Publications

Ellis, Erle C. (2023). The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social–ecological transformations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B .

Anthropogenic planetary disruptions, from climate change to biodiversity loss, are unprecedented challenges for human societies. Some societies, social groups, cultural practices, technologies and institutions are already disintegrating or disappearing as a result. However, this coupling of socially produced environmental challenges with disruptive social changes—the Anthropocene condition—is not new. From food-producing hunter–gatherers, to farmers, to urban industrial food systems, the current planetary entanglement has its roots in millennia of evolving and accumulating sociocultural capabilities for shaping the cultured environments that our societies have always lived in (sociocultural niche construction). When these transformative capabilities to shape environments are coupled with sociocultural adaptations enabling societies to more effectively shape and live in transformed environments, the social–ecological scales and intensities of these transformations can accelerate through a positive feedback loop of ‘runaway sociocultural niche construction’. Efforts to achieve a better future for both people and planet will depend on guiding this runaway evolutionary process towards better outcomes by redirecting Earth’s most disruptive force of nature: the power of human aspirations. To guide this unprecedented planetary force, cultural narratives that appeal to human aspirations for a better future will be more effective than narratives of environmental crisis and overstepping natural boundaries.

Warner EC; Cook-Patton SC; Lewis OT; Leimu-Brown N; Koricheva J; Eisenhauer N; Ferlian O; Gravel D; Hall JS; Jactel H; Mayoral C; Meredieu C; Messier C; Paquette A; Parker WC; Potvin C; Reich PB; Hector A. (2023). Young mixed planted forests store more carbon than monocultures—a meta-analysis. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

Although decades of research suggest that higher species richness improves ecosystem functioning and stability, planted forests are predominantly monocultures. To determine whether diversification of plantations would enhance aboveground carbon storage, we systematically reviewed over 11,360 publications, and acquired data from a global network of tree diversity experiments. We compiled a maximum dataset of 79 monoculture to mixed comparisons from 21 sites with all variables needed for a meta-analysis. We assessed aboveground carbon stocks in mixed-species planted forests vs. (a) the average of monocultures, (b) the best monoculture, and (c) commercial species monocultures, and examined potential mechanisms driving differences in carbon stocks between mixtures and monocultures. On average, we found that aboveground carbon stocks in mixed planted forests were 70% higher than the average monoculture, 77% higher than commercial monocultures, and 25% higher than the best performing monocultures, although the latter was not statistically significant. Overyielding was highest in four-species mixtures (richness range 2–6 species), but otherwise none of the potential mechanisms we examined (nitrogen-fixer present vs. absent; native vs. non-native/mixed origin; tree diversity experiment vs. forestry plantation) consistently explained variation in the diversity effects. Our results, predominantly from young stands, thus suggest that diversification could be a very promising solution for increasing the carbon sequestration of planted forests and represent a call to action for more data to increase confidence in these results and elucidate methods to overcome any operational challenges and costs associated with diversification.

Maron, M., Quétier, F., Sarmiento, M., ten Kate, K., Evans, M. C., Bull, J.W., Jones, J. P. G., zu Ermgassen, S. O. S. E., Milner-Gulland, E. J., Brownlie, S., Treweek, J., von Hase, A. (2023). ‘Nature positive’ must incorporate, not undermine, the mitigation hierarchy. Nature Ecology & Evolution .

For the concept of nature positive to succeed as the lodestar for international action on biodiversity conservation, it must build upon lessons learned from the application of the mitigation hierarchy — or risk becoming mere greenwash.

Cerullo G; Barlow J; Betts M; Edwards D; Eyres A; França F; Garrett R; Swinfield T; Tew E; White T (2023). The global impact of EU forest protection policies. Science .

Sven Wunder, Cecilia Fraccaroli, Joseph W. Bull, Trishna Dutta, Alison Eyres, Megan C. Evans, Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, Julia P.G. Jones, Martine Maron Bart Muys, Andrea Pacheco, Asger Strange Olesen, Thomas Swinfield, Yitagesu Tekle Tegegne, Thomas B. White, Han Zhang, Sophus O.S.E. zu Ermgassen (2024). PREPRINT: Biodiversity credits: learning lessons from other approaches to incentivize conservation. .

