Understanding human behaviour and how it shapes organisations, communities and societies is needed to address global challenges such as the environmental, economic and health crises that we face now and in the future. Currently, behavioural research is not well coordinated in the UK. It also doesn't always ask the right research questions, involve people with the best skills, make good use of existing data, take advantage of innovative research methods or produce findings that can be used to make positive changes. The Behavioural Research UK Leadership Hub (BR-UK) will change this. BR-UK brings together a team from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that includes experienced researchers from many different backgrounds and partners from government, the wider public sector, charities and businesses. We will work with communities to better understand behaviour and conduct research to improve lives and livelihoods. BR-UK will deliver a detailed work programme for the first 18 months. At the same time, we will expand our initial plans for the longer term to be reviewed by the funder, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). In the first 18 months, we will: - Carry out a scoping study to look at needs, priorities and opportunities for behavioural research and set up a national network of researchers and research users - Determine how behavioural research can be more sustainable to make the best use of available funding - Identify (with our international advisory board) under-used global evidence as well as methods and theories to improve behavioural research excellence - Conduct 'demonstration projects' to show how the team can work together to use existing data and speed up the application of models and frameworks to provide rapid results. Topics include how behavioural advice was used during the Covid-19 pandemic, how we address some current issues like speeding on our roads, how to combine large amounts of data more efficiently and how well public support for different policies to help tackle climate change can be transferred between countries - Set up & test a responsive-mode consultancy service where organisations can ask questions about how behavioural research could help them with their policies or practices, and be matched to team members with relevant expertise. Looking ahead, BR-UK will organise our work around four Work Packages (WPs) and Themes (T). Work Packages are about HOW we will do things, and our Themes are about WHAT we will focus on. These are: WP1: Capability Building; WP2: Data and Technology; WP3: Methods and Evidence Synthesis; WP4: Engagement and Involvement; T1: Environment and Sustainability; T2: Health and Wellbeing; T3: Resilient Communities: and T4: Organisations, Markets and the Economy. We will conduct new studies across WPs and Themes. Examples of research questions to illustrate the range are: how to better use mobile phone technologies to engage people long-term to stop smoking or reduce their alcohol consumption; how to help regulators and the police keep children safer online and tackle internet crime; how to help people and organisations shift to transport that is better for the environment; how best to work with local and national governments to better understand the needs of their local communities when making policy decisions. As a Leadership 'Hub', BR-UK will work with other parts of the programme ('spokes' including a centre to train students and early career researchers as they develop. We will be flexible, and reserve part of the funding that could lead to new studies when sudden events like a new threat, emergency or event occur. We are well positioned to carry out rapid reviews of existing research to help governments and organisations know what behavioural evidence exists to inform decisions, and to identify evidence gaps. We will be ready to adapt and bring in new members with skills and experience that are most needed as BR-UK evolves.

Given the economic, social and environmental value of the marine environment it makes sense to manage it in a way that ensures long term sustainability of both ecosystems and human uses. We can only do this if we understand the impact that human activities and management practises have on marine systems, including people. Spatial management measures such as fishery closures, marine protected areas and marine plans have emerged as a core component of the UK's marine management portfolio. In essence, spatial management aims to incorporate the diversity of human uses, consider the compatibility of different activities, and balance use with the impacts of these activities on biodiversity and people. Yet despite the extensive use of spatial management, substantial gaps in understanding exist regarding how to monitor the impacts of spatial management measures and evaluate their effectiveness across environmental, social and economic outcomes. Our research aims to systematically bring together the available evidence on existing and emerging environmental, social and economic techniques for monitoring the effects of spatial management measures and evaluating their effectiveness. In particular we will focus on examples from countries with a coastline and in a similar socio-economic and political context to the UK. By clearly and transparently describing this evidence, we will be able to explore understanding surrounding methods for how to monitor and evaluate spatial management measures, and inform the development of guidelines and future monitoring and evaluation practises across the UK. Our findings, in the form of a database, will be published alongside an article in the open-access journal Environmental Evidence, providing a highly accessible, freely available summary of the evidence. We will also produce a one-page policy summary, to disseminate our results to decision-makers, and a set of guidelines for use to facilitate application of our database. By making these outputs publicly available and easy to use we will give our work a lasting legacy beyond the life of the project. For example, researchers will be able to easily update and build on our database as desired or design research to fill evidence gaps, and decision-makers will be able to easily locate evidence of relevance to inform their monitoring and management activities. We will involve key stakeholders through our Stakeholder Group in the design of our project and discuss our results with them to ensure they are used to help inform spatial management in the UK. The evidence base collated within this project is anticipated to benefit a wide range of sectors and users of the marine environment, as well as nature conservation and academic research. These benefits will extend beyond the UK to international policy audiences facing similar challenges in determining the impact of their spatial management activities. Our extended review team demonstrates the interdisciplinarity nature of this project being composed of researchers specialising in marine and fisheries management from environmental, social, economic and policy perspectives based across academic and charitable institutions. Our existing Stakeholder Group attests to the value of this project with support from: the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), Marine Scotland Science (MSS), Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs), and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas). We will seek to extend our Stakeholder Group to incorporate all of the UK Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies during the project programme. Keywords: evaluation methods; fishery closure; marine spatial management; marine protected area; marine spatial plan; monitoring methods; systematic map

