New nature markets at sea: evaluating stakeholder attitudes to guide policy and practice

Supervisors:

• Dr Flurina Wartmann (University of Aberdeen)
• Dr David Bailey (University of Glasgow)
• Prof Robbie McDonald (Office for Environmental Protection)
• Dr. Thomas Bodey (University of Aberdeen)
• Prof Phil Stephens (Durham University)

Project Summary:

The UK Government aims to improve the marine environment, addressing conservation and sustainable use amid competing demands. In England, the Environmental Improvement Plan (https://tinyurl.com/yc4jt485) highlights using the established biodiversity net gain (BNG) mechanism for land and developing a new marine net gain (MNG) scheme to enhance both terrestrial and marine habitats. In 2022, Defra outlined its consultation on principles of MNG, focusing on environmental improvements and both strategic and site-based approaches. A summary of the consultation (https://tinyurl.com/2s3j3xnm) revealed general support for MNG principles but differing views on policy specifics. The scope of this project is to integrate stakeholder attitudes and priorities with ecological modelling of scenarios on MGN mechanisms.

The objectives of this project, are

1. to expand on this consultation and explore perspectives of stakeholder groups regarding the proposed MNG scheme and its implementation. Stakeholders will include ecologists, policymakers, developers, conservation NGOs, private financiers and the general public. We will primarily employ social science methods such as participatory workshops, focus groups, and interviews to assess attitudes toward compensation across multiple ecological dimensions, including value, function, and risk.
2. to integrate perspectives from this in-depth stakeholder assessment into ecological models and compare model outputs with/without social science input. One example is the Ecopath with Ecosim that can incorporate cultural service value of different taxa into the model, and the StrathE2E ecological models, which allow assessing effects of measures like reducing fishing as a way of increasing biodiversity as likely one of the important ways of compensating for loss of biodiversity elsewhere at scale. Key topics to be examined and modelled depend on stakeholder perceptions and priorities, but may include, for example, onshore compensation facilitating offshore infrastructure development, integrating artificial habitats such as underwater infrastructure, and how marine net gain metrics incorporate different types of biodiversity (alpha/gamma diversity). The model outputs then serve as input for the final objective.
3. we will bring back the modelled scenario to stakeholders for discussion. We will use serious spatial planning games to assess stakeholder opinions to the different scenarios presented. And finally, to deliberate potential solutions to perceived challenges presented in the scenarios, the project will use creative and arts-based methods in a workshop setting, including future visioning as a graphical approach that has been successfully used to deliberate a range of future scenarios (Nalau and Cobb 2022) and develop shared future visions for MNG. 

To apply visit: https://netgain.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/phd-projects/

Student Profile:

We are offering an exciting opportunity for a PhD on the emergent marine biodiversity netgain approach and associated opportunities and challenges. The successful candidate will become part of our NETGAIN cohort and benefit from close collaboration with our partner organisation, the Office for Environmental Protection. As a successful candidate you will gain highly relevant experience and skills across natural and social sciences and become uniquely positioned to take on a leading role in the transformative field of nature markets.

We are therefore seeking a candidate with a degree in Social Sciences (human geography, sociology or similar) or in Environmental Sciences, ecology, biology or similar, with a keen interdisciplinary interest and ideally experience of working across subject areas in addressing environmental challenges.

This project requires the integration of social science methods (stakeholder analysis, workshop and interviews with stakeholders) into ecological models. Knowledge or previous experience in applying either social science or ecological modelling (or both) would be desirable, and an interest to build new skills is essential. Experience of working in areas of public policy, particularly in the marine environment, would be beneficial. Ability and willingness to work independently and to conduct fieldwork with stakeholders is necessary.