Our research

Delivering a Nature Positive future will require transformative action across society, However, there is currently limited evidence on how to operationalize this mission at different scales and in different sectors and contexts. Broadly our current research falls into the following areas: 

Defining and driving Nature Positive action

  • Working with partner organisations to define Nature Positive goals and strategies, and identify priority research questions that need to be tackled. 

  • Develop overarching frameworks and tools that can help build the Nature Positive approach and prioritise effective action. For example, the Mitigation and Conservation Hierarchy for designing Nature Positive approaches and tracking contributions to overarching targets.

Regulatory, financial, and policy frameworks

  • Engagement with key actors in policy development and implementation, from regional to global scales (e.g. the GBF), including working with business to operationalise high-level voluntary biodiversity commitments. 

  • Empirical analysis of regulations, governance structures, financial mechanisms and standards that either contribute to, or provide the conceptual precursors to, Nature Positive (e.g. Biodiversity Net Gain in the UK), and  understanding key ecological, social and economic outcomes.

  • Investigating underlying drivers of biodiversity loss and wider structural barriers in the socio-economic system that can inhibit Nature Positive action.  

Sustainable organisations and value chains

  • Comprehensive biodiversity impact accounting to estimate the biodiversity impacts of organisations, across entire value chains.

  • Tracking the impacts of consumption along supply chains, from biodiversity on the ground to end-consumers, in a replicable, standardised way, and for a wide range of different products and pathways.

  • Developing target-setting and evaluation approaches to help guide Nature Positive action in line with global biodiversity targets. 

  • Evaluating possible strategies through which organisations can deliver effective, feasible and efficient Nature Positive contributions – from actions to avoid and minimise impact, to designing appropriate biodiversity offsets and emerging biodiversity credits. 

  • Providing data and tools to enable sustainable value chains and finance, in multiple sectors and particularly agriculture.

Measuring and scaling outcomes 

  • Understanding and promoting the scaling of action from individual behaviour change to systemic transformation

  • Investigating tools and metrics for measuring biodiversity outcomes that can be applied across multiple scales, scopes of impacts, and sectors, within and between supply chains, and for different threats which may be area-based or diffuse. 

  • Explore scenarios of development and mitigation at different sectoral and geographic scales that can guide policy and highlight potential pathways to realising Nature Positive outcomes globally.

  • Explore the trade-offs and synergies between outcomes to ensure Nature Positive strategies can address the triple challenge (climate change, biodiversity loss, social outcomes), and lead to equitable and just outcomes.

  • Demonstrating approaches to impact evaluation against counterfactuals, with methods for monitoring activities, outputs, outcomes and impact over time, and incorporating adaptive management;

  • Incorporating local wellbeing and rights into decision frameworks and strategy design for planning in ways that support procedural, distributive and interactional equity. 

Empowering all actors and promoting action

  • Building collaborations of organisations to deliver Nature Positive action, and promoting approaches and tools that can help these actors engage with biodiversity and deliver Nature Positive change (e.g. Nature Positive Universities). 

  • Multi-partner technical and practical research collaborations to drive impactful, practitioner-driven research.

  • Developing tools and guidance for organisations and consumers seeking to make sustainable choices (e.g., around food consumption).

  • Ensuring we incorporate perspectives on nature from disempowered actors or from those at the root of global value chains.