The centre will focus on negative emission technologies. Most climate policy specialists in the UK and around the world consider these will be essential to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. At present the Supergen Bioenergy hub has 2 research projects on BECCS (focused on gasification), the Oxford based greenhouse removal hub works with 4 demonstrators (on biochar, peatlands, enhanced weathering and afforestation), all focused on academic research in UK institutes. This project will work with both Supergen and the GGR Hub (as well as the dmonstrators which have Nottingham and Aston leadership and participation) to expand the research to the currently neglected areas of engineered GGR solutions. The scale and level of activity often makes it difficult for individual universiteis to engage fully in the needs of the sector and so the CDT will address that by providing a wide pool of supervisors, facilities and disciplinary perspectives. No other centre currently does this for PhD students. No other centre has or is planned to address the future skills need with the huge anticipated expansion of this centre. The main technological themes are: Direct air capture and CO2 storage Direct air capture and CO2 utilization Biochar synthesis and utilisation Biomass to materials and chemicals CO2 Utilization Biomass to energy with carbon capture and storage

major transformation of the food system is required, which is focused on the production and consumption of healthy and sustainable food. Change will need to be facilitated through a number of means, both direct and indirect. The Sus-Health project will establish and demonstrate a blueprint of a system that incentivises both directly and indirectly the consumption of sustainable and healthy food. The project will demonstrate to stakeholders how the use of a codesigned, combined measure of environmental impact and nutritive value (the Sus-Health Index) of foods, meals and ingredients can be used to influence the future direction of our food system and the stakeholders within it. Sus-Health will co-create a systemic strategy and innovative solution for influencing food choices and consumption, so that they better align with planetary boundaries and nutritional guidelines. The resulting consumer preferences (obtained through living lab experiments and through simulation) will feed back down the entire food chain driving the processes and raw materials used, towards more sustainable and health-inducing foods and diets. Comprising two academic partners and a range of stakeholder involvement Sus-Health will demonstrate a range of stakeholder focused communication vehicles, in a range of interventions in Northern Ireland followed by upscaling activities in the rest of the UK. The consortium comprises a mix of academic, and food industry partners with expertise in consumer behaviour, sustainability, nutrition, agri-economics, software design, agriculture, food service, and food systems. Key outputs of the project will be: - The develpment, validation and demonstration of the use and applicability of a combined measure for assessing sustainability and nutritive value in real settings (restaurants, fast food outlets, canteens and related supply chains) - A range of communication tools and approaches aimed at influencing change in consumer food choices - Interventions focused on food affordability including economic assessments of direct policy interventions that would make healthy sustainable food more affordable. - Stakeholder guidelines for using the Sus-Health index and related communication tools together with extensive stakeholder focused communication and dissemination activities

Vision: To determine novel and policy relevant pluralistic values for marine biodiversity and apply these values to co-develop green investment options, leading to a transformative shift in our understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity. There have been significant developments in understanding how economies are embedded in nature and how biodiversity can be integrated into economic models and decision making. This has included growth in environmental valuation, ecosystem service assessments, natural capital approaches, and green investments. Despite these advances biodiversity is only sporadically integrated into decision making and remains external to our economic systems. The result is continuing biodiversity loss with negative implications for our society, economy, and fundamental wellbeing. Key challenges include: i. a nascent understanding of how biodiversity provides benefits resulting in a lack of decision grade data; ii. hesitance of users to apply values due to low confidence, poor understanding, and a negligible definition of the beneficiaries; iii. uncertainty regarding routes of green investment. To address these interconnected challenges ValMaB-DM brings together expertise in marine ecology, human geography, environmental and ecological economics, governance, and finance. The team includes academics, consultancies, and NGOs coupled with an extensive partner network of government, industry and commerce representatives. To drive a meaningful shift in the understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity our partners highlighted a need for state-of-the-art theoretical development to be coupled with practicable representations. As such ValMaB-DM takes a twin track approach. One track will develop innovative, internationally applicable approaches whilst a parallel track will ground the research in key coastal habitats identified as priorities for net-biodiversity gain at the Solent and the Moray Firth, showcasing potential ecological, social, economic, and financial benefits. To address a critical evidence gap and inform the net zero agenda we will focus on the regulating services: bioremediation of waste and carbon sequestration. To tackle the stated challenges ValMaB-DM will first substantiate the interlinkages between marine biodiversity and carbon sequestration and bioremediation through the combination of new and existing data to assess how the condition of biodiversity affects the quantity, quality, and resilience of the services. Collaborating with international expertise we will develop consensus on scaling these findings from local to national and generic. Building on current understanding robust, generically applicable, monetary valuations of carbon sequestration and bioremediation will be further developed and applied to support natural capital accounting frameworks, and also coupled with novel ecological understanding at the case studies. As singular monetary valuations may not align with community aspirations participatory mapping initiatives will be advanced and deployed to engage real world communities in mapping the social values and trade-offs associated with biodiversity and Natural Capital resources. The ecological, monetary, and social values of biodiversity will be connected to decision-making through the co-design and implementation of green investment to maintain and enhance coastal habitats. Communication and capacity building are at the heart of ValMaB-DM. Strategic stakeholder engagement will be choreographed through the co-development of research, stakeholder mapping, the Programme Steering Group, and sharing of outcomes (e.g. policy briefs, trade shows, social media). We will also run a training programme for practitioners, collaborators and external stakeholders, enabled by Natural Resources Wales and the Coastal Partnership Network, and develop of an MSc course module and capitalise on links to the SuMMeR Centre for Doctoral Training