Designing cities for everyday nature.

The motivations for incorporating nature into the design of cities have never been more compelling. Creating experiences with nature that occur every day (everyday nature) in cities could help reverse the fate of many threatened species and connect people with nature and living cultural traditions. However, this requires more than just urban greening; it involves ensuring daily doses of nature in a way that also supports nonhuman organisms. A major shift in the way nature is conceived of and is made part of the design of cities is required. Principles include reconsidering nature as a development opportunity rather than a constraint and eliminating offsetting of biodiversity site values. Processes include using biodiversity-sensitive design frameworks and establishing meaningful professional engagement among ecologists, planners, and designers. Challenges include design obstacles, conflicts between nature and people (e.g., safety, disease, and noise) that require careful management, and socioeconomic and political considerations (e.g., Global North vs. Global South). Research to interrogate the multiple benefits of nature in cities can complement experimental interventions, ultimately supporting better urban design and creating much more resiliently built environments for people and nature.

Diseño de ciudades para la naturaleza cotidiana Resumen Los motivos para incorporar a la naturaleza dentro del diseño urbano jamás habían sido tan convincentes. La creación en las ciudades de experiencias con la naturaleza que ocurren a diario (naturaleza cotidiana) podría ayudar a cambiar el destino de muchas especies amenazadas y conectar a las personas con la naturaleza y las tradiciones culturales vivientes. Lo anterior requiere más que reverdecimiento urbano ya que involucra dosis diarias de naturaleza de manera que también mantengan a los organismos no humanos. Se necesita de un cambio mayor en la manera en la que se concibe a la naturaleza y cómo se le hace parte del diseño urbano. Los principios incluyen reconsiderar a la naturaleza como una oportunidad de desarrollo en lugar de una limitación y eliminar la compensación del valor de los sitios de biodiversidad. Los procesos incluyen el uso de marcos de diseños sensibles con la biodiversidad y el establecimiento de una participación profesional significativa entre los ecologistas, los planeadores y los diseñadores. Los retos incluyen los obstáculos del diseño, conflictos entre la naturaleza y las personas (seguridad, enfermedades y ruido) que requieren de un manejo cuidadoso y consideraciones políticas (Norte Global versus Sur Global). La investigación para interrogar los múltiples beneficios de la naturaleza en las ciudades puede complementar a las intervenciones, a la larga respaldando un mejor diseño urbano y creando ambientes para las personas y la naturaleza construidos con mayor resiliencia.

Demographic and spatial variables associated with spending time in nature during COVID-19 lockdowns.

To stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (COVID-19) governments around the world implemented lockdowns restricting public travel. In the Australian state of Victoria, this included limiting permitted reasons for leaving home and restricting movements to within a 5 km radius of one's home. In 2020, we conducted a state-wide survey (N = 1024) of Victorians that coincided with a lockdown. We asked respondents where they had spent time in nature and how they perceived lockdowns affected the amount of time they spent in nature. We then considered demographic and spatial predictors of spending more or less time in nature. Women, younger people, and those living in areas with higher socio-economic status were likely to report spending more time in nature. Closer proximity of residents to parks and waterways and higher proportional area of native vegetation within a 1-km radius were also associated with more time in nature. Understanding how different groups were affected by restrictions on access to nature can help improve government management of crises like pandemics, including through urban planning for green space, supporting improved individual and societal resilience. We discuss the implications of our findings for improving access to nature during lockdowns as well as opportunities for a post-pandemic relationship with nature, particularly in urban settings.

Projecting biodiversity benefits of conservation behavior-change programs.

