is gradually emerging and solidifying is a global framework for governance of biodiversity. The international UN process certainly can’t solve this on its own, but it does provide an essential global architecture. Ultimately, nations and businesses need to deliver against these targets, but a process is built to create targets and build international mechanisms for finance and monitoring. Multilateral negotiations and agreements are essential but deeply inefficient and frequently frustrating, but also provide a space for smaller countries, and for indigenous peoples and other groups to have a voice at the table.
This year, the meeting was held in the city of Cali in Colombia, tucked in the forest-clad eastern foothills of the Western Cordillera of the Andes, fittingly one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Lush tropical montane forest stretches above the city, a tree-lined river runs through like a throbbing green vein, surging after the frequent and heavy tropical downpours. This stunning, friendly city has a troubled history and it was gamble for the Colombian government to locate it here, a gamble which I believe paid off admirably. I came to support the activities of the London Natural History Museum, of which I am a Trustee, and to also better understand this emerging global biodiversity architecture and how our activities at Oxford University (including our Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery) can address and support these goals.
I have been to some climate change COPs previously, but to newcomers these COPs can be overwhelming. COPs are split into a Blue Zone, accessible only to negotiators and to a limited quota of observers from sectors such as NGOs, academics, media and business, and a Green Zone freely open to all. In Cali the Blue Zone was in a lovely conference area semi-open to views of the lush green hills, a welcome antidote to the nature-free, soul-sucking sterility of many large conference venues. The Green zone was in the heart of the city, in a range of venues clustered around a pedestrianized area joyously hugging the river.
What was achieved in this COP?
Only a small fraction of countries (44 out of 196) have submitted their detailed national biodiversity pledges (National Biodiversity Strategies and Application Plans – NBSAPs in the jargon loved by the negotiations). A larger number (119) have produced less detailed national targets. How biodiversity action can be financed in ways that transfer resources from the resource-rich Global North to the biodiversity-rich Global South, always the thorniest question, still needs to be fleshed out. The meeting ran out of time before all business was completed, with the aim of completing unfinished business in the next two years.
There were two big outcomes:
Firstly, an agreement on Digital Sequence Information that sets a principle and precedent for companies (such as pharmaceutical companies) that use genetic information to ensure small fraction of their revenue is shared fairly with the people living where the resources were discovered, including Indigenous groups, supporting the conservation of such biological wealth.
Secondly, the creation of a permanent body to represent the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities within the framework.
An informal event in the Blue Zone, with COP President Susanna Muhamad and Brazilian Environment Minister Marina da Silva discussing novel mechanisms for funding tropical forest protection
The negotiations are important and essential and there is some excellent coverage of them and their outcomes (I highly recommend the comprehensive analysis and summary by Carbon Brief). Rather than repeat those summaries, here I will focus on two other aspects of the conference that I think get less international attention or understanding by non-participants. In effect, there are at least two other processes going on in parallel to the negotiations.
Yadvinder with UK Secretary of State Steve Reed
One is essentially a conference on biodiversity that brings together governments, policymakers, NGOs, academics, journalists, indigenous peoples, activists, businesses and finance in a somewhat overwhelming flurry of events that stretch from the Blue Zone right across the city. These don’t get the coverage of the main negotiations because they are so amorphous and hard to track. But this is where a lot of the detailed consequences of the Global Biodiversity Framework, and wider thinking about the biodiversity challenge, are being worked out. For example, I attended one session on how researchers are rising to the challenge of developing a global biodiversity data architecture that brings together multiple sources of data and will support and simplify how countries can track and report changes in their biodiversity.
Another session I attended was on how ecosystem restoration activities can be scaled up to meet the target of restoration of 30% of degraded lands by 2030. And another on whether novel approaches based on the intrinsic rights of natural entities (rivers, mountains etc.) can be effective and integrated into national laws and legal systems. And there was a plethora of smaller but hugely significant events such as Brazil launching its plan to restore 12 million ha of its ecosystems by 2035, and presentations of a new mechanism to finance tropical forest protection and restoration. And, even more amorphous, sprinkled in every day were multiple conversations and serendipitous encounters, new agreements to collaborate together on something, new plans being hatched. And the meetings and conversations stretch across disciplines – as an academic I know of no other forum where I can engage so effortlessly with governments, activists, NGOs, journalists and filmmakers.
