Norfolk Green Care Network

Claire Wicks– Senior Research Assistant, University of Essex

Susan McPherson– Professor in Psychology and Sociology, University of Essex

Is it better to live in a city or in the countryside? While urban dwellers may benefit from more employment opportunities, better access to public services alongside cultural activities and entertainment, people who live in rural areas often argue they have a better sense of community and greater access to nature.

A number of studies have sought to determine whether city or country is better for mental health by drawing on national survey data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS). This is a national survey which has followed approximately 40,000 UK households since 2009. Each year, data is collected on a range of social, economic and behavioural factors.

This is what some of these studies have found when it comes to mental health and where you live:

Physical activity

Research has shown that physical activity can reduce anxiety and depression, alongside improving mood and wellbeing. Indeed, UK health guidelines recommend physical activity for the treatment of depression and improved quality of life.

One easy way of getting more physical activity in your life is through active travel – such as cycling or walking on your way to work or running errands.

So how does urban or rural dwelling impact on this? According to UKHLS research which looked at data from 35,295 people in the UK, urban residents were 64% more likely than rural residents to engage frequently in active travel. This is likely because there are more active travel opportunities in urban environments where there are shorter distances between facilities, shops, offices and homes.

Research shows that the more active travel a person does, the better their mental health. In fact, the mental health benefits of active travel may be just as good as physical activity for leisure. So, based on this measure, people living in the city may have better mental health overall.

But while urban life may offer more opportunities for active travel compared to living in the countryside, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still many ways to incorporate physical activity into your daily life for mental health benefits wherever you live.

Access to green space

Access to green space (such as parks) is believed to support many aspects of health and wellbeing – including your mental health.

To investigate whether nearby green space was related to mental wellbeing, data from the 2009-2010 UKHLS study was combined with data on the proportion of green space within different areas of England. The analysis found the amount of local green space did not actually predict mental wellbeing.

What this suggests is that while green space may be important for mental wellbeing, having it nearby doesn’t necessarily mean people will engage with it. As such, we can’t assume rural living is inherently more beneficial just because nature is more accessible.

This aligns with the findings of a 2021 study, which showed that living near green space did not improve mental health outcomes. However, the analysis did find that the more frequently a person visited green spaces, the better their mental wellbeing. Meaningful engagement with green spaces (such as taking photographs) may also be more important for reaping the mental health benefits of nature.

As such, urban living may be just as good as rural dwelling when it comes to the mental health benefits of green space.

Air quality

Numerous studies have found links between high levels of air pollution and poorer mental health. A review of 111 studies even suggests that polluted air may cause changes in the brain regions that control emotions. This may increase the risk of developing anxiety and depression compared to those who breathe cleaner air.

To investigate the impact of air pollution on mental health, researchers combined data on air pollution from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with UKHLS survey data, alongside data from the British Household Panel Survey (which looked at 10,000 UK households and ran from 1991 to 2009). This allowed them to analyse data from the years 1991-2014.

The analysis found that people who were exposed to higher levels of air pollution reported lower levels of life satisfaction. The study indicated that the negative effect of air pollution on life satisfaction can be equivalent to major life events, such as divorce.

In general, urban areas have between two to four times the levels of air pollution than rural areas, suggesting people who live in cities may be more likely to experience worse mental health as a result. However, the agricultural industry also generates high levels of air pollution meaning some rural dwellers in certain settings may also be at risk.

Regional variation in wellbeing

Of course, these are just a few of the factors that affect a person’s day to day mental health – and it appears neither city nor country living is significantly better than the other when it comes to your mental health.

Indeed, research has found that the region of the country you live in may be more important when it comes to your mental health than whether you live in the city or the countryside. There are many factors that may explain this effect, including the cost of living in certain areas, alongside local politics and a person’s economic status.

Where we live is clearly very important when it comes to our mental health. But the place that works best for your mental health will depend largely on broader social and economic factors as well as which aspects of your lifestyle are most important to you.

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Paul Dobraszczyk– Lecturer in Architecture, UCL

How did early humans first learn to build? It’s quite possible that it was by observing animals that had already mastered the art. Indeed, when you look at the animal world many birds, insects and mammals are excellent architects and builders.

Beavers are quite literally landscape engineers – they’re being reintroduced in the UK to help fight against the increased incidence and severity of flooding caused by climate change.

Social insects like bees, wasps, ants and termites construct what many have described as the animal equivalents of human cities.

Spiders and silkworms have long been regarded as expert builders in the weaving of their silk webs. While other creatures like foxes, moles and badgers build by excavating the ground.

Then there are the animals that carry their homes on their backs – the shells of snails and turtles, for example, are both extensions of and protection for their vulnerable soft bodies.

Beyond human

We might admire and even imitate animal architecture, but when it comes to human-designed buildings, we are usually extremely selective about what kinds of creatures we allow in.

In general, animals are only ever designed for when they are of use to humans – whether as livestock, domestic pets, spectacles to consume in zoos and aquariums, or objects of scientific manipulation in laboratories.

If animals can’t be put to use, they’re usually ignored. And if those animals take it upon themselves to inhabit buildings, they’re invariably regarded as pests and dealt with accordingly.

