IGSD News

On Monday June 19 Dr Vangelis Pitidis visited community members at Stoke Primary school in Ball Hill, Coventry, as part of an internal project focusing on tackling air pollution in the area through participatory research methods. Dr Pitidis discussed the concept and potential practical use of Citizen Science tools and methods to support the engagement and participation of local communities in envirnmental issues, preparing the ground fo the Citizens' Jury sessions that will be taking place on the area later this year. More information about the project can be found here: Link opens in a new window 

Nature protected areas are a key policy tool for biodiversity protection, and public support for protected areas is a key element for their success. Now in its final year, the FIDELIO project team have published two articles on their research into the social factors affecting public support for protected areas based on their statistical modelling work on thousands of public survey responses from across Europe. Both articles are fully open access and may be downloaded here:

‘Exploring local public support for protected areas: What social factors influence stated and active support among local people?’ Environmental Science and Policy, 145, 250-261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.04.003 . 

‘Using perceived impacts, governance and social indicators to explain support for protected areas.’ Environmental Research Letters 18(5). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acc95b .

On Wednesday 14 of June, Dr Pitidis participated in the 2nd Risk Awareness Workshop organised in Fraunhofer Forum in Berlin in the context of the EU Horizon 2020- funded project RiskPACC. The purpose of this workshop was to present the outputs of the project during the first two years of its development and implementation as well as to present some of the technical solutions developed and tested in different case studies to external observer cities that might be interested in adopting similar two-way communication tools between citizens and Civil Protection authorities. The workshop included a full practical session where the technical solutions to enhance disaster preparedness and response were tested by the participants.

As per Nikoleta's post, this week I had the opportunity to participate in the FIDELIO workshop looking at establishing pathways for transformative change in terms of Protected Area governance. I had the pleasure of presenting maps to colleagues to highlight the work I have been doing to convey trends in social impacts across parks in Europe. Please see attached example showing level of impact on Connectedness to Nature and Local Moran's I (a test to see if relationships are similar (positive) or dissimilar (negative) between respondents.

A two day workshop was organised 13-14 June by Nikoleta Jones, James McGinlay and Alfie Begley from IGSD bringing together practitioners and researchers across Europe who have been involved in social impact assessments of protected areas. The workshop follows the work conducted under the FIDELIO project during which over 15 assessments have been conducted across several countries. The FIDELIO project has explored why some Protected Areas are more effective than others setting at its core the unravelling of complexities in social-ecological systems and the important role of social outcomes of these conservation policies. During the workshop the main outcomes of the project were discussed including the level of public support for protected areas, their social impacts and also the spatial distribution of social impacts in the local communities. We were very excited to discuss new ways of improving social value and impact assessments for Protected Areas and explored pathways that will facilitate countries across Europe to meet the targets outlined in the new Global Biodiversity Framework including the potential expansion and increase of protected areas across the world.