Policy

I’ve been interested in the science-policy interface for a number of years, but particularly since undertaking a BBSRC-funded Fellowship at the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology in 2014. I have continued my work in this area and highlight only a few key activities:

• I am a Lead Author on the Thematic assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

• In preparation for COP15 (2022), I developed a scenario-builder tool; this allowed me to quickly predict the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) under new scenarios in order to reflect daily progress of the negotiations. I worked closely with artist Thijs Biersteker, who then fed these new BII values (updated twice daily) into his artwork: a robotic plant that grew or wilted depending on our progress. Thijs and I were invited to the official COP press conference to talk about this work further.

• I was one of two science experts at the Launch of the CSaP Policy Fellows Climate and Sustainability Cluster (July 2023).

• I developed a pilot data portal for policy makers to access our biodiversity indicator data. In the run-up to COP26 (2021), this idea was developed into The Biodiversity Trends Explorer (BTE).

• I led the analysis of the BII for a piece of consultancy work for Vivid Economics, which fed into the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity HM Treasury (2021).