ExCASES Mission: The Future of Biodiversity Renewal, insights from the RENEW community

Published on 12 August 2025

Blog post by: David Bavin, Postdoctoral Researcher, National Trust

People perceive and engage with biodiversity renewal in different ways, shaped by many factors including experience, identity, cultural background, and values. This plurality is not necessarily a bad thing – and indeed, increased diversity is generally healthy – but it can also, when not explicitly acknowledged and tended to, undermine efficacy and lead to inequitable outcomes.

Exploring diversity

The aim of this ExCASES mission was to explore the diversity of values, worldviews and understandings that shape aspirations towards biodiversity renewal amongst the RENEW community (programme staff and partner organisation representatives) – to identify and better understand areas of agreement, divergence, tension, and shared aspirations around key themes in biodiversity renewal.

The ExCASES team engaged with RENEW through employment of a novel process, the Restoration Partnership Development Toolkit. Participants responded online to statements that captured prominent aspects of biodiversity conservation, grouped into five key themes: 1) Decision making, finance, justice and equity; 2) Relationships and relational values; 3) Land use, farming and food systems; 4) Resilient and functioning ecosystems; 5) Conservation approaches. The outcomes from this survey provided the focus for a facilitated process at the RENEW Biodiversity Parliament 2024, where participants reflected on and collectively discussed the results of the survey. A number of key themes and findings emerged which are presented in the mission report, along with aspirational visions created by groups of participants for each of the five overarching themes.

A photograph of researchers looking at a presentation slide about different biodiversity perspectives.

Above: Workshop activity at the RENEW Biodiversity Parliament 2024 hosted by the ExCASES team.

The process proved a rewarding and thought-provoking experience for attendees. On reflection, embracing diverse perspectives and approaches can be powerful, but it requires deliberate effort to build coherence and shared direction to ensure that diversity enhances rather than hinders collective impact. As a community of different academics and practitioners who care about the renewal of biodiversity, we need diverse approaches to tackle the complex and multivariate ecological and climate crises.

The outcomes of this mission shed light on how we might work together to support this and invites a conversation to identify new and potentially fruitful collaborations, and perhaps research gaps or future trajectories within and beyond RENEW.

Access both reports below: