Published on 21 May 2024
Sophie Stenson – University of Exeter
Dr Oliver James – University of Exeter
Dr Lewis Elliot – University of Exeter
.
.
Renewing biodiversity will require a workforce with the right skills, knowledge and experience. Relatively little is currently known about the nature workforce or how it might develop in future. The rapidly expanding nature recovery sector is facing a skills shortage and relies on many forms of voluntary contributions, from citizen participation to donations, the impact and extent of which is poorly understood.
This work extends to understanding the motivations and barriers which affect participation in nature recovery, community engagement with nature recovery and information strategies to connect top-down with bottom-up approaches.
.
We collected data from the Conservation Careers jobs board to map the UK nature workforce as it is now and over the last decade. We explored the motivations and barriers to participation in nature recovery by running a quantitative analysis on a questionnaire with nature recovery participants and then a series of semi-structured interviews with nature recovery community engagement professionals. We have also worked in collaboration with Natural England to inform the development of the Explore Framework – a holistic decision support tool, by investigating the impact of equivalence framing on nature performance reporting to local communities. These tools help decision-makers consider factors in addition to economic growth, such as environmental health or social equity, and are important for local community planning processes to achieve sustainable governance. A policy briefing note including research into successful UK and international examples explored how decision-makers have incorporated nature recovery into their wider strategic planning and how we can spread best practices at different levels from local to international governance.
.
This research is ongoing until October 2026. We hope it will inform the use of strategic decision-support tools and help spread best practice in how these tools can affect public participation in nature recovery.