To the outside this “conference of biodiversity” may seem superfluous to the main negotiations, especially in an age where air travel is rightly being questioned and many have taken the decision to not travel. But I can’t see the speed of activity and collaboration required to address the biodiversity challenge happening in any other way, especially when creating partnerships across countries.
Yadvinder with the British Ambassador to Colombia, George Hodgson, and a team from the Natural History Museum in London, at the launch of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition in Cali
The third element that matters is the use of the event as an opportunity for mobilization of public awareness, activism and enthusiasm. This was evident in the UK around the Glasgow climate COP in 2021. Biodiversity has languished compared to climate change, but in the last few years it has stepped up a notch with “nature” being a prominent part of public conversation, both in the UK and internationally. But there is so much more to be done. The Colombian government made this explicit in declaring this “the people’s COP”, and they truly delivered. The Green Zone, in the heart of the city, on the pedestrianized streets straddling the Cali river, was packed with stalls and information stands and humming with joy and music ranging from salsa through Afro-Colombian choirs and Andean flutes. Throughout the COP this zone teemed with the public, enjoying the event but also learning and celebrating biodiversity and the natural world. And there were many other events.
I joined the British Ambassador to Colombia in opening the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition. It was free and easy to walk into off the street: every time I passed by it was full of people enjoying this celebration of the wonders of the natural world. The media coverage in Colombia was intense and joyous, and also there was good coverage in Brazil, and I believe in other parts of Latin America. As an ecologist it was truly wondrous to see such a public and joyous celebration of nature and its importance. It was disappointing there was less media coverage in the UK, something that is needed if we are to better mainstream nature and biodiversity into the public conversation.
The magnificent forests above Cali harbour extraordinary biodiversity and protect the city’s water
At the end of the meeting, I took a trip out with a local conservationist to the lush cloud forests in the mountains above Cali, and to the tropical dry forests and wetlands to the north of the city. Everywhere was brimming with life, a celebration of the abundance and exuberance of the living world. It was also filled with stories of hope and progress. A forest that had been protected and restored for the protection it supplies to the city’s water supply, and is now found to be home to one of the planet’s rarest birds, discovered only in 2019 (we got to see this charismatic little bird that struts and swings its torso like a salsa dancer – hence its nickname of the “salsita”) and an abundance of gorgeous plants and insects. City ecologists who are implementing ambitious plans for green corridors and public access to nature. A river with multiple tragic stories from past violence but now a focus of community-led projects for reconciliation and reconnection. But also sobering reminders of wider challenges: a bird-rich wetland experiencing two years of continuous drought, hill-sides razed by cattle-gazing and fire, intensive sugar-cane monocultures stretching across the valley.
Amongst the local people (“Caleños”) that I met there was immense pride and joy that Cali was being celebrated as a city of biodiversity, and lending its name and legacy to global efforts to protect and restore the natural world. Biodiversity and nature recovery are ultimately always local and intimate, but they cannot only be local. Somehow, we need to bridge the scales from local to national to global, to try and shift not only global nature governance and finance, but also the values of our modern civilizations, to rebuild our connections with nature, and retell and build new stories about how the natural world is not primarily a commodity, a source of resource extraction to power our economies, but the nurturing matrix from which we emerge and which sustains us. This was apparent in the cosmovisions of many of the indigenous peoples who spoke at the meeting. The whole meeting had the strap-line of “paz con la naturaleza”, peace with nature. The President of the COP, the inspiring Colombian Minister of the Environment Susana Muhamad, spoke of the need to live in synchrony with the cycles of nature. The UN secretary general spoke of ending a war with nature.
After spending ten days in the company of people, both delegates and locals, with so much love for the natural world, in a beautiful, seductive, magical country that is sadly far too familiar with conflict but also with reconciliation and peace-making, I come home energized and empowered. This felt significant. There is so so much to do, but I feel this was an important moment in addressing the huge challenge of creating civilizational and just peace with nature.