In my new book, Animal Architecture: Beasts, Buildings and Us, I look at why we should build for animals as well as people. Indeed, wildlife is all around us and is already living in or around most of our homes, anyway.

Examples in the book include spiders spinning their webs in the dark corners of rooms. Swallows finding ideal purchase on brick walls for their saliva and mud-based nest cups. Rats making their homes in the subterranean spaces of the city. And cats and dogs appropriating our furniture and fittings as their own places of rest.

There’s hardly any part of the human-built environment that can’t be inhabited or changed by insects, animals and birds. It’s easy enough to understand how this works in relation to animals that are classed as pets. It’s generally taken for granted that pet owners know how to care for their animals. But it’s much harder to care for animals that are mostly regarded as unwelcome intruders into buildings.

Animal estates

A powerful example of the potential breadth of such interspecies awareness is artist Fritz Haeg’s Animal Estates project, which ran from 2008 until 2013. In nine different cities, Haeg organised events to encourage participation in creating structures that would be attractive to a variety of native species, including bats, birds and insects.

As well as building structures for animals to inhabit, the project also hosted events designed to stimulate interest and knowledge about native animals (and, in many cases, to encourage urban dwellers to make structures themselves). This holistic approach to ecological design aimed to foster more care for animals in cities – animals that would probably otherwise go unnoticed.

Other wildlife-inspired architectural projects include the non-profit organisation The Expanded Environment, which provides helpful online resources on how to care for a much wider range of animals in relation to architecture – most notably in their collaborative design proposals and annual competitions for novel types of animal design.

The material on their website expands ideas about what might be considered appropriate animals for designers to work with as “clients”. Insects appear alongside dogs and cats, birds with lizards and bats with oysters.

Housing the non-human

Ultimately thinking beyond just people is important because all lifeforms create their own environments – and what humans generally call “the environment” is in reality the sum of these creations. Why then does the idea that humans live outside of the environment persist so strongly?

Perhaps, as any therapist will likely tell you, losing a fantasy is always much harder than losing a reality. Yet, as is all too obvious, the persistence of the fantasy of human exceptionalism is now endangering all life on the planet.

It is humans, and humans alone, who dominate every corner of the environment, while at the same time asserting they are actually removed from that environment. If my book has one core aim, it is to encourage readers to think beyond humans in the way we imagine, design and live in our buildings and cities.

1. Alex Nurse Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Liverpool
2. Alessia Calafiore Lecturer in Urban Data Science and Sustainability, The University of Edinburgh
3. Richard J. Dunning Senior Lecturer in Housing and Planning, University of Liverpool

Conspiracy theories aren’t a new thing, and for as long as they’ve been around they’ve ranged from the benign to the absurd. From the six moon landings being faked to the Earth being flat, or our ruling class being lizards, we’ve all probably come across them in one form or another.

Yet, in a surprise twist, the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023 comes from an unlikely corner: town planning. This relates to the idea of “the 15-minute city” and has even gone so far as to be mentioned in UK parliament by an MP who called the idea “an international socialist concept” that will “cost us our personal freedom”.

As town planning academics who have published research on 15-minute cities, we know this is nonsense. But what actually is the 15-minute city? And what’s the fuss about?

The 15-minute city itself is a simple idea. If you live in one, it means that everything you need to go about your daily life – school, doctors, shops and so on – is located no more than a 15-minute walk from your house.

Designed for people not cars

The concept, which originated from the French-Colombian urbanist Carlos Moreno, is the current zeitgeist in planning, and calls for city design that is centred on people and their needs rather than being designed for cars. It gained international attention when the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, announced her intention to make Paris a 15-minute city following her reelection in 2020, with the plan to enhance neighbourhoods across Paris while ensuring connections between them. The idea flourished in the wake of COVID, when lockdowns and working from home had more of us ditching the car and recognising the need for well-served local neighbourhoods.

Yet this connection to how our towns and cities are changing in the wake of COVID is also probably the reason that 15-minute cities are now a hot-topic in the conspiracy world. Among other things, the charge sheet against 15-minute cities is that they are a “socialist”, or even “Stalinist”, attempt to control the population by actively preventing citizens from straying more than 15 minutes from their homes.

However, the reality is that the 15-minute city does not seek to exclude people or to prevent them from leaving. Instead, the idea is about providing high-quality neighbourhoods so that you don’t have to travel further to get the service. Crucially, this doesn’t mean you’re trapped where you live.

Yes, if travelling by car, the 15-minute city might make the journey to leave the neighbourhood longer as the urban realm and roads shifts from car dominance to a more equal distribution of space for active travel. But this might also mean that other ways of getting about town (walking, wheelchair, cycling, bus or train) might make sense for most journeys, with the car used only when necessary.

It’s fairly easy to see how Moreno’s idea has been perverted here. Within this, it’s also equally easy to trace a line between this and the prevalence of conspiracy theories surrounding COVID and the role of government. In this world, encouraging us to use cars less is seen as a limitation of our freedom rather than an opportunity to live in more vibrant and less polluted neighbourhoods.

