Panel Discussion: 'Measuring what matters: biodiversity metrics for business and finance'

Forthcoming Event

Date
 10 February 2026, 5:00pm - 6:30pm
Registration Required

Location
 Oxford Martin School & Online
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

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This panel discussion will explore how biodiversity science can better inform decisions in business, finance, government and other bodies.

The panel will examine:

• What biodiversity science can currently say about state and trends, and which dimensiongenuinely matter for decision-making across marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
• How to navigate proliferating metrics and frameworks (TNFD, SBTN, national indicators, emerging biodiversity credits).
• Where scientific frontiers lie: from genomics and AI-enabled monitoring to functional trait metrics, plural biodiversity knowledge and global synthetic indices.
• How to ensure that scientific advances directly support nature-positive trajectories and do not inadvertently reinforce extractive forms of measurement or governance.

The discussion will also consider how biodiversity metrics can be developed in ways that respect the rights, knowledge systems, and governance structures of Indigenous peoples (many of whom who are among the world’s most effective stewards of biodiversity).  

Of course, better science is only part of what is needed for business to be more biodiversity positive.   This event is part of a seminar series co-organised by OMS and the LSE Global School of Sustainability in support of the IPBES Plenary meeting taking place in Manchester in the first week of February.  The Plenary will see the release of a major IPBES Report on Biodiversity & Business and this seminar series will explore topics related to this theme (biodiversity, economic and political economy aspects).

Panel:

Professor Nathalie Seddon, Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Biology, University of Oxford (Chair)
Dr Elizabeth Boakes, Conservation Scientist, RSPB Conservation Science Monitoring Team 
Professor Andy Purvis, Research Leader, Natural History Museum, London
Professor Kate Jones, Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity, University College London
Professor Mark Blaxter, Head of the Tree of Life Programme, Wellcome Sanger Institute
Professor Anjali Goswami, Chief Scientific Adviser and Director General Science, Data and Analysis, DEFRA
 

REGISTRATION

Nathalie Seddon bio pic

Professor Nathalie Seddon
Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Biology, University of Oxford (Chair) 

Nathalie Seddon is Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford, where she is Founding Director of the Nature-based Solutions Initiative and Director of the Oxford Martin School’s Agile Initiative. In 2021, she co-founded the social venture Nature-based Insights to support companies in implementing nature-based solutions with integrity. More recently, she co-founded the non-profit I Stand Beside, which works to rekindle nature connection in society.

Trained as a behavioural ecologist at the University of Cambridge, Nathalie has over 25 years of research experience across diverse ecosystems worldwide. Her work is now highly interdisciplinary, focusing on the role of nature-based solutions in social and ecological flourishing, and on strengthening the influence of robust biodiversity science and Indigenous knowledges in climate and development policy.

She has recently served on the UK Climate Change Committee, was Academic Co-Lead for the UK’s first People’s Assembly for Nature, and is a trustee of the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance. In 2024, she received the British Ecology Society’s Marsh Award for Ecology.

Elizabeth Boakes Bio pic

Dr Elizabeth Boakes
Conservation Scientist, RSPB Conservation Science Monitoring Team

Elizabeth is a Scientist in the RSPB’s Conservation Science Monitoring team. She is interested in the connections between biodiversity and human society and aims to incorporate this theme into her research projects. Currently, she is working on a collaborative project with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, exploring biodiversity metrics for use in the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). Prior to this, Elizabeth worked as a postdoc at UCL, studying the impacts of the global trade in food on biodiversity.  

Andy Purvis Bio pic

Professor Andy Purvis
Research Leader, Natural History Museum, London

Professor Andy Purvis is a Research Leader at the Natural History Museum in London. He co-leads the Biodiversity Futures Lab and the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems), which aims to model globally how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human pressures and to use these models to project potential biodiversity futures under alternative scenarios of socioeconomic development. Other current projects aim to understand global trends in insect biodiversity, and to improve access to nature for the UK’s schoolchildren. He was a Coordinating Lead Author on the first IPBES Global Assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services (published in 2019), scientific advisor on Sir David Attenborough’s documentary, “Extinction: The Facts” (2020) and a contributor to Greta Thunberg’s “The Climate Book” (2022).

Kate Jones Bio pic

Professor Kate Jones
Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity, University College London

Kate Jones is an ecologist whose interdisciplinary research investigates the interface of ecological and human health. Her research understands the impact of global land use and climate change on ecological and human systems, with a particular focus on emerging infectious diseases from animals. Kate’s work also focuses on generating better tools for monitoring the status of wildlife populations, developing some of the first applied artificial intelligence tools for monitoring ecosystems, and further understanding how citizen science data can be used to understand biodiversity trends.

Kate is the Director of The People and Nature Lab at UCL’s new cross-disciplinary campus in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (UCL East). Kate has held appointments at the Zoological Society of London, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, University of Virginia, and Imperial College London. She has written over 150 articles and book chapters in prestigious journals, is a UK government scientific advisor, chaired The Bat Conservation Trust for 5 years, and served as an expert advisor to the UK’s Climate Change Committee. Kate won the Leverhulme Prize for outstanding contributions to Zoology in 2008, and in 2022 won both ZSL’s Marsh Award for Conservation Biology and British Ecology Society’s Marsh Award for Ecology.

Mark Blaxter Bio pic

Professor Mark Blaxter
Head of the Tree of Life Programme, Wellcome Sanger Institute

Mark Blaxter leads the Sanger Institute’s Tree of Life programme, generating and analysing genome sequences from thousands of species across the tree of life, especially Britain and Ireland (the Darwin Tree of Life project). His own research portfolio focuses on the genomics of neglected, non-model organisms - especially using the chromosomally-complete genome sequences generated by Tree of Life work -  and the interpretation of those genomes in ecological and evolutionary contexts (including, inter alia, parasitic and free living nematodes, tardigrades, gastropod and bivalve molluscs, butterflies, bees, flies, birds, algae, fungi and bacteria). He has played a key role in defining pattern and process in chromosome evolution in lepidoptera (comprising 10% of all described species) and nematodes. Before joining Sanger, he was Professor of Evolutionary Genomics in the University of Edinburgh. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.

Anjali Goswami Bio pic

Professor Anjali Goswami
Chief Scientific Adviser and Director General Science, Data and Analysis, DEFRA

Professor Anjali Goswami was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser and Director General Science, Data and Analysis at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 1 July 2025.

Anjali is a research leader in evolutionary biology and former Dean of Postgraduate Education at the Natural History Museum, London, an Honorary Professor in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, and Past President of the Linnean Society of London.

She received her B.Sc. from the University of Michigan in 1998 and her PhD from the University of Chicago 2005, followed by a US National Science Foundation fellowship held at the Natural History Museum and a JRF at King’s College and lectureship in Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Her expertise is in vertebrate evolution and development, particularly in the emerging area of evolutionary phenomics. She and her group develop and apply new approaches to capturing the complex three-dimensional shapes of organisms in order to reconstruct the evolution of biodiversity. Her work spans insects to dinosaurs, but her main interest is in the evolution of mammals. To fill key gaps in the palaeontological record, she has searched for fossils from Svalbard to Madagascar, with her primary fieldwork being based in South India.

She is the recipient of the Linnean Society Bicentenary Medal, the Zoological Society of London Scientific Medal, the Hind Rattan Award, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Robert L. Carroll award, the Palaeontological Association President’s Medal, and the Humanists UK Darwin Day Medal. She was elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society of London in 2024

In-Person Registration

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