Professor Nathalie Seddon
About
Professor Seddon is interested in understanding the origins and maintenance of biodiversity and its relationship with global change. After completing a degree and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK, she acquired over 20 years of field research experience in tropical forests and other ecosystems across the globe, including ten years as a University Research Fellow of the Royal Society. She now advises governments, UN agencies and businesses on nature-based solutions to societal challenges. As an official 'friend' of COP26, she is one of around 30 global experts to advise the UK government on the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).
She has broad interests in understanding the origins and maintenance of biodiversity and its relationship with global change. Her research now focusses on determining the ecological and socioeconomic effectiveness of nature-based solutions to societal challenges, and how best to increase the influence of robust biodiversity and ecosystem science on the design and implementation of climate and development policy.
In 2017, she founded the Nature-based Solutions Initiative a programme of interdisciplinary research, policy advice, and education aimed at bringing the equitable protection of nature to the centre of the sustainable development agenda.
She is a Senior Associate of the International Institute for Environment and Development and a Senior Fellow of the Oxford Martin School.
Expertise
- Nature-based solutions
- Biodiversity
- Climate change
- Tropical forests
- Ecosystems
Selected publications
- Nature-based solutions can help cool the planet - if we act now. (2021)
- Getting the message right on nature-based solutions to climate change. (2021)
- Mapping the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for climate change. (2020)
- Saving the Sundarbans from development. (2020)
- Global recognition of the importance of nature-based solutions to climate change impacts. (2020)
- Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions. (2020)
- Harnessing employment-based social assistance programmes to scale up nature-based climate action. (2020)
- Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges. (2020)
Media experience
Nathalie has extensive experience of interviews for media including national print and broadcast.
Recent media work
- Oxford Offsetting Principles: Academics launch new guidelines for carbon offsetting (Business Green, 2020)
- Aiming to be carbon-neutral? Don't rely on planting trees, scientists say (Reuters, 2020)
- How a 'nature-positive economy' could reverse the catastrophic decline in wildlife (Business Green, 2020)
- Climate change: Will planting millions of trees really save the planet? (BBC News, 2020)
- How will tree planting help the UK meet its climate goals? (Carbon Brief, 2020)
- From Indonesia to Gabon, countries turn to nature to cut climate risks (Reuters, 2019)
Languages
English