LEVERHULME NATURE RECOVERY CENTRE LAUNCHED

Centre Director Professor Yadvinder Malhi spoke to a large audience drawn from surrounding communities as well as University post holders and other staff and students.

He spoke about the ambitious objectives of the Centre to achieve truly interdisciplinary cooperation across many parts of the University of Oxford and the local community and City and County.

‘The ongoing loss and degradation of nature and its biodiversity are amongst the greatest challenges of our time.’

‘The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, will tackle the challenge of halting and reversing this loss of biodiversity by addressing the ecological, social, cultural and economic dimensions of nature recovery in a single framework, harnessing state-of-the-art technologies and developing and testing an innovative model to deliver nature recovery at scale.’

Oxford’s vision for the Centre will lead it to act as a hub for innovative thinking, discussion and analysis of nature recovery, the Centre uniting researchers from a wide range of disciplines to collaborate on a range of projects in conjunction with national and international partners.

Successful nature recovery necessitates not only an understanding of ecology and land use, but land rights plus cultural, social, food provision, health and wellbeing, and the economic value of landscapes.

The £10 million Centre was first announced in January 2022, one of three UK centres established with a hotly-contested Leverhulme Trust 2021 award. On top of the 10-year Leverhulme funding, the Centre will receive £5 million in co-funding from the University of Oxford, which will support fundamental cross-disciplinary research.