Dr Annette Green: The Restoration Partnership Development Toolkit

Landscape-scale restoration projects are proliferating as the urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises intensifies; they are also, inevitably, power-laden processes which take place in peopled landscapes. The various stakeholders in restoration landscapes often make competing claims about how a landscape should (or should not) change, informed by their personal and professional perspectives. The parlance of participation has entered into mainstream conservation discourse, and (most) restoration projects at least acknowledge the importance of engaging diverse voices. In practice, however, the diverse perspectives of those affected by restoration are not always fully captured or considered in planning processes.
In this seminar, Annette will discuss her experiences in developing and then using an adaptable social science-based toolkit for understanding and deliberating diverse perspectives in complex restoration landscapes. Drawing on examples from working in Cumbria and the Cambridgeshire Fens, she will demonstrate how data from perspective elicitation surveys can be used to structure and facilitate (potentially) difficult conversations between stakeholders who may have fundamentally differing values, priorities and perspectives – including restoration project leaders, farmers, estate managers, ecologists, professionals, local government representatives and others. Engaging with literature on conflict in conservation, Annette proposes that acknowledging points of disagreement – and discussing them in a structured environment – can enhance mutual understanding and build trust between stakeholders, as well as generate interesting data for researchers.

Dr Annette Green is a political ecologist interested in conservation ideas and strategies. She is particularly interested in how beliefs about society and nature underpin decision-making processes related to conservation and/or land use, and in using social science methods as hybrid data collection-engagement tools. Currently, she is employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Landscape Regeneration, a five-year project supported by the NERC Changing the Environment Programme. In this role, she conducts social science research into (often competing) perspectives on landscape management and restoration, as held by various stakeholders, in two parts of the UK: Cumbria and the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Title photo: © Glynis Pierson