News & Stories – Page 5 – Oxford Nature Network

Selected News and Stories

How to save the Amazon

In honour of journalist Dom Philips and indigenista Bruno Pereira, a gathering of Indigenous leaders, human rights and environmental defenders, researchers, and practitioners came together on Earth Day to celebrate their lives and build hope for ‘How to Save the Amazon.’ The newly launched paperback version of the book ‘How to Save the Amazon’ uncovers […]

wildflower meadow with fields and trees in distance — Wildflower meadow in Oxfordshire. Photo Yadvinder Malhi

The great significance of observing nature in your back garden

Yadvinder Malhi shares his rediscovery of nature at the local level Like many, I have found solace and refuge in local nature over this year of pandemic and lockdown. When able to escape from Zoom calls and cabin fever, I’ve wandered and exercised in my local floodplain meadow of the Thames. I’ve used books and […]

For plants facing climate change, staying alive beats reproducing

Oxford researchers have found that plant resilience depends more on year-to-year survival than on growth or reproduction, with fluctuations in water availability emerging as the strongest environmental driver. A University of Oxford study has answered a deceptively simple question: what makes some plant populations more resilient than others to year-to-year environmental change? The answer surprised […]

Inspired by Nature. Powered by People

Celebrating a Remarkable Nature Festival 2026. On Saturday 27 June, as Oxfordshire experienced one of the hottest days of the year, hundreds of people came together for something worth celebrating: a festival that connected people with nature, with each other and with the inspiring work taking place to protect our environment. Despite the heatwave, The […]

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OPEN Fellowship awarded to investigate how risk impacts high-integrity carbon...

Caitlin 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 […]

Oxford Researcher Wins Prestigious Award for Work on Nature-Based Climate...

We are delighted to announce that Dr Youngho (Young) Kim, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Economics, has been awarded the Wallace E. Oates Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2024 by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE). This prestigious award recognises Dr Kim’s outstanding contribution to the field through his doctoral research at […]

Featuring on the Biodiversity Network website

If you are a member of staff, visiting researcher or a student at the University of Oxford, and you would like to feature your profile, or that of your research group on this website, please give us a few details and we’ll do the rest. To add your profile to the website click here To […]

Biodiversity Network Coffee (and talk) mornings

13th March: Klara Kaleb – Natural Language Processing for Nature-based Solutions Accessing high-quality evidence for nature-based solutions (NbS) is challenging due to the vast, fragmented scientific literature. Manual systematic reviews are slow and resource-intensive, often leading to suboptimal environmental decisions. Advances in transformer-based Natural Language Processing (NLP) offer new opportunities to automate evidence synthesis and […]

Beyond the Sensor: Building Blocks for Equitable Nature Recovery

Dr 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 […]

Unpacking the politics of Nature-based Solutions governance: Making space for...

A new open access paper – ‘Unpacking the politics of Nature-based Solutions governance: Making space for transformative change‘ explains that while Nature Based Solutions (NbS) have huge potential to tackle biodiversity loss, climate change, and human well-being, dominant governance approaches can undermine the transformative change we need. NbS have received significant attention worldwide for their […]

Cop29: Indigenous communities still being sold short as the world...

dee karen/Shutterstock Stephen Lezak, University of Oxford and Bea Addis, Washington University in St. Louis As the annual UN climate conference, Cop29, draws to a close, negotiators, civil society observers and activists are staying up late, poring over draft texts that will determine how the international community addresses climate change for years to come. Central […]

Conservation Careers

When: Tuesday 26th, 5:30-7 Where: Christ Church lecture room 2 Who for: undergrads with interest in a conservation career Sign up here: https://forms.gle/R8nkb2rGiNFqV44w9 Are you an undergrad hoping to go into a conservation-related career? Hear from the OUNCS committee about some of our varied experiences as we also attempt to get into the world of nature conservation! We all still have many […]

The climate and biodiversity crises are entwined, but we risk...

Nathalie Seddon, University of Oxford and Audrey Wagner, University of Oxford Climate change and biodiversity policies have largely evolved in isolation, even though the two crises are deeply intertwined. They have their own UN summits, with the same name and numbering system: the UN biodiversity summit Cop16 just concluded in Colombia, while the climate summit […]

An Indian village went from hunting Amur falcons to being...

Diogo Veríssimo, University of Oxford and Sahila Kudalkar, Columbia University Wildlife conservation is an exercise in human persuasion. It may seem counterintuitive that we hold the keys to the survival of wildlife, but 98% of all threatened species are threatened exclusively by human activities such as pollution, invasive species or habitat loss. Influencing human behaviour […]

Wild or manicured? Why we disagree about messy natures

Current aspirations for nature recovery to address biodiversity loss and climate change involve changing what landscapes look like What is considered neat or messy impacts on action and policy changes Nature recovery activities are highly politicised and resisted Publicised movements for messier gardens and environments can help shift public opinion to accepting less orderly environments […]

COP16 Colombia, a newcomer’s reflection

By Yadvinder Malhi In late October 2024, the UN Convention on Biodiversity held its biennial large meeting (the Conference of Parties, or COP). This convention is a sister of the better known one on climate change, both birthed in Rio in 1992, but until the last few years has languished in relative obscurity. This all […]