Biodiversity loss is driven by human behavior, but there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of behavior-change programs in delivering benefits to biodiversity. To demonstrate their value, the biodiversity benefits and cost-effectiveness of behavior changes that directly or indirectly affect biodiversity need to be quantified. We adapted a structured decision-making prioritization tool to determine the potential biodiversity benefits of behavior changes. As a case study, we examined two hypothetical behavior-change programs--wildlife gardening and cat containment--by asking experts to consider the behaviors associated with these programs that directly and indirectly affect biodiversity. We assessed benefits to southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus) and superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) by eliciting from experts estimates of the probability of each species persisting in the landscape given a range of behavior-change scenarios in which uptake of the behaviors varied. We then compared these estimates to a business-as-usual scenario to determine the relative biodiversity benefit and cost-effectiveness of each scenario. Experts projected that the behavior-change programs would benefit biodiversity and that benefits would rise with increasing uptake of the target behaviors. Biodiversity benefits were also predicted to accrue through indirect behaviors, although experts disagreed about the magnitude of additional benefit provided. Scenarios that combined the two behavior-change programs were estimated to provide the greatest benefits to species and be most cost-effective. Our method could be used in other contexts and potentially at different scales and advances the use of prioritization tools to guide conservation behavior-change programs.

Proyección de los beneficios para la biodiversidad obtenidos de los programas de cambios de comportamiento de conservación Resumen La pérdida de la diversidad biológica es causada por el comportamiento humano, pero existe incertidumbre sobre la efectividad que tienen los programas de cambio de comportamiento para otorgar beneficios a la biodiversidad. Para demostrar el valor que poseen, los beneficios para la biodiversidad y la rentabilidad de los cambios de comportamiento que afectan directa o indirectamente a la biodiversidad necesitan ser cuantificados. Adaptamos una herramienta de priorización de toma de decisiones estructurada para determinar el potencial de los beneficios para la biodiversidad obtenidos de los cambios de comportamiento. Como estudio de caso, examinamos dos programas hipotéticos de cambio de comportamiento, la jardinería silvestre y la contención de gatos, mediante la petición a expertos de considerar los comportamientos asociados con estos programas que directa o indirectamente afectan a la biodiversidad. Evaluamos los beneficios para el bandicut café (Isoodon obeselus) y el reyezuelo supremo (Malurus cyaeneus) mediante la obtención de estimaciones de expertos de la probabilidad de que cada especie persista en el paisaje con una gama establecida de escenarios de cambios de comportamiento en los cuales la aceptación de los comportamientos varió. Después comparamos estas estimaciones con un escenario de situación normal para determinar el beneficio relativo para la biodiversidad y la rentabilidad de cada escenario. Los expertos proyectaron que los programas de cambio de comportamiento beneficiarían a la biodiversidad y que los beneficios aumentarían con la creciente aceptación de los comportamientos deseados. También se pronosticó que los beneficios se acumularían mediante comportamientos indirectos, aunque los expertos estuvieron en desacuerdo sobre la magnitud del beneficio adicional proporcionado. Se estimó que los escenarios que combinaron los dos programas de cambio de comportamiento proporcionarían el mayor beneficio para las especies y serían los más rentables. Nuestro método podría usarse en otros contextos y potencialmente a diferentes escalas y fomenta el uso de herramientas de priorización para orientar a los programas de cambios en el comportamiento de conservación.

Global synthesis of conservation studies reveals the importance of small habitat patches for biodiversity.

Island biogeography theory posits that species richness increases with island size and decreases with isolation. This logic underpins much conservation policy and regulation, with preference given to conserving large, highly connected areas, and relative ambivalence shown toward protecting small, isolated habitat patches. We undertook a global synthesis of the relationship between the conservation value of habitat patches and their size and isolation, based on 31 systematic conservation planning studies across four continents. We found that small, isolated patches are inordinately important for biodiversity conservation. Our results provide a powerful argument for redressing the neglect of small, isolated habitat patches, for urgently prioritizing their restoration, and for avoiding simplistic application of island biogeography theory in conservation decisions.

Five lessons to guide more effective biodiversity conservation message framing.

Communication and advocacy approaches that influence attitudes and behaviors are key to addressing conservation problems, and the way an issue is framed can affect how people view, judge, and respond to an issue. Responses to conservation interventions can also be influenced by subtle wording changes in statements that may appeal to different values, activate social norms, influence a person's affect or mood, or trigger certain biases, each of which can differently influence the resulting engagement, attitudes, and behavior. We contend that by strategically considering how conservation communications are framed, they can be made more effective with little or no additional cost. Key framing considerations include, emphasizing things that matter to the audience, evoking helpful social norms, reducing psychological distance, leveraging useful biases, and, where practicable, testing messages. These lessons will help communicators think strategically about how to frame messages for greater effect.

