Examples of current and past research and consulting projects
Transformative Actions for Resilient Coastal Communities (TRACC) (2024-2028)
Role: Joint Principal Investigator
Resilience is place specific, determined by complex interrelations between biophysical, sociocultural, and economic circumstances. TRACC will explore and implement new transformative place- and values-based governance structures to support coastal resilience and sustainability across Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. We will co-develop Resilience Collectives (RCs): regional partnerships between researchers, communities and stakeholders to investigate and address pressing, interrelated resilience issues facing coastal communities. Each RC will co-develop a deep understanding of the systemic barriers and opportunities to achieve transformative change, developing Transdisciplinary Actions Plans (TAPs) to support place-based community resilience and governance. The learning and experiences of each RC will be drawn together and shared nationally via a newly created UK Resilience Assembly, supported by the Coastal Partnerships Network (CPN) and other TRACC partners to maximise project impact and legacy.
Branching Beyond: New routes for social and cultural values in urban treescape decisions (2023-2025)
Role: Principal Investigator
Most studies on urban trees neglect wider social and cultural values that cannot easily be valued. Branching Beyond builds on Branching Out (see below) to develop a new tool that integrates multiple values for visioning futures for urban treescapes, tested and validated with citizen panels and end users in Edinburgh and Camden (London). Local authorities and community groups will have access to the new visioning tool through Forest Research and the Local Government Association, and Branching Beyond will also deliver a number of training sessions.
Project website: www.valueoftrees.co.uk/branchingbeyond
Branching Out – New Routes to developing urban treescapes (2021-2024)
Role: Work package lead
Most studies on urban trees neglect wider social and cultural values that cannot easily be valued. Consequently, we do not meaningfully account for the symbolic, heritage, spiritual, social, and cultural values of treescapes. Branching Out is working with local authorities and diverse stakeholders and citizen panels in York, Milton Keynes and Cardiff, developing new ways of mapping, predicting, and communicating social and cultural values to support robust, evidence-based decision making and management.
Project website: www.valueoftrees.co.uk
Global Assessment for a New Economics (2020-2025)
Role: Principal Investigator
The COVID-19 pandemic showed that the world can respond to global crisis with huge changes of assumptions, mindsets and habit and with decisive political action. Now is the moment to make sure those changes evolve into pathways that create a flourishing and just future for people and planet, addressing not just the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic but also the climate, nature and inequality emergencies. GANE seeks to (1) synthesise key principles across diverse new economics approaches (2) develop global deliberative dialogues to support action.
Project website: neweconomics.net
Navigate – Integrating multiple values into economic decisions (2022-2025)
Role: Work package lead
NAVIGATE aims to enhance our understanding of diverse value concepts and explore how these values might be better integrated into economic thinking and policy decisions. Our research will draw on a range of scientific and policy perspectives to provide greater clarity on definitions of diverse value concepts, how they might be measured (using both monetary and other indicators) and how they might best be integrated into policy and business decisions. To test our ideas, we will apply our methods to four case studies that will value the non-instrumental values associated with forests and woodlands. Our case studies include: the UK national forest; a new woodland that has recently been planted in Wales to store carbon, reduce flooding and promote outdoor recreation; urban woodland in the City of Helsinki, Finland; and forestry supply chains linking Tanzania and the UK.
Project website: navigate.aber.ac.uk
Social and Economic Understanding of Marine Natural Capital (2024)
Role: Consultant
This project, commissioned by Defra and delivered in collaboration with Plymouth Marine Lab, undertook an audit of marine natural capital and ecosystem assessment projects, stakeholder mapping and a structured review of sociocultural valuation studies and approaches. A key outcome is a series of sixteen recommendations of where resources and/or external stakeholder input could be strategically and effectively deployed to expand current projects and to commission new projects to address priority gaps in understanding.
GGR-Peat: greenhouse gas removal by accelerated peat formation (2021-2025)
Role: Consultant
This project is developing and refining sustainable peatland management practices to reverse the trend for peatland degradation that emits greenhouse gases. By restoring this vital habitat, we can directly remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and store – or sequester – it in the ground. This process involves peat formation that results in Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR), which allows peatland to build up to pre-industrialised levels and store more and more carbon in the soil each year. By developing practices to manage and restore peatland habitat, we can accelerate GGR at scale, for the UK and beyond. We will also work with stakeholders to deliberatively value the changes resulting from these interventions.