Stakeholder Engagement Best Practice – Nattergal’s Ten-Point Approach
This month sees the publication of The Nattergal Report on Stakeholder Engagement Best Practice for Landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects. Developed for the Boothby Wildland Landscape Recovery project, and funded via the DEFRA Landscape Recovery Development Phase, the report was led by the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) at the University of Gloucestershire and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Agile Initiative projects at Oxford University, with the objective of establishing a framework for enhancing and embedding stakeholder engagement into nature restoration.
Ben Hart, Head of Operations at Nattergal said: “As part of our Landscape Recovery Phase 1 Pilot development project for Boothby Wildland, we reached out to Dr. Caitlin Hafferty at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR), and Josh Davis at the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) to help us to understand how to develop and deliver an exemplar best practice programme for our first Nattergal nature restoration project. Josh, Caitlin, and their colleagues did an amazing job of reviewing all available guidance and frameworks on the subject and condensed them into a digestible 10-principle approach that we could implement on site.
Our team have been following the guidance to deliver a fantastic programme of engagement, which has been greatly appreciated by our stakeholder community, and enabled richer and more supporting communication between all parties. The long-term impacts of this work will be highly beneficial not just for Boothby, but for all Nattergal projects as we scale, hopefully setting the groundwork for generational engagement programmes as we aim to deliver nature restoration in perpetuity.”
Effective stakeholder engagement is key to improved land-use decision-making, natural resource management, and achieving mutually beneficial outcomes for individuals, communities, and places.
Our intention is that not only will we apply the principles across the Nattergal portfolio, but, in line with our core value of collaboration, we can help other organisations engaged in nature recovery to deliver enhanced benefits for their stakeholders. The report sets out ten evidence-led recommendations for improving stakeholder engagement in nature recovery projects. Below are working examples of how we are implementing these recommendations at Nattergal – and collaborating on community benefit best practices across the UK Natural Capital market.
Nattergal’s Ten-Point Approach
1. Treat engagement as an ongoing process, not a ‘one-off’, ‘add-on’, or ‘tick-box’ activity.
At Nattergal we aim to manage our sites for nature in perpetuity, and as such, we need to maintain positive stakeholder engagement for decades, and across generations.
Creating programmes that work for immediate needs, whilst laying the foundations for long term engagement is key to the success of each project. We recognise that programmes need to be flexible, adaptive and continually evolving through the lifetime of a project. Accordingly, regular reviews are being built into our plans to ensure these needs are met.
2. Prioritise understanding of the local context, purpose, and rationale for engagement.
An early stakeholder mapping exercise undertaken by Louise Arkles, which has since evolved and grown.
A clear early priority for any nature recovery project is identifying the individuals, groups and organisations through a stakeholder mapping exercise. These include both ‘communities of place’, i.e. the groups and individuals in our local geographical area, as well as ‘communities of interest’, being stakeholders with an interest in the project but not living in close proximity. At Boothby Wildland this was a critical part of an independent stakeholder analysis we commissioned Louise Arkles to conduct as part of her MPhil in Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge. Louise spent three months embedded within the Boothby team during the summer of 2023, attending community events, engaging face-to-face with local people, and undertaking surveys and interviews.
Key outputs included a summary of census data, an initial map of actual and potential stakeholders as illustrated below, a living spreadsheet of engaged stakeholders, and an Impact-Influence Matrix of all stakeholders. These formed the basis of early engagement planning at Boothby Wildland.
3. Engage stakeholders in dialogue as early as possible in decision-making processes.
Boothby Ranger Lloyd Park presenting at the consultation – February 2024
A key nature recovery objective at Boothby Wildland is the restoration of the West Glen River, with the aim of reconnecting to its floodplain, creating wetland habitats, and alleviating downstream flooding. After expert consultation, baseline monitoring and modelling of different restoration options, we identified that drainage removal and the enclosed release of beavers would be key to success. Given the potential controversy around beaver reintroductions, it was incumbent on us to engage with stakeholders before taking any action.