Cinco Lecciones para Dirigir un Encuadre Más Efectivo del Mensaje de Conservación de la Biodiversidad Resumen Las estrategias de comunicación y defensa que influyen sobre las actitudes y comportamientos son muy importantes para abordar los problemas de conservación. La manera en la que se encuadra un tema puede afectar cómo las personas lo ven, lo juzgan y cómo responden a él. Las respuestas a las intervenciones de conservación también pueden estar influenciadas por cambios sutiles en la redacción de las declaraciones que pueden exhortar a valores distintos, activar las normas sociales, influir sobre el afecto o humor de una persona o producir ciertos sesgos, cada uno de los cuales puede influir de manera diferente sobre la participación, el comportamiento y las actitudes resultantes. Sostenemos que al considerar estratégicamente cómo se encuadra la comunicación de la conservación, ésta puede volverse más efectiva con muy poco o ningún valor adicional. Algunas consideraciones importantes son el énfasis en las cosas que le importan al público, la evocación de las normas sociales útiles, la reducción de la distancia psicológica, el aprovechamiento de los sesgos útiles y, en donde pueda practicarse, el ensayo de mensajes. Estas lecciones ayudarán a los comunicadores a pensar estratégicamente sobre cómo encuadrar sus mensajes para obtener un mayor efecto.

Factors influencing property selection for conservation revolving funds.

Finding sustainable ways to increase the amount of private land protected for biodiversity is challenging for many conservation organizations. In some countries, organizations use revolving-fund programs, whereby land is purchased and then sold to conservation-minded owners under condition they enter into a conservation covenant or easement. The sale proceeds are used to purchase, protect, and sell additional properties, incrementally increasing the amount of protected private land. Because the effectiveness of this approach relies on selecting appropriate properties, we explored factors currently considered by practitioners and how these are integrated into decision making. We conducted exploratory, semistructured interviews with managers from each of the 5 major revolving funds in Australia. Responses indicated although conservation factors are important, financial and social factors are also highly influential. A major determinant was whether the property could be resold within a reasonable period at a price that replenishes the fund. To facilitate resale, often selected properties include the potential for the construction of a dwelling. Practitioners face with clear trade-offs between conservation, financial, amenity, and other factors in selecting properties and 3 main challenges: recovering the costs of acquisition, protection, and resale; reselling the property; and meeting conservation goals. Our findings suggest the complexity of these decisions may constrain revolving-fund effectiveness. Drawing from participant responses, we identified potential strategies to mitigate these risks, such as providing adequate recreational space without jeopardizing ecological assets. We suggest managers could benefit from a shared-learning and adaptive approach to property selection given the commonalities between programs. Understanding how practitioners deal with complex decisions in the implementation of revolving funds helps identify future research to improve the performance of this conservation tool.

Rethinking Social Barriers to Effective Adaptive Management.

Adaptive management is an approach to environmental management based on learning-by-doing, where complexity, uncertainty, and incomplete knowledge are acknowledged and management actions are treated as experiments. However, while adaptive management has received significant uptake in theory, it remains elusively difficult to enact in practice. Proponents have blamed social barriers and have called for social science contributions. We address this gap by adopting a qualitative approach to explore the development of an ecological monitoring program within an adaptive management framework in a public land management organization in Australia. We ask what practices are used to enact the monitoring program and how do they shape learning? We elicit a rich narrative through extensive interviews with a key individual, and analyze the narrative using thematic analysis. We discuss our results in relation to the concept of 'knowledge work' and Westley's (2002) framework for interpreting the strategies of adaptive managers-'managing through, in, out and up.' We find that enacting the program is conditioned by distinct and sometimes competing logics-scientific logics prioritizing experimentation and learning, public logics emphasizing accountability and legitimacy, and corporate logics demanding efficiency and effectiveness. In this context, implementing adaptive management entails practices of translation to negotiate tensions between objective and situated knowledge, external experts and organizational staff, and collegiate and hierarchical norms. Our contribution embraces the 'doing' of learning-by-doing and marks a shift from conceptualizing the social as an external barrier to adaptive management to be removed to an approach that situates adaptive management as social knowledge practice.