Project website: www.ggrpeat.org
Valuation of potential marine protected areas in the United Arab Emeritates (2022-2024)
Role: Consultant
This project, commissioned by WWF/Emirates Nature and in collaboration with Seascape Ecology, is considering the value of potential new marine protected areas in the UAE in both monetary and non-monetary terms through a combination of stakeholder workshops, contingent valuation with residents and visitors, and use of well-being indicators.
IPBES Values Assessment (2018-2022)
Role: Lead Author (Chapter 2: Conceptualisation of values)
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has launched an assessment to develop a detailed conceptualisation of the values associated with nature and nature’s contributions to people. The assessment is considering conceptualisation of values, methods for assessing values, the interface between values and decision making, capacity building, and the role of values in societal transformation towards sustainability.
PERICLES: maritime cultural heritage (2018-2022)
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
PERICLES is an EU-funded research and innovation project. The project promotes sustainable, participatory governance of cultural heritage in European coastal and maritime regions. The team has developed a portal for participatory mapping of maritime heritage and is engaged in a diversity of demonstrator projects in a Scottish-Irish case region linking culture to marine planning, fisheries, and sustainable development.
Project website: www.pericles-heritage.eu
ESDecide: Integrated River management (2019-2021)
Role: Consultant
The ESDecide project, funded by the Ireland Environmental Protection Agency, aims to develop an evidence-based decision support tool for managing Ireland’s freshwater ecosystem services. The team is applying the Life Framework of Values to map and deliberate values around river ecosystems with a diversity of stakeholders.
Peat Pilots: shared and social values (2019-2020)
Role: Consultant
This project commissioned by Natural England is focusing on understanding shared and social values around peatland management in Defra’s five designated Peat Pilots. The project involves interviews and deliberative workshops to understand barriers and opportunities for peatland restoration, and involves deliberation around agri-environmental policy for peatlands post-Brexit.
Deliberative valuation of Spanish silvo-pastoral management (2019-2020)
Role: Co-investigator
This collaboration between the Polytechnical University of Catalunya and the shared values team at York involves developing deliberative economic assessments of social values for forest meadow ecosystems to enhance biodiversity, landscape quality and local livelihoods, whilst reducing wild fire risks.
Clyde Marine Plan Public Dialogue and Deliberative Monetary Valuation (2018-2019)
Role: Consultant
The shared values team worked with Collinwood Environmental Partners and the Clyde Marine Planning Partnership to deliver a public dialogue to inform priority setting in the Regional Marine Plan.
A second stage of the research took place when the draft plan was published, to assess social values and fair prices for its implementation.
Valuing Nature Programme: Peatland Tipping Points (2017-2019)
Role: Work package lead
The VNP’s Peatland Tipping Points project is investigating how changes in climate and how we manage land might lead to abrupt changes, or “tipping points”, in the benefits that peatlands provide to UK society. The project has helped to develop and evaluate options for policy and practice that can help prevent tipping points being reached and facilitate restoration and sustainable management of peatlands across the UK. A range of shared values approaches were used linking economic and interpretive methods to participatory scenario analysis and deliberative valuation.
Marine Ecosystems Research Programme (2017-2018)
Role: Work package lead
The UK MERP programme used shared values approaches to link ecosystem models to economic, social and cultural impact analysis to understand how changes in marine ecosystems resulting from policy and environmental change will affect human well-being. The approach brought together bioeconomic models, economic contingent behaviour models, ethnographic research, local knowledge and stakeholder deliberation to provide a comprehensive picture of potential environmental and social changes related to marine ecosystems, and brings together researchers and decision makers to consider how society might respond to these. One of the key outputs of the project was the first empirical testing of the Life Framework of Values.