The Nattergal team at Boothby Wildland held three consultation sessions attended by over 80 local stakeholders to present proposals, answer questions and log all feedback for consideration. The sessions were promoted extensively across social media, through local posters and by emailing our established contact database. They included an in-person meeting at the local Village Hall, a live online session and a walk & talk at the Wildland. Feedback questionnaires were distributed at each event, whilst a letter box drop for local villagers and online copies were also made available. We reviewed the outcomes, considered the feedback and have committed to ongoing follow-up conversations. A report of this consultation, which received overwhelmingly positive support, was included in the application to Natural England for an enclosed beaver release.
4. Integrate local knowledge alongside scientific expertise for robust decision-making
A critical element of our approach has been the creation of two co-design groups at Boothby Wildland, combining a diverse range of stakeholders with both scientific and local knowledge.
Specialist Advisory Group: This group is formed of representatives from specialists local NGOs, Consultants, Academics and Public Bodies and provide specialist advice to Boothby on the policy, technical and logistical aspects of our plans. Sub-groups will be formed for specific initiatives such as river restoration as and when needed.
Local Stakeholder Group: The Boothby community group is made up of a broader set of people (including our direct neighbours) and organisations, where we make every endeavour to ensure this is representative of the local context. ‘Sprint’ subgroups may also be formed to focus on specific, time sensitive issues as and when they occur.
5. Understand and manage power dynamics effectively, building trust and encouraging two-way dialogue
We have been working hard to foster relationships with our local community including surrounding farmers and landowners, as well as extensive collaborations with NGOs, academic institutions, research partners and commercial organisations locally, nationally and internationally. Our activities- including hosting regular walks with interested parties, through to weekly volunteering days – enable us to meet face to face to discuss the project directly with people and any concerns that arise. We also offer a site email address that is regularly contacted with questions for the team.
It is important to try and understand where different groups are coming from, and that many will have conflicting ideas and concerns. There are louder voices (both positive and negative), that it’s easy to engage with, but there is a wide range of other, less vocal stakeholders that we feel should have a chance to feed in. Our aim as we grow is that additional capacity in the team will help us reach out to those groups, who may need different areas of support to help them become more involved in the project.
We believe that undertaking this level of engagement provides value for all involved. From opportunities to learn and volunteer, to being involved in site development, we hope to create a sense of community, pride and agency in the Boothby Wildland project.
6. Recognise there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to engagement
As part of our planning process, we mapped out a Spheres of Influence Matrix to understand the level of engagement needed by each stakeholder type. In the Spectrum of Engagement model (below), we then identified examples of engagement methods that could be applied across each level, as appropriate to the people and the situation. We have implemented many of the engagement methods including newsletters, social media engagement, open days, guided tours, public meetings, establishing a local community group, consultations, our interactive Boothby WildMap and volunteering opportunities.
Boothby Wildland’s Spectrum of Engagement
7. Prioritise monitoring and evaluation of social impact to inform future practice
It is recognised that whilst imperative, monitoring and evaluating stakeholder engagement can be challenging for a variety of reasons. For example, having robust, repeatable methodologies for monitoring and the capacity to carry these out, is a goal we continue to work on.
We track social outcomes such as employment from the project, site visits, uptake of volunteering and student research. Evaluating the quality of our social impact and using qualitative methodologies is more challenging with a small team. Nonetheless, we review activities such as volunteering annually with questionnaires and feedback forms and have used printed and online feedback forms for our consultation process.
We remain open to conversation with all our stakeholders and try to actively encourage feedback of all types – for example, starting community workshops at Boothby Wildland with a SWOT analysis exercise to capture thoughts on the project’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. These identified factors are then regularly monitored and evaluated to ensure stakeholder engagement outcomes are realised, whilst also identifying risks and issues as they arise.
8. Act Local, to ensure ambition is rooted in the local community
One of Nattergal’s core values is ‘Act Local’. This begins by working with local stakeholders to ensure that each of our Wildlands is embedded in the respective local community. Employing people from the surrounding area was a first step towards this at Boothby Wildland, and the team adopted a spirit of co-design to help form plans for the site.