The thing is, like so many other conspiracy theories, it gets into trouble when it comes into contact with reality. In many British cities, the reality is that having most services within a 15-minute walk of your house is already closer than you might think – what matters more is the quality and equity of those services.

Most people want things nearby

What’s more, these ideas are popular. Not only have organisations like Sustrans consistently shown that more than two-thirds of people are in favour of these sorts of interventions, they are also endorsed at the ballot box. For example, when some candidates attempted to turn local council elections into a referendum on active travel interventions, they largely failed to get this opposition off the launchpad.

If anything, the 15-minute city envisages even the most urban parts of the country as something quintessentially British: a small market town. Indeed, if harking back to the past is your thing, then the past 50 years of transport planning has done more to damage this British ideal than make it a reality.

In fact, you would imagine that the Conservative MP who raised this conspiracy theory in the House of Commons might regularly get correspondence from the public bemoaning the lack of high-quality services in their neighbourhoods.

After decades of car-dominated culture there is a “gear change” happening in which pedestrian and cyclist experiences do increasingly matter in city planning. There is still a long way to go to make our streets and neighbourhoods places for all, and movements fuelled by conspiracy theory risk slowing these transitions and spreading unjustified fears.

While the 15-minute city has nothing to do with creating ghettos where people will be locked in, fake news like this circulates broadly and quickly, making it crucial for policymakers to convey clear messages about what’s at stake.

1. Bram Büscher-Professor of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg; Research Associate, Stellenbosch University; Professor of Sociology of Development and Change, Wageningen University
2. Rosaleen Duffy-Professor of International Politics, University of Sheffield

A major biodiversity conference, recently concluded in Montreal, Canada, was billed as the event that will decide the “fate of the entire living world”. All well then that the meeting closed with what has been hailed as a “historic” breakthrough: a deal to protect 30% of all land and water on Earth by 2030.

How historic is this deal, really? Judging from the effect of protected areas and major environment meetings over the last few decades, we should not get our hopes up. In fact, this deal may force us to reconsider the usefulness of such meetings altogether.

If there is anything that defines the history of mainstream conservation it is the steady rise of protected areas, covering about 2% of the globe in the 1960s to around 17% now. This progress was incredibly difficult, and still created many ineffective “paper parks” where species are protected from hunting and other threats in name only. Worse, it bred human rights abuses and violence as people were excluded from land that was declared off-limits.

If it took 60 years to get to 17%, how realistic is a near-doubling of Earth’s protected areas over the next eight years? And how will it, despite the pact’s rhetoric of placing indigenous peoples at the centre of conservation, ensure that the violence of the past is not repeated?

All this is left to the more than 190 countries under the treaty to implement. Given the pressures of the extinction crisis and the increasing militarisation of conservation, we have little faith that history will now suddenly work out differently.

The real problem is non-negotiable

Even if 30% of Earth was protected, how effectively would it halt biodiversity loss? The proliferation of protected areas has happened at the same time as the extinction crisis has intensified. Perhaps, without these efforts, things could have been even worse for nature.

But an equally valid argument would be that area-based conservation has blinded many to the causes of Earth’s diminishing biodiversity: an expanding economic system that squeezes ecosystems by turning ever more habitat into urban sprawl or farmland, polluting the air and water with ever more toxins and heating the atmosphere with ever more greenhouse gas. These structural problems are mentioned but not actually addressed at global environmental meetings.

Such meetings have become elaborate affairs eagerly organised by host states to reap tourist income and diplomatic goodwill. The idea is that conferences allow countries to negotiate global frameworks for tackling multiple, overlapping crises. Clearly, the planetary scale of environmental change requires cooperation at all levels.

After the second world war, multilateralism based on cooperation between states developed out of a sense of hopefulness and led to global conventions for addressing common challenges in many areas, including the environment. The 1987 Montreal protocol helped close the hole in the ozone layer. The CITES ivory ban has helped alleviate pressure on African elephants since 1989.

But that era is now over. UN summits have become little more than travelling circuses filled with desperate hopes but no real-world influence. Their meetings, announcements and deals are comprised of increasingly trivial language games, empty promises and non-decisions – many about the functioning of the convention itself. After every summit, small and sometimes major wins are celebrated as the breakthrough the world has been waiting for. But what have they actually done for the problems they are supposed to address?

Recent climate change summits have done very little to halt the growth in CO₂ emissions. And the Convention on Biological Diversity, which led this latest meeting in Montreal, was hobbled at its origin in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. Here it was decided to split climate change and biodiversity across two conventions, fundamentally placing them on two different tracks when scientists argue that they need to be addressed together.

It was also decided to render biodiversity, especially genes which might be valuable for industries such as pharmaceuticals, into “natural capital” that could be traded internationally. This enshrined capitalist ways of comprehending the environment at the outset of this process and entrenched a logic of turning nature into commodities. In short, the logic of the problem – the promotion of an ever-expanding economy – became the logic of the solution.

And so, there is a case to be made that international treaties actually deepen environmental destruction by making the problem seem soluble without changing a deeply unsustainable global economic system. They promote carbon offsets, biodiversity credits, no net loss (the idea that negative and positive consequences for biodiversity can be balanced as if on an accounting sheet) and other non-solutions. Fundamentally missing is a plan for an economy that accepts ecological limits to growth.

