After our official launch event last night, Director of DICE and Centre Lead for the E3 Sharing Space for Nature initiative, Professor Bob Smith shares more on the new project.
There are many highly influential publications in the history of protected and conservation area planning. One of my favourites is a report from 2010, which provided a review of England’s wildlife sites. Even the name of the report is good, “Making Space for Nature”, although it’s more widely known as the “Lawton review” because Professor Sir John Lawton led the group of experts who produced it. This landmark review came up with 24 recommendations to tackle the limitations with England’s nature reserve networks. Crucially, it then summarised these into a five-word mantra: “more, bigger, better and joined”.
The influence of the Lawton review continues and I’m sure it’s partly because of that simple, memorable phrase. But over the years, the mantra began to mutate. People started misquoting it as “bigger, better, more joined up”, and then “bigger, better, more connected”. The new versions spread and now appear online 25 times more than the original (4,820 versus 182).
I don’t know the reason for this change. But I think it reflects the historical lack of ambition in the UK’s conservation sector. We don’t expect the word “more” to be part of the solution, so move it to a place in the sentence where it causes less fuss.
This is changing though. The “Making Space for Nature” report was a turning point in England, but many countries have come to the same conclusion. All of them recognise that nature needs more. This is why the 195 countries that have signed the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed in 2022 to increase the global coverage of conservation areas to 30% by 2030 (known as ’30 by 30′).
At present, the official data shows 18% of the land and 8% of the sea is covered by protected and conserved areas, so meeting the 30% target will be incredibly challenging. It requires a radical shift in how we imagine, design and implement conservation areas, especially in multifunctional landscapes and seascapes, and a particular focus on developing effective and inclusive approaches.
These changes must be underpinned by relevant research, but we lack the capacity to supply the evidence we need. This is why we have officially launched the “Sharing Space for Nature” initiative at the University of Kent, supported by Research England’s Expanding Excellence in England (E3) fund. Through this £8.3 million 5-year project based at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), we are employing 14 new staff. This new team will work with existing DICE members to develop research and innovation work related to nature recovery, ecological networks and conservation areas, all in collaboration with our local, national and international partners.
Our project name “Sharing Space for Nature” is a nod to the Lawton review, building on their ambition. It also emphasises that conservation is mostly about people and their interactions with nature, whether it’s wilding projects in East Kent or community-run conservation areas in Mexico and Mozambique.
By building on DICE’s 35 years of interdisciplinary research and training, we will provide evidence and guidance to help inform progress towards the ‘30 by 30’ target, producing conservation area networks that benefit both people and nature.