DICE has been awarded £8.3 million by Research England’s Expanding Excellence in England (E3) for a five-year project titled “Sharing Space for Nature: enhancing the role of conservation areas in tackling current environmental crises“.
The E3 ‘Sharing space for nature’ initiative stems from new Convention on Biological Diversity targets, which commit every country to nearly double the area of land and sea managed for nature to 30% by 2030. This requires a radical shift in how we imagine, design and implement successful and inclusive conservation solutions in multifunctional landscapes and seascapes.
The project began in August 2024 and involves existing DICE members and 14 new staff (3 lecturers, 5 Research Fellows, 3 Innovation Fellows and 3 professional service staff).
Our work will generate the high impact interdisciplinary research needed for informed decision-making, operating across three spatial scales. In East Kent, we will co-produce approaches to understand and establish innovative initiatives for wilding, climate change mitigation via forest and coastal ecosystem restoration and nature-based job creation. In South East England, we will provide knowledge and skills to assist in delivering new policies to develop county-level nature recovery networks. Internationally, we will establish a collaborative cross-national research programme examining the potential for new types of conservation area to contribute effectively to meeting global conservation targets.
E3 funding is designed to support local and regional impact, as well as support broader research excellence, so our project has three main components with a different geographical focus:
- Wilding East Kent
- South East Nature Recovery Networks
- Meeting Global Conserved Area Targets
This month marks the official launch of the E3 Sharing Space for Nature initiative and will be marked by a launch event held on the University of Kent campus. There are limited tickets available on Eventbrite if you would like to attend and celebrate with us. Later this month, the E3 website will be launched, where you can find out more information about the project and the people working on it.