While more protected areas may alleviate the damage to some ecosystems and species in the coming years, their historical failure to prevent accelerating extinctions is not encouraging. We may still celebrate the international community coming to an agreement. But high expectations, big promises and negligible results have become the hallmark of UN environmental meetings.

We must therefore ask: have they become empty institutional hangovers of a lingering status quo that must be abandoned? Or is holding on to the fraying shreds of multilateralism worth the effort, even if they are becoming little more than extravagant witnesses to unfolding disaster?

Kate Hiseman– Senior Lecturer Practitioner in Environment and Sustainability, Anglia Ruskin University

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life found on Earth and underpins the natural systems which grow our food, cleanse our air and water and regulate our climate. Human life cannot exist without it. But around one million animal and plant species are now threatened by extinction.

At the recent UN biodiversity conference (COP15) in Montreal, parties agreed on a set of targets for reversing global biodiversity loss by 2030. This includes protecting 30% of the Earth’s surface and reforming subsidies for farming and fishing. Meeting these targets will require coordination between governments and businesses.

Yet the pace at which legislation and policies take effect is exceeded by the global rate of biodiversity loss. Here are some of the most effective actions you can take to help reverse biodiversity loss and restore nature now.

1. Donate

The total area of protected land and sea in the UK increased from 27.6 million hectares in 2017 to 40.6 million hectares in 2022. Much of this area is managed by charities, legal bodies and local authorities.

These organisations, such as the RSPB and the Wildlife Trust, restore biodiversity by creating new habitats, improving existing ones and ensuring that wild areas are connected with forested corridors and reserves to allow species to roam. For example, the Wildlife Trust has reintroduced beavers to fenland in Kent, where wet grassland habitats are now thriving as a result.

But the funds available for nature conservation in the UK are often insufficient. Individuals and businesses can donate money to support the work of these organisations.

2. Volunteer

Many charitable organisations are dependent on volunteers to undertake administration and marketing, site management or to spread the message about the biodiversity crisis. With new digital ways of working, people could volunteer from their own home at suitable times. Experience is not necessary in most cases and volunteers often benefit from on the job training.

Volunteering can also have other benefits. Research has revealed spending just two hours in nature each week can benefit health and well-being.

3. Change what you eat

No one likes being lectured about their diet. But unsustainable farming methods, the expansion of agricultural land and our meat-based western diets all threaten biodiversity.

Converting natural habitats to agricultural land has resulted in one-quarter of all remaining mammal species being threatened with extinction. Research has also shown that agricultural intensification now means that more than half of European bird species are threatened or in decline.

To reverse biodiversity loss, we must change both what we eat and how much we consume.

The UK’s National Food Strategy and the Food and Land Use Coalition’s “Better Futures Report” recommend a diet that is less reliant on meat. The Food and Land Use Commission, for example, suggest that, from 2030, a sustainable adult male diet should consist of 14g of red meat per day, 29g of chicken and other poultry, 250g of dairy products, 500g of fruits and vegetables, 50g of nuts and 75g of soya bean and other legumes.

4. Nature-friendly gardens

Urbanisation is increasingly fragmenting natural habitats and, as such, species decline is highest in cities. As cities continue to grow it will become more important to have multiple approaches for biodiversity conservation.

Our gardens, although typically not spacious enough to maintain species diversity, can be important habitats in urban environments. Working with our neighbours, we can scale up our gardens by growing networks of flowers to help insects feed and planting trees for birds to nest in. This will increase biodiversity by creating a patchwork of habitats across a whole neighbourhood. Wildlife-friendly gardens can create corridors for a wide range of species and improve connectivity, provide shelter or nesting sites, maintain genetic diversity and increase the abundance of native plants even in the smallest spaces.

A study in 2009 found that there were up to 28.7 million trees, 3.5 million ponds and at least 4.7 million bird nesting boxes in UK gardens. Nesting bird numbers can be increased if we know where trees can be planted for maximum effect. Networks of pollinating flowers across gardens could also help insects and butterflies feed.

5. Indoor cats and responsible dog owners

Cats are natural predators and allowing your pet to roam freely around the neighbourhood means it – and all the other free-roaming pet cats out there – could be responsible for the deaths of millions of animals each year. Research in Australia revealed that by allowing cats to freely roam, predation on local prey per square kilometre in residential areas is 28–52 times larger than predation rates by feral cats in natural environments. Cats have caused such devastating impacts to Australian wildlife that cat predation is listed as a key threat to native wildlife within national legislation.

In the UK, cat ownership in the UK has increased by 13% on average each year over the past 40 years so that roughly 90% of the UK’s cats are now pets. This has correspondingly increased the threat to our native wildlife.

There are several ways we can reduce the impact of pet cats on biodiversity. Keeping a cat well fed reduces their need to hunt. Another option is to keep them indoors for parts of the day, during the night or entirely. The impact of pet cats on Australian wildlife has grown so severe that local authorities have introduced bylaws and curfews to contain cat predation.