Incorporating detectability of threatened species into environmental impact assessment.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a key mechanism for protecting threatened plant and animal species. Many species are not perfectly detectable and, even when present, may remain undetected during EIA surveys, increasing the risk of site-level loss or extinction of species. Numerous methods now exist for estimating detectability of plants and animals. Despite this, regulations concerning survey protocol and effort during EIAs fail to adequately address issues of detectability. Probability of detection is intrinsically linked to survey effort; thus, minimum survey effort requirements are a useful way to address the risks of false absences. We utilized 2 methods for determining appropriate survey effort requirements during EIA surveys. One method determined the survey effort required to achieve a probability of detection of 0.95 when the species is present. The second method estimated the survey effort required to either detect the species or reduce the probability of presence to 0.05. We applied these methods to Pimelea spinscens subsp. spinescens, a critically endangered grassland plant species in Melbourne, Australia. We detected P. spinescens in only half of the surveys undertaken at sites where it was known to exist. Estimates of the survey effort required to detect the species or demonstrate its absence with any confidence were much higher than the effort traditionally invested in EIA surveys for this species. We argue that minimum survey requirements be established for all species listed under threatened species legislation and hope that our findings will provide an impetus for collecting, compiling, and synthesizing quantitative detectability estimates for a broad range of plant and animal species.

Sustainable coffee: A review of the diverse initiatives and governance dimensions of global coffee supply chains.

With a global footprint of 10 million hectares across 12.5 million farms, coffee is among the world's most traded commodities. The coffee industry has launched a variety of initiatives designed to reduce coffee's contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance the socio-economic conditions of coffee producers. We systematically reviewed the literature on the sustainability and governance of coffee production and developed a typology of eleven sustainability initiatives. Our review shows that coffee sustainability research has focused primarily on the economic outcomes of certification schemes. The typology expands our knowledge of novel sustainability initiatives being led by coffee farming communities themselves, allowing for an improved consideration of power dynamics in sustainability governance. Sustainability initiatives governed by local actors can improve sustainability outcomes by empowering local decision makers to assess direct risks and benefits of sustainable practices to the local environment, economy, and culture.

Developing a new tool to capture the nature dose to reduce loneliness and improve quality of life.

Recognition of the health benefits of nature contact has increased. Simultaneously, growing numbers of people worldwide experience loneliness. There is a movement towards prescribing nature-based activities to improve/promote social connections, health, and quality of life. Yet, what constitutes a therapeutic nature dose is not well understood, due in part, to the lack of instruments that capture the characteristics of nature-based activities and measure 'nature dose.' We created a nature dose measurement tool to fill this gap by capturing various aspects of contact with nature and perceptions regarding park access, quality, naturalness, psychological distance to nature, and biodiversity. This tool will facilitate greater understanding of how natural areas, nature-based activities, and nature exposure reduce loneliness and promote health-related quality of life. Measuring nature dose with standardized tools and documenting benefits will generate the evidence base needed to design, implement and evaluate nature-based social interventions for improving health and quality of life.•This tool captures the nature dose to reduce loneliness and promote quality of life.•Constructs range from park quality and access, to mood, to biodiversity perceptions.•The standardized nature dose tool will help design nature-based social interventions.

Ecological connectivity as a planning tool for the conservation of wildlife in cities.

The application of ecological theory in urban planning is becoming more important as land managers focus on increasing biodiversity to improve human welfare in cities. Authorities must decide not only what types of biodiversity-focused infrastructure should be prioritized, but also where new resources should be positioned and existing resources protected or enhanced. Measuring the contribution of green infrastructure to landscape connectivity can maximise the successful return and conservation of urban nature. By using ecological connectivity theory as a planning tool, the effect of different interventions (both positive and negative) on the ease with which wildlife can move across the landscape can be compared. Here we outline an approach to a) quantify ecological connectivity for different urban wildlife species and b) use this to test different urban planning scenarios using QGIS. We demonstrate extensions which improve the application of this method as a planning tool:•Conversion of the effective mesh size value ( m eff ) to a "probability of connectedness" ( P c , for easier interpretation by local government and comparisons between planning scenarios).•An approach for measuring species-specific connectivity, including how to decide what spatial information should be included and which types of species might be most responsive to connectivity planning.•Guidance for using the method to compare different urban planning scenarios.