In September 2023, we held a series of community workshops at Boothby, attended by over 50 local representatives. Small groups were asked to visualise desired outcomes from Boothby Wildland in the form of the front cover of a local newspaper in 2073. We were heartened to see such creativity and ambition from our local community and the exercise helped to kick-start our work on a collaborative footing.
Since then, we have developed an interactive WildMap to keep our growing list of stakeholders updated on our progress and shared vision as it develops. Navigating each square of the map you can interact with a wealth of content, from scientific research findings and camera trap footage to future vision illustrations. This way we can apply cutting-edge science and global best-practice to a plan conceived and developed locally. The WildMap also presents an opportunity to share community projects, for example the work submitted by supporters in our recent 2024 ‘Summer of Art’.
Boothby Interactive WildMap – Summer of Art
9. Develop organisational capacity for engagement through training, resources, and human capital
Our local team at Boothby includes Communities Co-ordinator Lizzie, Ranger Lloyd, and Boothby Manager Lorienne. Together with support from the wider Nattergal team, they work incredibly hard to deliver all elements of the Stakeholder Engagement Plan.
Through the FIRNS (Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland) Community Benefits Standard for Nature projects, we will be undertaking training workshops with the team in Q1 2025, reviewing what is working at Boothby and what could be improved, as well as feeding into the standard development. Our aim is to be the first English project to obtain the new Community Benefits Certification Mark when this is released.
As one of 22 first-round Landscape Recovery pilot projects, part of the broader Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, we have been encouraged and supported to develop our Stakeholder Engagement and Site Access Plans for Boothby Wildland. This support has been critical to delivering the research and resources associated with this work. We are now in the process of negotiating longer-term ELMs support which will enable us realise our ongoing ambition. These plans include expanding the Boothby team with at least 3 additional positions, which would provide increased capacity for continued and more in-depth stakeholder engagement.
10. Frameworks for best practice engagement should be institutionalised – embedding accountability and inclusivity at the centre of nature recovery efforts
We are working to foster an environment where equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded. We acknowledge that we must better match the demographics of our engaged stakeholders to the broader demographics of the local area. For example, we will look to identify and proactively approach ‘hard to reach’ and/or under-represented individuals of our community. We have also applied for funding to secure the infrastructure needed to host local schools and youth groups. If successful, this includes an Education Officer, group shelter, restrooms and an accessible path into the Wildland.
The figure below, taken from the report, shows the cyclic nature of Stakeholder Engagement. By embedding this process, we aim to consider engagement in everything we do across all Nattergal projects.
The Stakeholder Engagement Cycle – from the Best Practice Report
Nattergal is also a partner in the Nature Finance Certification Alliance (NFCA) ‘Community Benefits Standard for Nature Projects’. Funded by the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS), Nattergal is the only English partner in the project, which is aiming to “establish a consensus on community benefits best practice across the UK Nature Investment market.” In turn, this is feeding into the British Standards Institute (BSI) Nature Investment Standards, so lessons learnt at Boothby Wildland will have international impact.
Conclusion
By grounding decisions in best practice evidence, organisations like Nattergal can create effective strategies that maximise beneficial outcomes and manage risk, build trust and legitimacy, and promote a culture of continuous improvement.
Our work is ongoing, but we have made great progress and remain fully committed to delivering ever-better engagement across all key stakeholder groups as their needs evolve.
*Davis, J., Hafferty, C., Ingram, J., & Short, C. (2023). The Nattergal Report on Engagement Best Practice for Landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects. Carried out by the Countryside and Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire, UK.
Ben Hart | Nattergal Head of Operations | ben.hart@nattergal.co.uk
Dr. Caitlin Hafferty | Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Social Science Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR) | caitlin.hafferty@ouce.ox.ac.uk
Josh Davis | Environmental Sciences PhD Student at the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI), University of Gloucestershire | joshuadavis@connect.glos.ac.uk
Researchers initially checked LandSat Satellite, which is available up to the 1980s with coarse resolution. Unfortunately, forests were severely degraded around 1980s, thus we needed to track further back in time.
