Martha Crockatt and Mattia Troiano have been exploring equity of urban greenspace in Oxford communities. Here they present findings from their interdisciplinary research, which has used a wide range of methods to explore the implications of adopting a recognitional equity approach when thinking about access to greenspace and participation in its governance, culminating in a community workshop and academic paper (in prep).
Output association: LCNR supported
Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically4. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.
In this video, we dive deep into how human behavioral science can be a game-changer in conservation efforts. Many of the most pressing environmental and conservation issues stem from human actions, but addressing these problems requires more than just awareness campaigns. Traditional methods like educating the public often fail to create lasting change. To make real progress in nature recovery, biodiversity, and environmental conservation, we need to understand and influence human behavior at a deeper level. In this insightful talk, we debunk common myths around changing environmental behaviors and explore how human social wiring can be harnessed to drive meaningful, scalable changes. We also cover the most effective communication strategies derived from behavioral science that can be used to inspire real-world impact. Whether you’re an academic, work in an NGO, or are part of government organizations dedicated to environmental recovery, this video will give you powerful tools and insights to help transform how we approach conservation challenges.
There is growing interest in developing generalisable, standardised measurements of biodiversity, in particular to help the business and financial sectors to quantify biodiversity impacts. In their recent paper, Dr Hannah Wauchope and colleagues created a framework to explain how such units are defined in the rapidly growing voluntary biodiversity credits market. In this seminar, Hannah Wauchope will present this framework and use it to discuss the many measurement challenges that are faced in trying to reduce something as complex as biodiversity to a single unit, and what this might mean for biodiversity credit markets.
About the speaker Hannah Wauchope is a Lecturer in Ecology and Conservation at the University of Edinburgh. Her research examines how we measure biodiversity and our impacts upon it for policy and practice. Hannah studied zoology and ecology at the University of Queensland (Australia). She worked with the Australian Antarctic Division, before embarking on a PhD at the University of Cambridge to study the effects of protected areas on waterbird populations and related methodologies. Before joining the University of Edinburgh, she was an 1851 Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, studying the impact of warming on species in the past (through the Holocene and late Quaternary) as a way of improving understanding of range shifts and help draw generalisations about how other species will move in the future.
This seminar was a part of the NatureFinance@Oxford seminar series, a collaboration between Resilience Planet Finance Lab, Oxford Nature Positive hub, Department of Biology. The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery was a co-host for this seminar. More information on this seminar series: https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/page/naturefinanceoxford-seminar-series
In this video, Andrew Gonzalez explores the critical role of biodiversity science in achieving the targets set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) for 2030. With growing global efforts to reverse biodiversity loss, urgent and integrated action across all sectors is essential to bend the biodiversity curve. However, the implementation of the GBF is currently hindered by a lack of comprehensive and accurate data on biodiversity change. Our ability to track and understand biodiversity loss remains geographically patchy and uncertain. In this video, we introduce a detection and attribution framework for biodiversity change, which is crucial for guiding effective conservation and recovery actions. We also highlight the importance of science in supporting key targets, such as ecological connectivity and the establishment of protected areas. Furthermore, we propose the creation of a Global Biodiversity Observing System (GBiOS) to address significant knowledge gaps and enhance global biodiversity monitoring. This system will strengthen our ability to detect and assess biodiversity changes over time and bridge the gap between science and policy. Join us as we delve into innovative approaches that will support biodiversity conservation efforts and help policymakers take decisive action to meet the global biodiversity goals for 2030.
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.
The Global Biodiversity Framework aims to shift financial flows into biodiversity by at least $700 billion per annum by 2030 and emphasises the role of the private sector in addressing the ‘biodiversity finance gap’. Here we apply a novel systematic review method to non-academic (‘grey’) literature coupled with natural language processing and social network analysis to identify trends in biodiversity finance terminology, actors and networks between 2000 to 2022. Our results illustrate the recent explosion in biodiversity finance grey literature since 2020, and increased prevalence of financial over conservation terminology. Text analysis shows the frequency with which mechanisms for generating private investment in nature are mentioned is greatly disproportionate to estimates of their current and projected role in overall biodiversity financing. Our findings highlight the growth in number and diversity of biodiversity finance actors over time, while also pointing to the centrality of a powerful few in driving financialised discourses.
European countries have committed to ambitious upscaling of privately funded nature conservation. We review the status and drivers of biodiversity finance in Europe. By implementing semistructured interviews with 25 biodiversity finance key informants and three focus groups across Europe, we explore opportunities and challenges for upscaling private investment in nature. Opportunities arise from macroeconomic and regulatory changes, along with various technological and financial innovations and growing professional experience. However, persistent barriers to upscaling include the ongoing lack of highly profitable investment opportunities and the multitude of risks facing investors, including political, ecological and reputational risks influencing supply and demand of investment opportunities. Public policy plays the foundational role in creating and hindering these mechanisms. Public policy can create nature markets and investment opportunities, meanwhile agricultural subsidies and poor coordination between public funding sources undermine the supply of return-seeking investment opportunities. Investors demand derisking investments from uncertainties; in part caused by political uncertainty. These markets require profound state intervention to enable upscaling whilst achieving positive ecological outcomes; private investment will probably not upscale without major public policy change and public investment.
It has been hypothesized that the extinction of the dinosaurs, and later the Pleistocene megafauna, created a darker forest sub-canopy benefiting large-seeded plants. Larger seeds and their fruit, in turn, opened a dietary niche space for animals thus strongly shaping the ecology of the Cenozoic, including our fruit-eating primate ancestors. In this paper, we develop a mechanistic model where we replicate the conditions of tropical forests of the early Paleocene, with small animal body and small seed size, and the Holocene, with small animal body and large seed size.
Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) provides livelihoods for 5 million smallholder farmers, but the factors limiting cocoa yield are poorly understood. We present a global analysis of pollination, cocoa tree, plantation, and climate factors affecting cocoa yield, with experimental data from three major cocoa-producing countries: Brazil, Ghana and Indonesia. Hand-pollination increased yield by 20%, showing cocoa yield is limited by pollination, but not nutrients. Leaf litter and large cacao trees, measures of soil resource availability and access, increased yield by 9-19%. Cooler temperatures by 7 °C during the hot season increased yield by up to 31%, indicating substantial risks from climate warming. Agricultural production that enhances cocoa pollinator abundance, protects soils, and mitigates climate risks will be the most effective way to secure global cocoa production and support livelihoods into the future.