My experience as an intern at ICCS

Joanne Forster-Martin

16th September 2024

3 minutes read

This summer, I had the privilege of spending 8 weeks at the ICCS Nature Positive Hub as a Crankstart Intern with Professor Joe Bull. The project was truly unique. The aim was to improve and expand the coverage of biodiversity policy on Wikipedia, one of the world’s most visited websites. The internship was motivated by a recognition of Wikipedia’s importance and accessibility as a free, online encyclopaedia and its potential to play a key role in educating people on the biodiversity crisis and the efforts being innovated to fight the loss of nature.

By the time I started my internship, I had never edited Wikipedia or even made an account on the site. Getting to grips with its rules and conventions seemed intimidating at first but proved to be an engaging learning curve made easier by the invaluable training and advice kindly provided by Liam Wyatt and Stuart Prior at the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK respectively, as I began by looking for gaps in the coverage of biodiversity policy and thinking of ways that I could address them.

As well as being unfamiliar with editing Wikipedia, I was also new to many of the emerging aspects of biodiversity policy that I was to write about during my internship. It proved an inspiring education in all of these subjects and more, made even more engaging by the setting and the brilliant people I was surrounded by – I left feeling more optimistic than ever about the future of our planet and its biodiversity, energised by the hard work being done and motivated to learn more.

During my time at the ICCS, I created an article for nature positive on the English Wikipedia, which later appeared on Wikipedia’s main page in the “Did you know?” section. I also created a no net loss environmental policy article and was able to expand a range of other articles on biodiversity policy, including biodiversity offsetting, biodiversity banking, environmental mitigation, and others. I had the opportunity to present and enjoy discussing this work at one of the ICCS’ weekly meetings, thanks to encouragement from Talitha!

As I draw to a close, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Joe Bull for giving me such an amazing opportunity that has left a lasting impression upon me. You can find out more about the Nature Positive Hub’s work at its website: https://naturepositive.web.ox.ac.uk. I would also like to thank everyone at ICCS for making me feel welcomed, supported, and inspired during my time there this summer, with particular thanks to Talitha Bromwich, Sophus zu Ermgassen, and Lucy Radford.