Publications

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).

Nature Seminar Series: The ecology and conservation of atolls – Sebastian Steibl

Over one third of Indo-Pacific islands are atolls. Nevertheless, atolls remain largely unrecognised as a distinct ecosystem type, beyond being recognised for their smallness and perceived depauperate floras and faunas. However, atolls are systems with a remarkable and unique biogeography and ecology that transcend classic boundary thinking of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial realms. Recognising atolls as dynamic and integrated systems of geologic, marine, and terrestrial processes may hold the key for unlocking conservation opportunities and place-based solutions to build resilience to climate change and preserve their unique cultural and ecological values beyond the Anthropocene.

Nature Seminar Series: The Return of the Mermaid – Mindahi Bastida and Geraldine Encina

The Return of the Mermaid: Revitilizing the Lerma Wetlands in the highlands of Central Mexico with the guidance of the Mother of the Waters. The Lerma Wetlands in the highlands of Central Mexico have been home to Otomian peoples for at least ten thousand years. In their belief system, the rich biodiversity in the sweet water wetlands and the valley was the fruit of the generosity of Creation Mother, the Tlanchana, who would show in her favorite springs, at the feet of the Sierra Mountains that separate the Toluca Valley from the valley of Mexico to the east. When in the 1940s hundreds of springs were destroyed with dynamite as per instructions of an international water consultant, the Tlanchana abandoned her people and the waters were swallowed into the aquifer, with fish and all: the 20,000 ha wetland shrank to a few scattered ponds.

Nature Seminar Series: The role of secondary forests in mitigating fragmentation-related extinctions – Ricardo Rocha

This talk will provide an overview of the research conducted over the last decades at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP), examining with particular detail the taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic responses of bats, one of the richest Amazonian mammalian groups, to forest regeneration. I will explore area, edge, and matrix effects and investigate time-related complexities related to both short- and long-term responses to changes in matrix structure and composition. Finally, taking the BDFFP as an illustrative example, we will discuss the conservation implications of these findings for tropical biodiversity and propose avenues for future research in temporal ecology.