A finite amount of land is available to provide the very broad range of outcomes essential to supporting society and sustain the earth’s ecosystems and the biodiversity they support. Current land-use patterns and land management methods are causing substantial declines in national, and global, biodiversity.
Climate change is increasingly, and rapidly, exacerbating the biodiversity crisis. It is also affecting global agricultural yields and driving new, sometimes competing, land-use priorities; for example: carbon storage (Net Zero), water provision, (renewable) energy production, and flood-risk reduction (‘nature-based solutions’ in response to climate change). Complex, and tough, land-use decisions, and possible land use and management change, will be required to address the competing demands for people and nature.
Swansea University is working across scientific disciplines to produce the evidence and understanding required to develop and deliver sustainable land-based production systems and resilient ecosystems, and support land management decision-makers.
Theme Leads
As one of the largest agri-food industries, beer production generates large amounts of nutrient-rich wastewater and spent grain. The conventional linear “collect-treat-discharge” way of handling waste is costly and environmentally unsustainable. This project will use microalgal biotechnology to convert these wastes into useful products, thereby creating new revenue streams for breweries, decreasing their environmental impacts, and promoting a circular bioeconomy.
AlgaeBrew is funded by Defra (collaboration with EU-funded partners).
The River Gambia basin has extensive mangrove forests which are hotspots for biodiversity and carbon capture. However, these habitats are also threatened by climate change, saltwater intrusion and mismanagement.
Through the establishment of a Coastal Citizen Science Programme, this project enables participatory research and community actions to protect the River Gambia ecosystem and people's livelihood that depends on it.
Promoting Conservation in The Gambia is a collaboration with the GREAT Institute with funding from the National Geographic.
The Narrating Rural Change network brings together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers, artists, community organisations, NGOs and others with a direct interest to engage with cultural and human dimensions of climate crisis and biodiversity loss in agricultural communities. It explores the ways in which we narrate past, present and future rural change. What stories have been told, and what narratives might shape rural and national responses to climate and biodiversity crisis.