Cats predominantly threaten biodiversity in urban areas. Yet the interaction between dogs and wildlife occurs more frequently in rural situations.

The issue here arises primarily as a result of predation and disease transmission. But dog faeces and urine fertilise soils with nutrients and can change the type of plants that grow in an area. This carries knock-on effects on a habitat’s structure. By picking up dog faeces and correctly disposing of it, dog owners can reduce the input of nitrogen to the soil by 57% and phosphorus by 97%.

The best antidote to despair about the state of the natural world is to immerse yourself in it. Give these steps a try and you should hopefully discover more ways to not only lessen your footprint, but enjoy a more vibrant local environment.

Henrik Svedäng– Researcher, Marine Ecology, Stockholm University

To slow and reverse the fastest loss of Earth’s living things since the dinosaurs, almost 200 countries have signed an agreement in Montreal, Canada, promising to live in harmony with nature by 2050. The Kunming-Montreal agreement is not legally binding but it will require signatories to report their progress towards meeting targets such as the protection of 30% of Earth’s surface by 2030 and the restoration of degraded habitats.

Not everyone is happy with the settlement, or convinced enough has been promised to avert mass extinctions. Thankfully, research has revealed a lot about the best ways to revive and strengthen biodiversity – the variety of life forms, from microbes to whales, found on Earth.

Here are five suggestions:

1. Scrap subsidies

The first thing countries should do is stop paying for the destruction of ecosystems. The Montreal pact calls for reducing incentives for environmentally harmful practices by $US500 billion (£410 billion) each year by 2030.

Research published in 2020 showed that ending fuel and maintenance subsidies would reduce excess fishing. Less fishing means more fish at sea and higher catches for the remaining fleet with less effort. The world’s fisheries could cut emissions and become more profitable.

Scrapping policies which subsidise overexploitation in all sorts of industries – fisheries, agriculture, forestry, and of course, fossil fuels – are in many cases the lowest fruit to be picked in order to save biodiversity.

2. Protect the high seas

Almost half of the surface of the Earth is outside national jurisdiction. The high seas belong to no one.

In the twilight zone of the ocean, between 200 and 1,000 metres down, fish and krill migrate upwards to feed at night and downwards to digest and rest during the day. This is the ocean’s biological pump, which draws carbon from near the ocean’s surface to its depths, storing it far from the atmosphere and so reducing climate change.

The total mass of fish living in the open ocean is much greater than in overfished coastal seas. Though not exploited to any large extent yet, the high seas and the remote ocean around the Antarctic need binding international agreements to protect them and the important planetary function they serve, which ultimately benefits all life by helping maintain a stable climate.

3. Ban clear-cutting and bottom trawling

Certain methods of extracting natural resources, such as clear-cutting forests (chopping down all the trees) and bottom trawling (tugging a big fishing net close to the seafloor) devastate biodiversity and should be phased out.

Clear-cutting removes large quantities of living matter that will not be replenished before the forest has regenerated, which may take hundreds of years, particularly for forests in Earth’s higher latitudes. Many species which are adapted to live in fully grown forests are subsequently doomed by clear-cutting.

Bottom trawling catches fish and shellfish indiscriminately, disturbing or even eradicating animals which live on the seafloor, such as certain types of coral and oysters. It also throws plumes of sediment into the water above, emitting greenhouse gases which had been locked away. Seafloors that have been trawled continuously for a long time may appear to be devoid of life, or trivialised with fewer species and less complex ecosystems.

4. Empower indigenous land defenders

Indigenous people are the vanguard of many of the best-preserved ecosystems in the world. Their struggle to protect their land and waters and traditional ways of using ecosystems and biodiversity for livelihoods are often the primary reason such important environments still exist.

Such examples are found around the world, for example more primates are found on indigenous land than in surrounding areas.

5. No more production targets

Many management practices will have to change, since they are based on unrealistic assumptions. Fisheries, for instance, target a maximum sustainable yield (MSY), a concept developed in the mid 20th century which means taking the largest catch from a fish stock without diminishing the stock in the future. Something similar is also used in forestry, though it involves more economic considerations.

These models were heavily criticised in the subsequent decades for oversimplifying how nature works. For instance species often contain several local populations which live separately and reproduce only with each other, yet some of these “substocks” could still become overfished if just one production target was applied for all of them. However, the idea of a maximum sustainable yield has come back into fashion this century as a means to curtail overfishing.

Herring is a good example here. The species forms many different substocks across the North Atlantic, yet one maximum yield was adopted over vast areas. In the Baltic Sea for instance, Swedish fishing rights were given to the largest shipowners as a part of a neoliberal economic policy to achieve a more effective fishing fleet. Local stocks of herring are now declining, and with them local adaptations (genetic diversity) could eventually disappear.

Heading for more robust strategies than elusive optimal targets for extracting the most fish or trees while maintaining the stock or the forest may lead to a more resilient pathway regarding biodiversity and climate mitigation. It could involve lower fishing quotas, but also change from industrial fishing to more local fishing with smaller fishing vessels.