In Ghana, local collaborators have seen several aerial photos taken by the Royal Air Force in 1946, and topographical maps drawn based on these aerial photos, by an organisation called the ‘Directorate of Oversea Surveys’. They believed that a ‘nearly’ complete collection was being held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and asked us to help search for these precious materials and decipher the forest cover in the 1950s.
With amazing input from the Bodleian Librarians, researchers at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery found the necessary maps. They are safety kept in the library and taken very good care of. Despite being printed 70 years ago, they are still glossy and in great condition. Forest symbols are marked clearly on the printed sheets which reveal forest cover in 1950s.
Vegetation information recorded on these maps
Then, AI experts from the Leverhulme Centre for nature Recovery, Steven Reece and Olga Isupova created an excellent tool to convert this information into a digital form that could be used for GIS analysis. The tool turned out to be a great success and recognised symbols on these maps with a 98% accuracy.
In the Bodleian library, Dr Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng is reading details on the ‘Directorate of Overseas Survey’ archival maps, printed around 1950s.
More importantly, the 1950s forests cover map derived from these materials have very high fidelity to field and household surveys, and the original forest range maps were then discussed with local farmers and the extent of the previous forest cover agreed.
Part of a 1950s historical map showing study site Kwahu at the centre, before AI reading (left) and after AI land use type recognition (right)
Looking to the future, scientists from the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery will be carrying on applying these AI tools to more countries with ‘Directorate of Oversea Survey’ maps available, with Sierre Leon, Belize, South Africa just to name a few!
Oxford researchers find African forests even more productive than Amazonia.
Whilst most studies on the ecosystem functioning of tropical forests have focussed extensively on Latin America or Asia, researchers at the University of Oxford say comparing findings with studies in Ghana has produced interesting and differing results showing that more studies need to be made in Africa.
Tropical forests cover large areas of equatorial Africa and play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. Scientists from the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, in close partnership with collaborators at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG), have been looking at the carbon budget in both the Amazon and West Africa by undertaking detailed field assessments of the carbon budget of multiple forest sites.
The researchers monitored 14 one-hectare plots along an aridity gradient in Ghana. When compared with an equivalent aridity gradient in Amazonia that they had previously studied using the same measurement protocol, the studied West African forests generally had higher productivity and more rapid carbon cycling.
Lead author Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre, said:
“Tropical forests are so diverse that we are constantly surprised when opening new study sites. I became fascinated with West African forests because of this study, but I am sure there are more fascinating tropical forests yet to discover.”
“When we’re talking about carbon budgets, you can’t just study a stand of forests and imagine that applies to even nearby forests. Carbon budgets vary greatly from wet to dry regions in the tropics.
“Having studied the carbon budget in the Amazon it was interesting to see that West African forests are more productive, have more photosynthesis and absorb more energy. And we don’t quite understand why this is the case. This is an important region and shouldn’t be ignored. Our new findings were able to tell us a different story than our previous studies in the Amazonia, and has stimulated new questions and new research.”
The work carried out is part of the Global Ecosystem Monitoring network (GEM), an international effort to measure and understand forest ecosystem functions and traits, and how these will respond to climate change. GEM was created 2005 under the leadership of Prof Yadvinder Malhi. The GEM network describes the productivity, metabolism and carbon cycle of mainly tropical forests and savannas.
Professor Malhi said:
“Ecology is a global science, and equal long-term partnerships are essential to produce both better science and fairer science. This work is the product of decades of long-term partnership between Oxford and institutions in both Africa and South America, work that seen many local students trained and graduating and contributed to building local capacity in environmental science.”
The study is also a fruit of successful collaboration with the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana – CSIR, many scientists from which made fundamental contributions to the study and are coauthors of the publication.
One of the lead Ghanaian collaborators, Said Akwasi Duah-Gyamfi, Senior Research Scientist, CSIR-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana, said:
“It was a wonderful experience to be part of the research team, and most importantly to explore and generate knowledge on topical issues about forests in Africa.”