A transformative mission for prioritising nature in Australian cities.

Australia is experiencing mounting pressures related to processes of urbanisation, biodiversity loss and climate change felt at large in cities. At the same time, it is cities that can take the leading role in pioneering approaches and solutions to respond to those coupling emergencies. In this perspective piece we respond to the following question: What are the required transformations for prioritising, valuing, maintaining and embracing nature in cities in Australia? We adopt the mission framework as an organising framework to present proposed pathways to transform Australian cities as nature-positive places of the future. We propose three interconnected pathways as starting actions to steer urban planning, policy and governance in Australian cities: First, cities need to establish evidence-based planning for nature in cities and mainstream new planning tools that safeguard and foreground urban nature. Second, collaborative planning needs to become a standard practice in cities and inclusive governance for nature in cities needs to prioritise Aboriginal knowledge systems and practices as well as look beyond what local governments can do. Third, for progressing to nature-positive cities, it is paramount to empower communities to innovate with nature across Australian cities. Whilst we focus on Australian cities, the lessons and pathways are broadly applicably globally and can inspire science-policy debates for the post COP15 biodiversity and COP26 climate change implementation processes.

What next? Expanding our view of city planning and global health, and implementing and monitoring evidence-informed policy.

This Series on urban design, transport, and health aimed to facilitate development of a global system of health-related policy and spatial indicators to assess achievements and deficiencies in urban and transport policies and features. This final paper in the Series summarises key findings, considers what to do next, and outlines urgent key actions. Our study of 25 cities in 19 countries found that, despite many well intentioned policies, few cities had measurable standards and policy targets to achieve healthy and sustainable cities. Available standards and targets were often insufficient to promote health and wellbeing, and health-supportive urban design and transport features were often inadequate or inequitably distributed. City planning decisions affect human and planetary health and amplify city vulnerabilities, as the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted. Hence, we offer an expanded framework of pathways through which city planning affects health, incorporating 11 integrated urban system policies and 11 integrated urban and transport interventions addressing current and emerging issues. Our call to action recommends widespread uptake and further development of our methods and open-source tools to create upstream policy and spatial indicators to benchmark and track progress; unmask spatial inequities; inform interventions and investments; and accelerate transitions to net zero, healthy, and sustainable cities.

Biodiversity conservation cannot afford COVID-19 communication bungles.

With COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) dominating headlines, highlighting links between the pandemic and biodiversity may increase public awareness of the biodiversity crisis. However, ill-considered messages that frame nature as the problem rather than the solution could inadvertently propagate problematic narratives and undermine motivations and individual self-efficacy to conserve nature.

Allocating monitoring effort in the face of unknown unknowns.

There is a growing view that to make efficient use of resources, ecological monitoring should be hypothesis-driven and targeted to address specific management questions. 'Targeted' monitoring has been contrasted with other approaches in which a range of quantities are monitored in case they exhibit an alarming trend or provide ad hoc ecological insights. The second form of monitoring, described as surveillance, has been criticized because it does not usually aim to discern between competing hypotheses, and its benefits are harder to identify a priori. The alternative view is that the existence of surveillance data may enable rapid corroboration of emerging hypotheses or help to detect important 'unknown unknowns' that, if undetected, could lead to catastrophic outcomes or missed opportunities. We derive a model to evaluate and compare the efficiency of investments in surveillance and targeted monitoring. We find that a decision to invest in surveillance monitoring may be defensible if: (1) the surveillance design is more likely to discover or corroborate previously unknown phenomena than a targeted design and (2) the expected benefits (or avoided costs) arising from discovery are substantially higher than those arising from a well-planned targeted design. Our examination highlights the importance of being explicit about the objectives, costs and expected benefits of monitoring in a decision analytic framework.

Neither Hope nor Fear: Empirical Evidence Should Drive Biodiversity Conservation Strategies.

In biodiversity conservation, the prevailing consensus is that optimistic messages should be used to inspire people to change their behaviour, but there is scarce empirical evidence that optimistic messages lead to favourable conservation behaviour change.