Alexandra Zimmermann– Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford

The 196 countries meeting for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada, are negotiating a new set of targets for reversing the loss of Earth’s biodiversity. They have set themselves a formidable challenge: ensuring humanity is “living in harmony with nature” by 2050.

As part of this aim, and for the first time in an international agreement, nations are also being asked to work towards resolving human-wildlife conflict. When Swiss farmers fear losing livestock to rebounding wolf populations or the return of tigers threatens communities in Nepal, conservation can reach an impasse. These conflicts magnify the costs of biodiversity to local people – and, when left unresolved or handled badly, fuel tensions that erode support for protecting nature more broadly.

Standing by to help is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)‘s Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist Group – a global expert body which I chair. We convene the best knowledge available and are producing global guidelines and hosting a three-day international conference on managing these kinds of conflict in Oxford from March 30 next year.

Resolving conflict and achieving coexistence is far from easy. While all human-wildlife conflicts revolve around the risks that animals can pose to human interests – and the persecution of those animals in retaliation – these situations also provoke disagreements among groups of people. For example, although wolves can and do occasionally kill sheep in Europe and North America, conflict primarily arises between those who want to cull wolves and those who want to protect them. Tensions escalate, mistrust and divisions ensue and each group becomes increasingly entrenched in its view of the situation, blocking progress.

Because of this, resolving conflicts about wildlife is not a simple matter of installing fences, lights or noisemakers to keep animals away from crops, property or livestock. Resolving human-wildlife conflicts means resolving divisions and disharmony between people. This, more than any fence, is ultimately what makes coexistence possible. This means identifying any underlying grievances and addressing these through dialogue, engaging everyone involved in a joint agreement.

Without this groundwork, any practical measures outsiders suggest to communities for keeping wildlife at bay are likely to be poorly implemented or rejected altogether.

Measuring what matters

Following COP15, each country dealing with human-wildlife conflict at home will need technical and financial support to manage it. They will also, once the new agreement comes into effect, be required to track and monitor their progress towards all of the newly agreed targets, including that of “…minimis[ing] human-wildlife conflict for coexistence”. For this, a standard set of measurements called indicators are needed – which are also still under negotiation.

Yet here lies another challenge: countries deal with unique situations, ranging from maintaining coexistence with crocodiles in India to managing disputes over bats in Mauritius. Countries need to apply locally appropriate and culturally sensitive approaches to resolve these conflicts, while at the same time monitoring their performance in a globally standardised and comparable way.

Exactly how this should be done remains a sticking point in these negotiations. Just as resolving conflicts is not as simple as putting up barriers between wild animals and people, merely counting how often a crop is trampled by elephants or how many lions are shot in retaliation for preying on cows is insufficient. If the aim was only to reduce those numbers, then the simplest solution would be to remove all the animals or all the people – but that wouldn’t be coexistence. Rather, the aim must be for communities to balance the costs and benefits of living with wildlife, and for divisions between groups to be reconciled.

Although countries will need to track incidences of damage or loss, compensation claims, and the number of people and animals killed or injured, we recommend also monitoring levels of conflict between people and relative progress in each setting in ways which are appropriate to local contexts and cultures. Such an approach could include assessing the willingness of communities to live alongside wildlife, which can be measured with social survey methods of attitudes, values and tolerance. This combination allows countries room to decide their own adaptations and encourages more holistic thinking about what makes coexistence work.

Human-wildlife conflict is both a great challenge and a great opportunity. As UN secretary general Antonio Guterres stated in his opening address to the conference:

…humanity needs to make peace with nature, because we are out of harmony with nature.

Harriet Bulkeley– Professor of Geography, Durham University

With the dust still settling on the UN climate change summit in Egypt, another round of international talks is beginning in Montreal, Canada. The UN biodiversity conference, otherwise known as COP15, will assemble world leaders to agree on new targets for protecting nature.

The loss of biodiversity – the dizzying variety of life forms from microscopic viruses, bacteria and fungi to towering trees and enormous whales – is accelerating. The last agreement in 2010 yielded the 20 Aichi targets which included halving the rate at which species were being lost and expanding protected habitats on land and in the sea by 2020. Governments failed to meet a single one.

A global assessment in 2019 showed that nature was declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. The forces driving more and more species towards extinction – climate change, habitat destruction and pollution – are all trending in the wrong direction. Nothing less than a transformation of how societies work and the relationship between people and the rest of nature will get us on track.

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Read more: ‘Revolutionary change’ needed to stop unprecedented global extinction crisis

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After two years of delay due to the pandemic and difficulties negotiating a new venue with the country that holds the conference presidency, China, many are relieved that COP15 is happening at all. That relief may prove short-lived as there is much to be done in these two short weeks. The grand objective is the approval of a new global biodiversity framework, essentially a plan for how the world’s nations expect to halt the loss of biodiversity and ensure that, by 2050, society is living in harmony with nature.

30% by 2030

One debate which has dominated discussions so far is how much land and sea should be set aside for conservation. The current text aims for 30% by 2030. Some scientists believe this is insufficient, and that preserving half the Earth for nature is necessary. Others are wary of reviving failed ideas which have tried to boost wildlife by expelling people and erecting walls to keep them out.

