What is the problem? Habitat and biodiversity loss are a global nature emergency, and urbanisation is a key driver. With the UK now one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe, governments have recently introduced policies for nature recovery that operate through spatial planning systems. We call this 'Nature Recovery Planning', and it employs new market-oriented logics to count, evaluate, and mitigate habitat and biodiversity loss. From Autumn 2023, the English government will introduce Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). Ecologists will assess the quality and quantity of the habitat destroyed due to development. Developers will then mitigate this loss either by creating areas set aside for nature recovery on the development site or by purchasing offsite biodiversity credits. In Scotland, recently introduced planning policies emphasise the need to consider 'natural capital' (the idea that nature has economic value and provides essential services to humans) but BNG is not mandatory. However, at present, we do not have data on the extent of habitat and biodiversity loss associated with planning decisions under the previous and new policy regimes in either nation, which makes it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of these new policies. We also do not know how much weight ecological considerations will hold compared to the other social, spatial, economic, and environmental objectives balanced by planning systems. Furthermore, it is unclear how the types and scales of mapping used for nature recovery and spatial planning relate to one another. Importantly, the introduction of new forms of ecological assessment raises wider theoretical questions about whose view of nature is conceptualised, counted and valued, and the democratic and social justice implications of these changes for key actors. What will the project achieve? This interdisciplinary project will provide the first analysis of Nature Recovery Planning in the context of wider spatial planning systems. It will generate: The first robust quantitative ecological assessment of habitat and biodiversity loss associated with planning decisions in England and Scotland, comparing the effectiveness of emerging nature recovery policies with previous policy regimes. A groundbreaking qualitative analysis of the weight and status granted to ecological considerations compared to other social, economic, and environmental objectives in spatial planning processes across England and Scotland. A detailed study of the mapping processes of nature recovery and spatial planning, comparing their logics, studying the degree of integration between them, and exploring their impact on the production of urban and natural space. The first in-depth understanding of the ways that emerging policy is changing the types of ecological knowledge and expertise that are valued in the planning system, exploring the social justice and democratic implications of the change for different actors in planning systems. A series of recommendations to improve planning policy and practice to better respond to habitat and biodiversity loss. We will produce robust interdisciplinary research that generates new, timely appraisals of this emerging policy approach, and is of academic relevance to scholars beyond planning studies, including environmental economists, conservation researchers, ecologists, geographers, and political ecologists. Findings will be of immediate interest to government policymakers, planning and ecology practitioners, conservation NGOs, and community groups, and the project has strong support from major national organisations in these areas. It will be supported by a match-funded Knowledge Exchange Associate, who will ensure findings inform policy and practice.

Green infrastructure (GI) is recognised globally as an essential component of liveable and sustainable places. It is generally defined as encompassing most vegetated elements in the built environment, for example trees, shrubs, wetlands and other planting. It is widely acknowledged that GI provides numerous benefits to health and well-being and there is a substantial body of research demonstrating these benefits. Despite this there is still considerable uncertainty amongst the multiple stakeholders of 'what good GI is'. Currently, there is no overarching benchmark or standard for GI. This Innovation Fund will address this by developing a national benchmark for GI. The Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments at the University of the West of England, Bristol are already developing a local benchmark for GI with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. This benchmark is, however, focussed on local priorities in Gloucestershire and the West of England. This Innovation Fund will expand the local benchmark to ensure it can be used across England in a wider range of GI initiatives. This benchmark will allow an assessment of the process of GI creation, from policy, through to planning, design, delivery and long-term management, ensuring that current good practice has been adopted at all stages. The stakeholders, or end-users, for the national benchmark include planners, property developers, ecologists, urban designers, landscape architects, engineers, public health professionals, urban foresters, community safety officers and maintenance contractors. The objectives are as follows: - To work with a range of end-users to expand the local benchmark into a national benchmark and ensure that it is fit-for-purpose and user-friendly. - To apply this national benchmark to a series of GI demonstration projects including new commercial and residential developments and retrofitting initiatives across England to demonstrate its effectiveness. The national benchmark will then be formally launched and made available online for anyone to use for free. User documentation and reports detailing the demonstration projects will be available on a website for the benchmark. The outcome of the Innovation Fund is ultimately the delivery of high quality GI. This will maximise the benefits provided by GI including to nature conservation, health and well-being, economic growth, climate change adaptation and resilience. The key impacts include: Allowing developers to demonstrate to planning authorities, stakeholders and customers that they are providing high quality GI, which will act as a selling point for their developments. Enabling local authorities to communicate their expectations for GI in new developments and retrofitting projects (e.g. of social housing) and its maintenance; easily identify those planning applications that are meeting their requirements for the GI elements of developments; and demonstrate the quality of their own GI assets. Allowing built environment consultants to demonstrate compliance with a respected and recognised benchmark to their clients. Enabling policy makers to develop more effective policies, by being able to specify their expectations for GI at a national and local level in a range of contexts. This will improve clarity on the requirements for GI. Benefit residents and communities in both new and existing neighbourhoods who will gain from the provision of high quality GI and the associated benefits. This will ultimately improve, for example, their quality of life, health and well-being, environmental quality, resilience to climate change and the local economy. Benefit broader society which will have more consistent access to high quality GI and the associated positive outcomes from this including, for example, improved population health and well-being, inward investment, biodiversity, climate change adaptation and environmental justice.

