Society Research Theme
Encompassing the governance and socio-cultural dimensions of nature recovery.
About
This theme examines how ‘nature recovery’ is defined and governed at multiple scales across diverse landscapes, how its costs and benefits are distributed, and what lessons this holds for promoting equitable and restorative human-nature relations. The initial focus will be on case study landscapes in the UK and Ghana supporting a range of land uses, including conservation, recreation and the production of food and fibre for commercial and subsistence use.
One research strand examines the political ecology of nature recovery at multiple scales, with a strong emphasis on the design and implementation of participatory approaches to co-creating and managing nature recovery. This includes analysis of existing and proposed public and private policies, laws and standards for public participation in nature restoration and land use decision-making and how they intersect with grassroots and business recovery initiatives and local landowner engagements.
As part of this work, we will explore complementarities and tensions between scientific knowledge, including that generated by this project, and local knowledge of nature and place, and how different knowledge claims are used, accepted or rejected, and by whom. We will also examine how nature recovery efforts shape equality of access to land, nature and finance across diverse social groups.
Our second strand examines different cultural understandings of nature and how these configure the possibilities for nature recovery. We anticipate that successful strategies for nature recovery will require broad cultural support from landowners, farmers, citizens, and their representatives. But we know that these groups often disagree about what nature is and how it ought to be managed. We will investigate how culture and group identity shape different patterns of behaviour that impact nature recovery. We are especially interested what digital media tell us about popular understandings of nature and in the potential of digital technologies to enable new forms of environmental citizenship.
Projects
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Assessing urban ecosystem composition and function to understand pathways towards equitable, Nature-smart cities
Through considering the ecosystem composition and functioning of Greater London, I hope to provide not only a comprehensive analysis of nature of in cities as it currently stands, but I also hope to provide routes to improving nature in these areas based on this.
Team
Theme outputs
- Society
- Society
Summary of thesis: Recognitional equity in access to and planning of urban green spaces: How socio-economic deprivation shapes community values and participation in place-based governance.
Equity of access to, and planning of, Urban Green Spaces (UGS) is an area of growing interest in a period in which urban greening is intertwined with equity issues in socially diverse urban centres. While efforts to widen communities’ spatial access to UGS and procedural representation in their planning through more inclusive place-based governance arrangements have been made, little attention has been paid to the recognitional dimension of equity, here understood as recognition of communities’ lived experience of deprivation and historic relations with institutions. This thesis takes an intra- and inter-community comparative approach between three areas of Oxford with low, mid-high and high deprivation levels, and varying types of neighbourhood or regeneration plans.
Art and Nature in The Leys
A free, drop-in family-friendly event led by researchers Martha Crockatt and Mattia Troiano, developed in collaboration with Natasha Summer, a local community champion, and in partnership with the Oxfordshire African Caribbean Multicultural Society. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Festival of Social Science.
News & events
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OPEN Fellowship awarded to investigate how risk impacts high-integrity carbon and nature markets
15 January 2025Caitlin Hafferty, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, has recently been awarded an Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) Fellowship to explore the role of risk and uncertainty in shaping high-integrity nature markets in the UK. The project – conducted in partnership with the Green Finance and Capability Team at the Department for Energy Security […]
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Beyond the Sensor: Building Blocks for Equitable Nature Recovery
6 January 2025Dr Eric Mensah Kumeh 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 […]
news Blog -
Art and Nature in The Leys
20 December 2024A free, drop-in family-friendly event led by researchers Martha Crockatt and Mattia Troiano, developed in collaboration with Natasha Summer, a local community champion, and in partnership with the Oxfordshire African Caribbean Multicultural Society. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Festival of Social Science. The aim of the event was to engage […]
news