Negotiators will debate whether a 30×30 target should be met at the national level or globally. The former would mean each country meeting this standard within its own borders. The latter would prioritise Earth’s most important areas of biodiversity (such as tropical rainforests) but oblige countries with large remaining wildernesses (overwhelmingly in developing countries) to shoulder the lion’s share of conservation work. Many poorer countries foresee this stopping their economic development.

There is also disagreement over what level of protection should be given to these areas and how the rights of people living within them should be recognised. These plans would require a doubling of protected areas on land and perhaps as much as a tenfold increase in the oceans. But they could exclude indigenous people and those who make their living from cultivation, forestry and fishing.

Less emissions, less meat, less waste

Instead of concentrating on the total area reserved for nature, recent research highlights the importance of addressing the underlying causes of extinctions and habitat loss, such as greenhouse gas emissions, meat consumption and plastic pollution.

Targeting the processes driving biodiversity loss would shift attention away from where nature is being destroyed to the places where these processes are guided and sustained: boardrooms, trading floors, local planning offices and supermarkets.

The framework under negotiation includes several targets that would restrain the destruction, from eliminating policies subsidising the conversion of forest to cow pasture to halving food waste. These have failed to attract the momentum behind flashier goals like the 30×30 target. Changing how economies and societies function is more contentious and asks more from rich countries with more influence over the drivers of biodiversity loss.

Safeguard nature’s services

Yet another approach would safeguard the services nature generates, including flood protection, wood fuel, climate regulation and food provision. And it would identify the natural assets (wetlands, forests, coral reefs and mangroves to name a few) that must endure for these services to continue. This would mean protecting nature close to where it is most needed. A staggering 6.1 billion people live within one hour of such assets.

Good COP or bad COP?

While everyone gathering in Montreal agrees that a breakthrough is needed, there are different ideas about what that should look like. For many seasoned conservationists, a good outcome will mean more stringent targets for protecting and restoring nature and more expansive protected areas, plus the money and other resources necessary to enforce them.

Businesses, investors, cities, regional governments and the communities they represent want an agreement that mobilises the whole of society. Some companies have asked that all businesses be forced to report the impacts their activities have on nature. Cities and regions have their own pledges and have asked COP15 to formally recognise their role in delivering national plans.

This could bring the protection and restoration of nature into mainstream thinking around how economies develop and societies are organised, and make the case that much of what is important about nature is not to be found on the other side of a fence. This trend is evident in growing enthusiasm around nature-based solutions to climate change.

The recent UN climate summit in Egypt heralded the potential of such solutions, which include restoring peatlands and seagrass beds. These actions tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis together by expanding refuge for wildlife and drawing carbon from the air. Cities, businesses and investors smell an opportunity to meet multiple measures of sustainable development at once.

Some conservationists worry these supposed solutions are greenwashing and allow companies to exploit indigenous people and communities. Other experts argue that, with the right safeguards in place, these fears can be put to rest.

With much at stake, in seeking to straddle different agendas, COP15 risks achieving none.

Jake M Robinson– Ecologist and Researcher, Flinders University

Paul Brindley– Senior Lecturer, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield

Some of Britain’s city centres are filled with trees and parks, while others have little vegetation to break up the bricks, tarmac and concrete. Such differences aren’t just aesthetic: they affect whether animals can move around, and they have implications for human health and social equity.

That’s why we wanted to properly assess how green these cities are. In our latest research, now published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, we looked at all 68 municipalities in Great Britain with populations of at least 100,000. City centres were defined using Consumer Data Research Centre spatial datasets, which use complex statistics to demarcate retail boundaries. You can think of the boundaries as similar to “central business districts”. In Sheffield, for instance, the city centre is the entire area within the central ring road. London is a special case; because it is so large, it has several of these areas.

For each of these cities, we assessed three metrics of “greenness”: 1) tree cover using an algorithm to randomly sample recent aerial imagery, 2) the presence of green spaces using open-source data from Ordnance Survey (Great Britain’s national mapping agency), and 3) the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), which uses satellite observations of light absorption and reflection to measure vegetation cover in a given area.

Exeter greenest, Glasgow least green

Combining all three metrics into a single greenness score, we found that Exeter’s urban centre ranks highest, followed by Islington in London, Bristol, Bournemouth and Cambridge.

Glasgow’s urban centre is the least green, with Middlesbrough, Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds also in the lowest five. Tree coverage is probably the most relatable way to describe the differences: trees cover 12% of the total land area of Exeter city centre, but just 2% of Glasgow’s.

Exeter, a small city in England’s remote south-west, largely avoided the rapid industrial growth of better-connected cities. This is apparent today in its leafy streets and the meadows along the River Exe. In contrast, places like Glasgow and Sheffield were massive industrial powerhouses with considerable urban sprawl, though they do still have luscious parks outside of their city centres.

North-south green divide

It is worth noting that the top five urban centres are all in the south of England, while the bottom five are ex-industrial areas in the north or Scotland. In fact, only 25% of all northern cities are in the top half of the greenness table. Further analysis uncovered a statistical link between a lower greenness score and higher levels of deprivation, as measured according to crime risk, health, economics, education, and other related metrics. In addition, areas with larger populations had lower tree coverage and vegetation index scores.

