The initial program for The Living Pavilion (May 1-17) has now been released – including over 60 thought-provoking and inspiring events featuring speakers, research activities, workshops and more.
Amongst 40,000 plants endemic to the Kulin Nation, The Living Pavilion’s temporary event space and living lab will bring together local designers, artists and scientists to explore relationships across Indigenous knowledge systems, ecological science, sustainable design and participatory arts. CAUL Hub is co-producing this event as a key research and knowledge brokering activity – and as such will be conducting research in a range of topics, such as urban greening, biodiversity place making and social science; and presenting our research through the CAUL Hub Talk series. For 17 days, The Living Pavilion will be open to all members of the public – to wander through and experience the dynamic landscape and enjoy the free programmed events and performances.
The successful conservation of insect biodiversity in urban environments relies, in part, on making insects and their ecological interactions tangible to people. But given that most insect species are small and fast, they remain largely unknown to onlookers, and are thus excluded from many conservation and citizen science programs.
To overcome this, CAUL Hub researchers Blythe Vogel and Luis Mata have helped host a series of ‘pollinator observatories’ workshops at Westgate Park. During these workshops, citizen scientists learn to identify different native and non-native pollinators and make observations of their interactions with different indigenous plants either on paper or using the CAUL Hub Urban Wildlife App. Not only does this provide researchers with critical data on the factors and seasonality driving plant-pollinator interactions in urban greenspaces, it is also helping to reconnect people with nature and showcase the benefits that nature provides to people and other species. Earlier this month, Westgate Biodiversity Bili Nursery & Landcare, City of Melbourne and CAUL Hub hosted the ‘Summer Citizen Science Workshop’ – the seventh and final in the series of pollinator observatories sessions at Westgate Park. Over 30 participants had the opportunity to learn about the project’s findings thus far, including the high diversity of native flies and bees that call the park home.
Featured image: Citizen scientists in Westgate Park. Credit: Luis Mata
Citizen science and other types of participatory activities can be tremendously engaging for people when properly designed. But by adopting some of the principles that make these approaches
engaging, we can also design research-oriented, crowd-sourcing instruments that engage large numbers of participants and allow researchers to easily collect massive amounts of social science data. As part of CAUL Hub’s project ‘The Shared Urban Habitat,’ my colleagues and I have developed the Animal Attractiveness Survey – a photo-preference and quantitative social science instrument that is collecting data on the visual and social features that make animals attractive and charismatic to people. Developed in 2018, the survey aims to reach a diverse range of participants from all over the world.
The data from this survey will feed into the decision-making framework we are currently developing, called ‘Bringing Nature Back into Cities’. We believe that the success of any action to bring nature back into cities ultimately depends on the ability of decision-makers to target the most suitable and appropriate species. A key question to ask when conceptualising the social dimension of this model is how charismatic is the species? The Animal Attractiveness Survey was
conceived to address this question. The photo-preference technique of the survey was adopted from a scientific paper that used this approach to study mammal charisma in five countries. Interestingly, the study showed that, to a degree, Australians found local species more charismatic than other more traditionally charismatic megafauna, such as tigers and elephants. By developing a survey that can potentially reach people in every country around the world, we are interested to see whether this pattern can be generalised to other regions. We are hoping the survey data will also help us explore whether people prefer specific animal taxa over others, for example mammals over birds, and whether people prefer animals that are biologically related to humans, such as apes, monkeys and lemurs.
When work on the Animal Attractiveness Survey began, I was surprised to learn that no open-access platform existed to conduct research-oriented, crowd-sourced data collection. At the time, I had been involved in a few expert elicitation exercises, which sought to inform research through the knowledge of domain experts. The Public Elicitation Platform was born from this idea – to support research themes in which everyone can be an expert.
Take part in the Animal Attractiveness Survey by heading over to the Public Elicitation Platform: https://publicelicitation.org/
Building upon earlier air quality research in Liverpool, CAUL Hub has helped establish an air quality monitoring site at Liverpool Girls High School, in Sydney’s south-west. The site was installed in late February, and is a collaboration between CAUL Hub, Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH).
The site will help measure air quality in the area and also provide the opportunity for the high school students to design and run their own air quality citizen science projects in their community. Considerable time, expertise and equipment has been dedicated to the project from all involved researchers and contributing agencies. The new monitoring site includes a full portable air quality station, equivalent to OEH's permanent installations around the state, and a Radon detector, installed by ANSTO to measure atmospheric turbulence. ANSTO have also offered data from their long-term PM2.5 monitoring station in Liverpool.
Image: Part of the Randwick air quality team. L-R: Kate Sneesby, Lachlan Spicer, Clare Murphy, Alex Kuhar, Jenny Xu and Imogen Wadlow.
Last week, the CAUL Hub co-hosted a workshop on nature-based solutions with international collaborator NATURVATION at RMIT University.
