Prof Nathalie Seddon, Dr Cécile Girardin & Dr Steve Smith in conversation: "Value and limits of working with nature to address climate change"

25 January 2021

Portrait of Professor Nathalie Seddon

with Professor Nathalie Seddon
 Professor of Biodiversity

Nathalie Seddon is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. She has broad interests in understanding the origins and maintenance of biodiversity and its relationship with global change. Nathalie trained as a...

The failure to stem the tide of biodiversity loss, or to address the deeply related issue of climate change, demands we quickly find more ambitious and more coherent approaches to tackling these challenges.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are one such family of approaches that has recently gained prominence in international policy and business discourse. Broadly defined as actions that involve working with nature to address societal goals, NbS are being widely hailed as a win-win for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change. However, this win-win scenario is not guaranteed.

Some NbS - particularly those involving planting trees in naturally treeless habitats - can have negative outcomes for climate change mitigation, biodiversity and local peoples’ livelihoods. There are also critical questions around the timeframes over which NbS can help tackle the biodiversity and climate crises given the negative impacts of warming on the health of the biosphere.

In the second discussion in the Oxford Net Zero Series, hosted by the Oxford Martin School, Professor Nathalie Seddon, will bring together interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners to explore the value and limits of working with nature to address climate change and why NbS must both support biodiversity and be implemented with, by and for people, if they are to provide benefits over the longterm.