Biodiversity credits are an emerging vehicle for pro-environmental financing. Here we define and delimit biodiversity credits and explore the pathways through which credits can be issued. We scrutinize early evidence from pilots and suggest lessons from other market-based incentives for conservation and climate mitigation, including biodiversity offsets and forest carbon credits that have attracted large private funding flows, but have been questioned regarding their additionality, permanence, and leakage.

Sophus zu Ermgassen, Isobel Hawkins, Thomas Lundhede, Qian Liu, Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, and Joseph W. Bull (2024). PREPRINT: The current state, opportunities and challenges for upscaling private investment in biodiversity in Europe. OSF.

European countries have committed to ambitious upscaling of privately-funded nature conservation activities. We review the status and drivers of biodiversity finance in Europe. By implementing semi-structured interviews with 25 elite biodiversity finance key informants and three focus groups across Europe, we then explore opportunities and challenges for upscaling private investment in nature. We find that opportunities arise from macroeconomic, political and regulatory changes, along with various technological and financial innovations and growing professional experience.

Talitha Bromwich, Thomas White, Alice Bouchez, Isobel Hawkins, Sophus zu Ermgassen, Joseph W. Bull, Harriet Bartlett, Leon Bennun, Elizabeth Biggs, Hollie Booth, Michael Clark, Sami El Geneidy, Graham Prescott, Laura Sonter, Malcolm Starkey, and E.J. Milner-Gulland (2024). PREPRINT: Navigating uncertainty in LCA-based approaches to biodiversity footprinting. Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

The use of Life cycle assessment (LCA) methods is rapidly expanding as a means of estimating the biodiversity impacts of organisations across complex value chains. However, these methods have limitations and substantial uncertainties, which are rarely communicated in the results of LCAs. Drawing upon the ecological and LCA literature on uncertainty and two worked examples of biodiversity footprinting, we outline where different types of uncertainty occur across multiple stages of the LCA process, from input data to the choice of biodiversity metric. Some uncertainties are epistemic, incorporating structural (e.g., the types of pressures included in models), parametric (e.g., uncertainty around conversion factors), and measurement uncertainty, as well as natural variability, stochasticity, and information gaps.

Sophus O. S. E. zu Ermgassen, Katie Devenish, B. Alexander Simmons, Ascelin Gordon, Julia P. G. Jones, Martine Maron, Henrike Schulte to Bühne, Roshan Sharma, Laura J. Sonter, Niels Strange, Michelle Ward, Joseph W. Bull (2023). Evaluating the impact of biodiversity offsetting on native vegetation. Global Change Biology.

Biodiversity offsetting is a globally influential policy mechanism for reconciling trade-offs between development and biodiversity loss. However, there is little robust evidence of its effectiveness. We evaluated the outcomes of a jurisdictional offsetting policy (Victoria, Australia). Offsets under Victoria’s Native Vegetation Framework (2002–2013) aimed to prevent loss and degradation of remnant vegetation, and generate gains in vegetation extent and quality.

Shuo Gao, Joseph W. Bull, Julia Baker, Sophus O. S. E. zu Ermgassen, E. J. Milner-Gulland (2023). Analyzing the outcomes of China’s ecological compensation scheme for development-related biodiversity loss. Conservation Science and Practice.

Over the past three decades, China’s government has implemented many projects under its ecological compensation policy, including paying compensation fees for habitat creation to redress natural habitat losses caused by development. However, a critical evaluation of both the policy design and its ecological outcomes, has not previously been carried out. We assemble diverse data sources to provide the first evaluation of China’s eco-compensation policy and practice, identifying several challenges.

Sophus zu Ermgassen, Katie Kedward, Andrew Allen, Alexandre Chausson, Michael Clark, Natalie Duffus, Georgina Holmes-Skelton, Mariana Mazzucato, Katherine Simpson, Puninda Thind, and Erik Gomez-Baggethun (2024). Mission-Oriented Public Policy for Nature Recovery. Nature Sustainability.

We conduct an expert workshop to identify policies for delivering nature recovery in England and perceptions of their feasibility, showing an inverse correlation between experts’ perceptions of policies’ impact at delivering nature recovery, and their feasibility. We then explore how these policies relate to the policy toolkit applied in mission-oriented strategy and demonstrate how missions-thinking can be applied to nature recovery. Many policies proposed fall within the conventional mission-oriented policy toolkit (clearly defining the mission, policy coordination, strategic public procurement, public investment in fundamental innovation and public goods, conditional financing, public engagement).