Climate change is a social justice issue. It cannot be addressed without revealing and tackling the inequalities within society and where they are happening. Only when we know what is happening in detail, and where, can we make strategic, holistic decisions to benefit people and the planet in the long term. This is why the focus of this pragmatic project is on building a Community Open Map Platform (COMP) to help Local Authorities and their communities picture what is happening in a place as a basis for informed decision making and local action on climate change. The Isle of Anglesey/Ynys Môn in North Wales - the size of Greater London but with an ageing population of 70K - has been chosen as the pilot COMP because it is rural, disconnected and deprived of investment, and also because Anglesey County Council has high ambitions to reinvent itself as a centre of sustainable innovation. The need to include people in decision making about their future is at the heart of the Future Generations Wales (2015) Act (FGA), a ground breaking piece of legislation that is currently being emulated in a range of 'wellbeing economy governments' across the globe. The COMP has developed in response to Welsh Government's need to operationalise the FGA as well as the Isle of Anglesey County Council's need to align its activities and performance with the FGA. Anglesey's priority 'wellbeing objectives' are children and young people, zero net carbon and poverty, hence the focus of this short project on the experiences of children, young people and their families. The COMP will help Anglesey achieve and evidence its progress towards these priorities as part of the green transition through the development of a holistic value map that encompasses layers that demonstrate social, environmental and economic value, the 'triple bottom line of sustainability' and culture, a key pillar of the FGA, one that will be explored through the integration of arts and humanities practitioners (bards) into the mapping process. The project will tap into Anglesey's strong Welsh language storytelling tradition to support the the development of positive narratives that are a legacy for future generations. This will be achieved through 6 work packages (WP). WP1 Developing a Community Open Map Platform: we will use commercial digital design know how to create a bilingual, accessible and well designed data repository (website) that brings together the data layers constructed in WP2. WP2 Mapping the Evidence Landscape: constructing data layers with children, young people and their families: a)Social maps to show what contributes to quality of life in the area; b)Cultural maps made with the assistance of creative practitioners (bards); c)Environmental maps building on existing data, monitoring and observation; d)Census and administrative data maps. WP3 Future Generations Map: the data layers developed in WP2 will be spliced thematically, re-ordered and weighted, using digital technologies, to deliver a methodology for making an accessible digital Future Generations Map. WP4 Community Engagement: a) Inclusion - we will undertake experiments to explore how to make sure that the COMP website and the mapping exercises are as accessible as possible for a wide diversity of people; b) Face to face engagement - we will experiment with ways to make engagement fun & thought provoking; c) Digital engagement - we will explore ways to make our website & social media engaging as accessible as possible. WP5 Capturing impact: qualitative & quantitative methods will be used to gather and map the impact of the project. WP6 Developing the participatory digital mapping design ecosystem: we will promote awareness of the importance of participatory digital mapping while building capacity in this area across Wales and the UK more widely.

