Research
Governance and the Anthropocene
This research focuses on how governance can be reformed to enable society to cope with - and adapt to - increasingly strong drivers of environmental change, such as climate change and land degradation. Governance shapes how people affect ecosystems, and how society reacts to environmental change. Yet governance and policies are often not fit-for-purpose, i.e. they are not designed to address the right spatial scales, intervene at the right times, or target the most critical causes of ecosystem decline. Governance reform can both address these shortcomings and help to reframe conservation objectives in the Anthropocene.
I have written a book to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020: Governing the Anthropocene: Novel Ecosystems, Transformation, and environmental policy: available here. This book discusses the unprecedented, intensifying, and widespread human impacts on natural systems. In this new epoch, the Anthropocene, the already rapid rate of species loss is amplified by climate change and other stress factors, causing transformation of highly-valued landscapes. Many locations are already transforming into novel ecosystems, where new species, interactions, and ecological functions are creating landscapes unlike anything seen before. This has sparked contentious debate not just about science, but about decision-making, responsibility, fairness, and human capacity to intervene.
My research focuses on the science-policy interface, and how governance can be improved to more effectively confront the many challenges of the Anthropocene. The book focuses on the present and future challenges of managing ecosystem transformation on a planet where human impacts are pervasive. There is a real opportunity to enable society to cope with transformed ecosystems by changing governance, but this is notoriously difficult. Aimed at anyone involved in these conversations (be those researchers, practitioners, decision makers or students) Governing the Anthropocene brings together diffuse research exploring how to confront institutional change and ecological transformation in different contexts, and provides insight into how to translate governance concepts into productive pathways forward.
This is a core strand of my research, i.e. investigating where governance is and is not fit for making decisions about how to deal with this unprecedented era of environmental change, both at present and into the future. I am particularly interested in making a practical contribution to policy and the practices that help organisations and communities deal with the ecological and social challenges of the Anthropocene, and in helping to modernise the way society approaches ecosystem management.
As part of this I also look at governance and wildfires. I am interested in how current approaches affect social and ecological resilience, and so I am particularly interested in the intersection between climate, biodiversity, and risk reduction to understand how policies can be better integrated, more evidence-based, and more effectively confront multiple social and ecological challenges. I currently focus on Australia, but have an interest in this topic in other countries. I undertake further resilience research with respect to coastal governance, where I work with colleagues in Australia to understand how resilience thinking might contribute to more effective governance and management responses.
Nature-Based Solutions
Another stream of my research focuses on green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS) for addressing environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and poor health outcomes, and exploring whether they can provide more democratic, innovative, or socially just solutions to such challenges.
Urban GreenUP (European Commission, Horizon 2020)
In urban environments, my work focuses on how green infrastructure and nature-based solutions can help address multiple environmental, social, and economic challenges; and how we might mainstream the use of such approaches in policy and planning if they prove to be effective. My interest in NBS started with my role as chief investigator for the University of Liverpool in the project Urban GreenUP. This 6-year project was funded by the European Commission's Horizon2020 programme, and implemented NBS in several cities across Europe, South America, and Asia to test their impact on social, economic, and biophysical conditions as well as their feasibility in a variety of global urban settings. We also developed a transferable process for 're-naturing' cities and adapting to climate change (see the Urban GreenUP website). We also contributed to testing and further development of the IUCN global standard for NBS, using Liverpool as a case study. Urban GreenUP website
Beyond Urban GreenUP, I am interested in how NBS might provide an innovative way of thinking about conserving biodiversity and climate change adaptation and mitigation in wilderness and semi-natural landscapes, as well as with respect to novel ecosystems. I believe these are spaces where the biggest impact can be made, as NBS are meant to be applied at a landscape scale, which is often not possible in urban areas. NBS might provide a way of re-framing biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration objectives that could sit alongside "conventional" approaches to provide multiple benefits, especially in highly modified ecosystems and multi-functional landscapes where restoration to 'ideal' historical baselines is often not possible or requires more resources than are available.
Nature-Based Solutions and Democratic, Just and Equitable Outcomes
As the concept of NBS and related ideas such as 'nature positive' become increasingly popular, I am particularly interested to see how it plays out in the governance realm, and whether the promise for more collaboration, participation, co-production, and democratic outcomes will be realised. I am working on several smaller projects relating to greenspaces and their health, well-being, and biodiversity benefits. This includes the PhD Studentship in collaboration with Natural England, funded by an Economic and Social Research Council studentship, which examines use, access, and benefits of green and natural spaces for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities. Before returning to Australia, I was involved in the initial stages of the GroundsWell project, which aims to co-produce a whole systems approach to urban green and blue space to improve population health and reduce health inequalities. I am expanding my research on NBS into Asia and the South Pacific.
Research grants
GroundsWell: Community-engaged and Data-informed Systems Transformation of Urban Green and Blue Space for Population Health
MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
October 2021 - September 2026
URBAN GreenUP - New Strategy for Re-Naturing Cities through Nature-Based Solutions
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
June 2017 - May 2023