Nature Positive

Our Vision

 

The Oxford Nature Positive Hub brings together leading researchers from across the University of Oxford, and close collaborators from other organisations. We are united by a common theme: working towards understanding and quantifying the drivers of biodiversity loss, identifying opportunities for impact mitigation and nature gains, and investigating policy mechanisms and actions that might underpin pathways towards Nature Positive outcomes overall.

Through strong collaboration with partners in government, business, research institutes and international NGOs, we aim to deliver research that can provide the technical underpinnings necessary to catalyse a step change towards a genuinely Nature Positive world. Given the will and the tools, a Nature Positive future is entirely feasible.

Our Approach

Delivering a Nature Positive future will require transformative action across society. However, there is currently limited evidence on how to operationalize this mission at different scales and in different sectors and contexts. Broadly our current research falls into the following areas:

Defining and driving Nature Positive action – for example, using the Mitigation and Conservation Hierarchy

Regulatory, financial, and policy frameworks

Sustainable organisations and value chains

Measuring and scaling outcomes

Empowering all actors and promoting action

Read more on the dedicated Oxford Nature Positive Hub website.

Theme Members

Blogs

4th August 2026

Mapping monitoring resources to support progress tracking of global biodiversity-related commitments

Éilish Farrelly
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28th July 2026

The Oxford Bubble: Reflections on Science, Decisions, and Connection

ICCS Admin
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14th July 2026

Evaluating the biodiversity commitments of Earth’s keystone corporations

Tom White
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25th June 2026

Reflections from the World Biodiversity Forum 2026

Éilish Farrelly
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18th May 2026

Demystifying biodiversity finance

Harrison Carter
Sophus zu Ermgassen
Joe Bull
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11th August 2025

New blueprint to help tackle the biodiversity impacts of farming

Joe Bull
Joseph Poore
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14th July 2025

Seeking to quantify contributions that fisheries operations can make to a global Nature Positive goal

Stefania Asta Karsldottir
Hollie Booth
E.J. Milner-Gulland
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11th March 2025

Common approaches for assessing business impact on biodiversity are powerful, but often insufficient for strategy design

Tom White
Talitha Bromwich
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6th February 2025

The current state, opportunities & challenges for upscaling private investment in biodiversity in Europe

Sophus zu Ermgassen
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11th December 2024

What is a unit of nature? New framework shows the challenges involved with establishing a biodiversity credit market

E.J. Milner-Gulland
Sophus zu Ermgassen
Harrison Carter
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16th September 2024

My experience as an intern at ICCS

Joanne Forster-Martin
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6th September 2024

Risks and Opportunities of using LCA-based approaches for Biodiversity Footprinting

Tom White
Talitha Bromwich
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8th August 2024

An interview with Shahzoda Alikhanova.

Minori Kojima-Mogan
Shahzoda Alikhanova
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6th May 2022

Everyone’s going Nature Positive – but what does it mean?

E.J. Milner-Gulland
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20th January 2021

Four Steps for the Earth: becoming ‘nature-positive’ by 2030

Sophus zu Ermgassen
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7th January 2021

Lessons from Misool: a nature-positive approach to the tourism sector could aid the green recovery

Lucy Radford
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Publications

Here are some academic publications that represent the breadth of our work. For a more complete list of publications, please see individual researchers’ profiles.

Hawkins, I., Bromwich, T., Jouffray, J. B., White, T. B., Bull, J. W., Chang, F., … & zu Ermgassen, S. O. (2026). Evaluating the biodiversity commitments of Earth’s keystone corporations. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2026.101747

 

Farrelly É, Bromwich T, zu Ermgassen S, et al. Towards Nature Positive supply chains: From biodiversity impacts to organisational action. EcoEvoRxiv; 2026. https://doi.org/10.32942/x27h5v

 

Carter, H., Thompson, B.S., Bull, J.W. et al. Demystifying biodiversity finance. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 2, 388–401 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-026-00155-z

 

Caruana A, Bull J, Ferraro P, et al. Still Money for Nothing? Two Decades of Empirical Evaluation of Conservation Investments. EcoEvoRxiv; 2026. https://doi.org/10.32942/x2c383 

 

Bromwich, T., White, T. B., Bouchez, A., Hawkins, I., zu Ermgassen, S., Bull, J., Bartlett, H., Bennun, L., Biggs, E., Booth, H., Clark, M., El Geneidy, S., Prescott, G. W., Sonter, L. J., Starkey, M., & Milner-Gulland, E. J. (2026). Navigating uncertainty in life cycle assessment-based approaches to biodiversity footprinting. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 17, 1387–1404. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.70001