Last October, the final Valuing Nature (VN) Programme Conference was held at the Royal Society in London where the WetlandLIFE team represented the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of Greenwich.
The VN Programme, supported by a consortia of UK Research Councils including the AHRC, ESRC and NERC, funded seven research projects orientated around two research enquiries; the impacts of potential ecological tipping points for natural resources within the UK and the importance of nature for human health and wellbeing for British citizens. The WetlandLIFE team have been involved in the latter research area, human health and wellbeing, through their collaborative work within the WetlandLIFE project, which is drawing to an end in January 2020.
The VN conference was an opportunity for all the WetlandLIFE team to present their initial findings ahead of a synthesis of their overall research discussion and conclusions. Director of the Greenwich Maritime Centre, Reader in Human Geography at the University of Greenwich, and wetlandLIFE Principle Investigator, Dr Tim Acott helped to opening proceedings with a plenary talk summarising the overall impression of findings so far and focussing on the interdisciplinary nature of the project. A key feature of the wetlandLIFE project has been to use multiple ways of knowing to understand the diversity of values associated with wetlands, and the combination of disciplines involved has provided fertile grounds for additional discoveries to emerge. Tim then joined a lively panel discussion about lessons learned across the protfolio of Valuing Nature projects.