Sheffield – where the study was conducted – is often billed as having one of the highest densities of trees out of all European cities. But this is due to the vast swathes of trees in the suburban areas and surrounding fringe of the Peak District national park. Our work shows that Sheffield actually has the lowest city centre tree cover out of all the cities included in the study.

The reasons for the north-side divide are complex and can depend on decisions made centuries ago and development since. Clearly, some urban centres invested in parks and tree-lined avenues more than others in the past. Industry and war efforts then contributed to urban sprawl and reduced natural features in certain urban centres, particularly in northern England and Scotland.

In the 19th century, city planners often incorporated street trees, particularly in affluent areas. These decisions were influenced by an admiration of continental European boulevards and the wellbeing benefits of “garden cities” and “spa towns”. This is exemplified by the “luxury effect” whereby affluent neighbourhoods record higher biodiversity in cities around the world, often dictated by structural classism and racism.

Differences in historical development have therefore left us with leafy urban centres like Exeter’s, and others with far less greenness. The question remains why over time such imbalances have not been addressed.

It’s an important question as around 70% of the world’s population will soon live in urban environments. In the UK, 84% of people already do. This rapid rise in urbanisation has led to a disconnect between humans and nature as we often fail to create healthy and biodiverse spaces, especially in city centres.

But there is at least one reason to be hopeful. Urban centres in Great Britain and other areas of the world are changing, especially as digital shopping means many retail outlets are closing. This is a problem in many ways, but it’s also an opportunity. The decline of in-person shopping gives us a chance to re-envision and redevelop urban centres to enhance their green spaces.

Johannes Novy– Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster

The debate around how to fix the global housing crisis usually hinges on whether more market or more state is required. Some people stress the need for additional housing stock and less regulatory red tape, so that the market can create it. Others claim that stricter government measures – against ruthless developers and landlords, more rent control, and more public housing – are crucial.

Increasingly, policymakers are paying attention to what lies between the public and private sectors. The United Nations’ New Urban Agenda – a key international policy framework to promote sustainable urban development – highlights the benefits of “cooperative solutions, such as cohousing, community land trusts and other forms of collective tenure”. A slew of recent community-led housing projects across Europe and beyond show how this can work.

Cohousing includes all kings of edifices, new and existing. It is not tied to a particular type of tenure. And the groups of people it involves can vary considerably in size. At its heart are two key principles. Residents do not only live next to each other, but with each other, in buildings that comprise communal spaces and facilities. And they take the lead, or at least are involved in, the design and management of their communities.

Communal life

German sociologist Anja Szypulski has lauded the “abundant potential” cohousing proffers for sustainable housing and neighbourhood development. The first way it does this is by promoting an ethos of participation and sharing.

Residents are involved throughout the building process. When, in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, a developer pulled out of a state-owned site in Cambridge, the city council opted for a cohousing initiative to build on the land instead, precisely because of the social and community benefits that would bring.

The resulting Marmalade Lane project opened in 2018 after four years, during which the cohousing members developed the architectural brief, sought planning permission and contracted builders.

Residents also often take part in actually building their homes too. The Church Grove project in Lewisham, south London, is a community-led housing development on a old derelict school and industrial site. When completed it will count 36 homes designed to be permanently affordable. To keep the costs low, future residents are involved in this construction process. They have already built a communal hall on the site.

Communality also shapes daily life in a cohousing project. Marmalade Lane residents share 42 homes – houses and flats, both – organised around a common house with a shared kitchen, refectory and fireplace, a pedestrianised lane, outdoor play area and garden, a laundry, a gym and a workshop.

Similarly, La Borda, in Barcelona, is a cooperative housing block comprising 28 apartments, organised around a communal, open-plan atrium. Residents share a kitchen-dining area, a laundry room, guest rooms and generous outdoor spaces. Their flats were deliberately designed small, with movable walls, so that a room belonging to one flat could become part of another, as the need arose.

Socially and architecturally sustainable

The La Borda project contributes to the wider community, too, by organising events and sourcing goods from local cooperatives. It is based on a participatory planning process and costs have been kept low through the use of smart low-tech solutions and a lot of self-help during construction by its future users, who are also responsible for the maintenance and management of the project. Decisions are made collectively in a general assembly and all adults participate in various committees that deal with different issues, from financial matters to communal dinners

While the idea of committee meetings and doors facing each other won’t appeal to everyone, the benefits of knowing you’re not alone are clear. Residents at Marmalade Lane have spoken about children playing together, stay-at-home mothers not feeling isolated and retirees being engaged and occupied.

The UK Cohousing network describes cohousing as a “way of resolving the isolation many people experience today, recreating the neighbourly support of the past”. And research bears this out. A recent study on the way cohousing dwellers in the UK coped with lockdown found that many residents experienced a level of mutual support and care that went well beyond the general good neighbourliness of the early days of the pandemic.

Cohousing projects also encourage sustainability by typically being built for the long term. The Marmalade Lane buildings used environmentally-friendly materials and designs that promote low-energy use for a small carbon footprint.