Community Voice Approaches to Marine Management (2014-2016)
Role: Consultant
This project involved a collaboration between the shared values team, the Marine Conservation Society, the Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority and Natural England to develop shared values around management measures for Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) in England. The approach harnesses ethnographic film to assess and bring together diverse values across communities, which then feed into a deliberative analytical process where stakeholders evaluate potential management scenarios to support decisions by Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities. The approach has been succesfully applied to two MCZs in Sussex, on the English south coast, and has since been extended to a range of marine decision making contexts.
Cooperative Participatory Evaluation of Renewable Technologies on Ecosystem Services (CORPORATES) (2014-2015)
Role: Co-investigator
The CORPORATES project was a collaboration between researchers (University of Aberdeen, Scottish Association for Marine Science, James Hutton Institute, Marine Scotland Science), policy makers (Scottish Government) and renewable energy companies (Mainstream, Seagree, Repsol) to develop a decision support mechanism to exchange knowledge and develop shared values around ecosystem services associated with marine energy developments. The project focused on interactions between marine energy and other marine uses, including biodiversity conservation, fisheries, recreation and tourism in a marine spatial planning context.
Policy brief | Project report
Project website: www.corporatesproject.co.uk
Valuing the Dark Peak: A Deliberative Approach to Payments for Peatland Ecosystem Services (2014-15)
Role: Consultant
This project explored opportunities fot a Payments for Ecosystem Services scheme in the Dark Peak upland moorland region of England, in the Peak District National Park. The project brought together a wide range of stakeholders and used deliberative monetary valuation to assess shared values for peatland restoration, negotiating fair prices for potential payments.
UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-On (2012-14)
Role: Principal Investigator (Shared and Plural Values)
The UK NEAFO aimed at addressing key knowledge gaps exposed by the UK NEA. One of these was an understanding that the significant collective meanings and values of ecosystems were underrecognised and new concepts, methods and indicators were needed to assess these shared values, and in particular to more comprehensively incorporate cultural ecosystem services into decisions. The work packages on Cultural Ecosystem Services and Shared, Plural and Cultural Values of Ecosystems developed a comprensive framework of shared values, a novel place-based and relational conceptualisation of cultural services, and demonstrated a wide variety of deliberative, interpretative and analytical methods to assess these services and values and integrate them into decisions.
Special issue | Handbook for decision-makers | Policy brief | Technical reports
Project website: uknea.unep-wcmc.org
Cultural services from marine protected areas (2012-2014)
Role: Principal Investigator
This collaboration with the Marine Conservation Society involved a large-scale assessment of monetary and non-monetary cultural ecosystem service benefits and values of 151 potential MPAs across UK seas as well as comparison of a survey-based and deliberative approach.
Peer-reviewed report: Kenter et al. 2013
Peer reviewed publications:
Jobvogt et al. 2014, Bryce et al., 2016, Kenter et al. 2016.
Valuing the Inner Forth (2011-2013)
Role: Principal Investigator
The shared values team worked with the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative, regional councils and other stakeholders in Scotland to undertake extensive deliberation with community councils to assess monetary and non-monetary values for intertidal restoration and integrated natural and cultural heritage landscape interventions. This involved linking participatory mapping, participatory systems modelling and deliberative monetary valuation.
Valuing Nature Network – Bridging the gap between supply of and demand for valuation evidence (BRIDGE) (2012-13)
Role: Project Manager
The VNN BRIDGE project investigated the relationship between the ‘supply of’ and ‘demand for’ evidence on the value of nature. By better understanding the processes around the generation and uptake of knowledge, and the needs of decision-makers, we can help improve the decisions that policy-makers, businesses and the third sector make. The research highlighted interactions between plural interpretations of value and how these interacted with decision making contexts, and the potential for deliberation to enhance the potential effectiveness of valuation evidence.
Peer reviewed publication: What are shared and social values?
Special issue on Ecosystem Services and Knowledge Utilisation
Project website: valuing-nature.net/values-decisions
Deliberative valuation in the Solomon Islands (2009-2012)
Role: PhD Researcher
Working with a bridging organisation, the Kahua Association, we linked extensive participatory action research with deliberative monetary valuation of ecosystem services to build capacity in local communities for sustainable rainforest management.