Green Infrastructure (GI) is the network of natural, semi-natural and managed green spaces and water features that provide benefits for people and wildlife. This includes woodlands, parks, gardens, playing fields, street trees, grass verges, green roofs, rivers, ponds, wetlands and sustainable urban drainage systems. GI offers a range of benefits, including flood protection, carbon storage, cooling, filtering of air and water pollution, space for recreation, and habitat for biodiversity. There is a wealth of academic research into the benefits of GI and a wide range of assessment tools have been developed by researchers, but many of these tools are not suitable for wider use, and there is no comprehensive guidance to help users choose and apply the best tools to meet their needs. This poses a problem for local planners, who face the challenge of developing effective networks of GI as budgets fall and demand for land for housing and infrastructure grows. This project is driven by the needs of Cherwell District Council, who are responsible for planning GI in Bicester. The town is set to double in size over the next 20 years, which will place pressure on existing GI - already being lost to infill development - but provides opportunities to create large areas of high-quality GI within the new developments, which include the UK's first eco-town in NW Bicester. The council needs tools to help them plan how to link existing GI with the new GI and the wider countryside, creating connected networks for wildlife and people, and how to ensure that the GI network delivers a wide range of benefits in the areas where they are most needed. The University of Oxford is therefore working with Forest Research to compile a toolbox of existing methods that can be used to plan and evaluate GI, and develop clear step-by-step guidance to help users select and apply the best tools to meet their needs. The tools and guidance will allow users to map and assess existing GI, identify opportunities for adding new GI or enhancing existing GI, and evaluate the benefits of these investments. We will work with local planners to apply this approach to developing a GI Plan for Bicester, and we will test the tools and guidance with potential future users in other local authorities to ensure that it can be applied more widely. By enabling planners, developers and green space managers to assess the impact of new developments on GI, and identify well-targeted cost-effective options for improving the GI network, we expect our project to have a significant impact in Bicester and beyond. Improved planning can maximise the benefits delivered by each area of GI and by the network as a whole. Valuation of the benefits delivered by GI can help to make the business case for investment, allowing more GI improvements to be delivered on the ground. A high quality network of well-designed GI can transform an area into a more attractive place to live, work and invest. As well as improving the health, wellbeing and quality of life of residents, this can boost jobs and economic development by creating new commercial opportunities in maintaining GI or running associated businesses (cafés, outdoor exercise classes etc). GI can also provide the most cost-effective way of adapting to climate change impacts by providing flood protection, shading and cooling. It can also provide opportunities for social engagement, local food production and educational activities, as well as protecting biodiversity. Keywords: Green infrastructure; ecosystem services; biodiversity; spatial planning; valuation; connectivity. Stakeholders: Cherwell District Council; Bioregional; Oxfordshire County Council; Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership; Bicester Town Council; Wild Oxfordshire; BBOWT (wildlife trust); A2Dominion (Bicester eco-town developer); Ecosystems Knowledge Network; Green Infrastructure Partnership; Environment Agency; South Downs National Park Authority; Mersey Forest.

National infrastructure (NI) systems (energy, transport, water, waste and ICT) in the UK and in advanced economies globally face serious challenges. The 2009 Council for Science and Technology (CST) report on NI in the UK identified significant vulnerabilities, capacity limitations and a number of NI components nearing the end of their useful life. It also highlighted serious fragmentation in the arrangements for infrastructure provision in the UK. There is an urgent need to reduce carbon emissions from infrastructure, to respond to future demographic, social and lifestyle changes and to build resilience to intensifying impacts of climate change. If this process of transforming NI is to take place efficiently, whilst also minimising the associated risks, it will need to be underpinned by a long-term, cross-sectoral approach to understanding NI performance under a range of possible futures. The 'systems of systems' analysis that must form the basis for such a strategic approach does not yet exist - this inter-disciplinary research programme will provide it.The aim of the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium is to develop and demonstrate a new generation of system simulation models and tools to inform analysis, planning and design of NI. The research will deal with energy, transport, water, waste and ICT systems at a national scale, developing new methods for analysing their performance, risks and interdependencies. It will provide a virtual environment in which we will test strategies for long term investment in NI and understand how alternative strategies perform with respect to policy constraints such as reliability and security of supply, cost, carbon emissions, and adaptability to demographic and climate change.The research programme is structured around four major challenges:1. How can infrastructure capacity and demand be balanced in an uncertain future? We will develop methods for modelling capacity, demand and interdependence in NI systems in a compatible way under a wide range of technological, socio-economic and climate futures. We will thereby provide the tools needed to identify robust strategies for sustainably balancing capacity and demand.2. What are the risks of infrastructure failure and how can we adapt NI to make it more resilient?We will analyse the risks of interdependent infrastructure failure by establishing network models of NI and analysing the consequences of failure for people and the economy. Information on key vulnerabilities and risks will be used to identify ways of adapting infrastructure systems to reduce risks in future.3. How do infrastructure systems evolve and interact with society and the economy? Starting with idealised simulations and working up to the national scale, we will develop new models of how infrastructure, society and the economy evolve in the long term. We will use the simulation models to demonstrate alternative long term futures for infrastructure provision and how they might be reached.4. What should the UK's strategy be for integrated provision of NI in the long term? Working with a remarkable group of project partners in government and industry, we will use our new methods to develop and test alternative strategies for Britain's NI, building an evidence-based case for a transition to sustainability. We will analyse the governance arrangements necessary to ensure that this transition is realisable in practice.A Programme Grant provides the opportunity to work flexibly with key partners in government and industry to address research challenges of national importance in a sustained way over five years. Our ambition is that through development of a new generation of tools, in concert with our government and industry partners, we will enable a revolution in the strategic analysis of NI provision in the UK, whilst at the same time becoming an international landmark programme recognised for novelty, research excellence and impact.