Enhancing Ecosystem Resilience

Climate change and other pressures, such as change in our land, freshwater and sea use, pollution and over-exploitation, are causing a decline in global biodiversity. This impacts ecosystem functioning and resilience (ie, their ability to adapt and respond to changes and disturbance).

Healthy ecosystems provide clean water, food and fuel for our wellbeing and survival. So we urgently need to understand the impacts that our actions are having on biodiversity and the environment. This understanding allows us to develop solutions that protect and restore biodiversity and enhance ecosystem resilience in the face of human pressures.

We work at local, national and global scales on research that informs policy and management responses. And we engage stakeholders to create solutions that enhance ecosystem resilience.

Understanding impacts

We have to understand how human activities are impacting ecosystems and biodiversity before we can develop effective solutions.

Our researchers form inter-disciplinary collaborations for innovative research investigating how people interact with and depend upon their environment. We work in a diverse range of environments and climate zones to understand how species and ecosystems are affected by human activities.

Creating solutions

We use our understanding of the impacts of climate change and other pressures to develop policy and management responses that protect and enhance biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. We work with local, national and international partners, including local communities, governments and international organisations. The stakeholders we work with to develop a resilience framework are:

• farmers in the UK and Tanzania
• the UK government
• international organisations
• policymakers

We support the work of:

• International Union for the Conservation of Nature
• Convention on Biological Diversity
• Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services