Integrating social data into systematic conservation planning.(4469)

Resources for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services are invariably limited and need to be spatially allocated (a place-based approach) to greatest effect. However, evaluating often multiple policy and management options is commonly extremely challenging, because of conflicting and interacting values and objectives of different stakeholders, and frequently incomplete information. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) and related approaches have been employed widely to provide support for such decision-making. In particular, they enable the consequences of alternative explicit assumptions and weightings of different considerations to be formally compared and contrasted, and often portrayed in map form. However, whilst it is clear that some allocations of resources for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation are more beneficial to human communities (including in terms of health and wellbeing) and are more socially acceptable, the integration of social data into SCP has thus far been limited.

This studentship will explore the integration of social data on individuals' benefits from, and attitudes and expectations towards, the natural environment into SCP for England. First, it will evaluate the appropriateness of, and ways of handling, different kinds of social data in the context of such tools. This will include addressing issues such as the application of 'benefits transfer' techniques that are widely employed in the context of environmental data, and issues of spatial context (e.g. views of nature) that may be rather different from those relevant to environmental data per se. Second, it will integrate key social data sets (e.g. such as ones derived from Natural England's People and Nature Survey) into SCP to examine some current significant strategic planning issues, particularly the consequences for the spatial allocations of resources for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation (such as those embodied in Local Nature Recovery Strategies, tree-planting targets and net gain) of addressing the health and wellbeing benefits of nature, the social acceptability of options, and of reducing the potential for environmental and social injustice, and the potential of an SCP approach for anticipating un-intended consequences of environmental change.

This project is a partnership between Natural England and the University of Exeter RENEW project 'Individuals' theme, and the student will work closely with Natural England, use its approaches as a case study for the research, and have opportunities to be embedded in the organisation for a period.