The workshop was led by Professor Harriet Bulkeley, Leader of the NATURVATION program, as well as Dr. Judy Bush and Dr. Cathy Oke from the CAUL Hub. It provided the opportunity for over 30 Australian researchers, practitioners and policy makers to come together to discuss nature-based solutions in local urban development, and how these projects could contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
What are nature-based solutions?
Nature-based solutions use the natural properties of ecosystems. They have the potential to limit impacts of climate change, enhance biodiversity and improve environmental quality while contributing to economic activities and social well-being. Examples are green roofs and city parks that limit heat stress, urban wetlands that store water and permeable surfaces, vegetation and rain gardens to intercept storm water. Yet despite their significant potential, the use of nature-based solutions remains marginal, fragmented, and highly uneven within and between cities.
Why is this relevant?
Growing international attention is now being directed to the potential for cities to work with nature to address a broad range of sustainability goals - from climate resilience to health and well-being, economic development to biodiversity. Within Europe, a significant programme of investment is focusing on the impact of ‘nature-based solutions’ in relation to environmental, economic and social outcomes. Global organisations including ICLEI, the IUCN, The Nature Conservancy, the UNFCCC, WWF and many others are seeking to mobilise urban actions that are working with nature to realise sustainability goals, and in particular the SDGs. Locally, there are examples at all levels of Australian governments of investment in research and infrastructure with these outcomes in mind.
Central to these efforts is the realisation that working with nature can potentially address multiple goals simultaneously. For example, the provision of green space in cities can cool the surrounding city, reduce pollutants, provide a sense of well-being, create inclusive spaces and encourage physical activity. Whilst more and more research and on-ground experience confirms these contributions, we currently have limited ability or capacity to plan and capture the multiple contributions that nature can make towards the SDGs and to create the means through which this value can be recognised, and investment enabled.
Green roofs, like this one in Melbourne, are examples of nature-based solutions. Credit: Judy Bush
Towards the SDGs with nature-based solutions
The workshop functioned in three sections:
Introducing nature-based solutions CAUL Hub researchers Professor Sarah Bekessy and Dr. Bush, as well as industry partner Greening the Pipeline, shared local opportunities of nature-based solutions from around Melbourne.The diverse presentations highlighted the challenges of bringing back or maintaining nature in cities. This included the importance of local solutions for local ecologies when looking to replicate international success, and ensuring links to practice and practicality. There was plenty of optimism that with good governance and a linked-up approach, more nature in cities will be a reality sooner rather than later – especially if practice uses the evidence base to select the right nature-based solutions for their purpose and project aims.Judy Bush presenting during the workshop. Credit: @naturvation via Twitter
Exploring the NATURVATION Urban IndexThe Urban Nature Index is a new approach being developed as part of the EU-funded NATURVATION project, to evaluate how nature can contribute to SDGs. The NATURVATION Urban Index uses the existing evidence base to identify a set of environmental, social, cultural and economic indicators that can be used to evaluate how different kinds of nature contribute to twelve urban sustainability goals.Starting with a generalized assessment, the Index is designed to encourage discussion and debate about urban priorities. Currently, the Index can be used to explore how different interventions can contribute to sustainable development goals, or to examine how a specific type of urban nature project will support key priorities.Participants explored how the application of this tool can reveal the diverse ways in which a proposed urban nature project might contribute to multiple sustainability goals, the trade-offs involved, and how the diverse contributions that nature can make to urban sustainability can be debated and prioritized. According to Dr Bush, this was a great opportunity for Australian researchers and practitioners to reflect on the tool's useability and usefulnesss."It was a unique way for us to be able to contribute to NATURVATION’s research - by testing the tool and the model for ease of use, clarity and generalisability," says Dr. Bush.
Business models for nature-based solutionsDuring this interactive section, participants turned from questions of how we can plan and capture the multiple values of nature in cities, to how we might find practical ways of designing and implementing the business models and financing required to realise its potential. Working with a range of business models that have been identified as supporting the use of nature in cities, participants explored the different pieces of the 'finance puzzle' needed to create the potential for securing investment and experiment with diverse ways in which these could be bought together to enable cities to work with nature to address their sustainability goals."The Business Model exercise served to reinforce the multiple benefits and services provided by nature-based solutions, and prompted us to build the business case using the business planning language of ‘value proposition’, ‘value capture,'" reflected Dr Bush. "As a result of our testing, we proposed that ‘customers’ should instead be called ‘beneficiaries’, so that we can include non-human biodiversity in the business planning approach."
The workshop provided the chance for researchers and policy makers to come together to highlight and discuss key policy needs, existing research and research gaps.
Dr. Oke reflected that "it was great to see a tool utilising the evidence base for key indicators of the SDGs, so practitioners and policy makers can make informed decisions on which nature-based solutions provide the greatest outcome."
The CAUL Hub looks forward to contributing to this with local evidence from our research hub and partners.
