Catch up with Dr James Hill – KTP Associate

“Behind every good paper is a philosophical debate” – We caught up with KTP Associate and Researcher at the SRI Dr James Hill about his collaboration with Groundwork and ecosystem management.

Dr James Hill is a researcher and KTP associate working in the SRI, in collaboration with the environmental charity Groundwork. His research line focuses on the potential for ecosystem service markets to uplift biodiversity and sequester carbon, with a particular focus on designing habitat restoration projects with ecological and social integrity at its heart.

James and supervisor Dr Jack Clough have been conducting fieldwork in wetlands and green areas of the South East of England.

Hi James! Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to working on the collaboration between the SRI and Groundworks?

My PhD was in environmental science, where I gained technical expertise in long-term ecosystem dynamics (i.e., centennial and millennial scales). I focused on the impacts of climate change and indigenous land use in tropical habitats in Bolivia across 6,000 years, to understand how these ecosystems worked in the past in order to help conserve them into the future, since we cannot create long-term habitat management strategies without robust baseline data.

It was this strong belief in conservation ecology as an applied science which drew me towards working on this current KTP project with Groundwork. Primarily, I want to make a practical difference in how organisations bring nature back into our lives and rehabilitate wildlife across our landscapes. I wanted to come out of the ivory tower, so to speak.

James and supervisor Dr Jack Clough have been conducting fieldwork in wetlands and green areas of the South East of England.

So the KTP will strengthen the link between the SRI and a charity organisation. How has it felt moving from academia towards closer work with an external organisation?

I’ve never worked for a charity before, so it feels quite different for me. In a practical sense, working in Groundwork doesn’t feel very different from working in a university department in that there is a high level of expertise and commitment to the field. However, it has made me very aware of quite how disassociated university expertise is from reality and how challenging it can be to apply in practice. I think there’s a real issue with disseminating knowledge generated from on-high, be it from universities or government, to practitioners, something I had always been taught but was nonetheless surprised by when it came to experiencing it first-hand! For example, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), a metric for selling biodiversity uplift that was itself devised by government officials, remains poorly understood by many local authorities and requires a lot of -up-skilling for charities to get effectively on board.

“I am then taking Groundworks objectives into the university setting, and working alongside my supervisors and academic colleagues to determine how the latest innovations in sustainability research can be applied in practice.”

To zoom in for a moment to your project topic itself, what is in the pipeline for the KTP at this stage and what do you hope are the lasting impacts?

Firstly, I am centring on what Groundwork want – what are their overarching aims. They are interested in building the evidence base for BNG and carbon credits from their sites and community projects. For example, working with the Groundwork GIS team, I have been building toolkits and mapping resources which Groundwork can use to visualise biodiversity restoration and/or carbon sequestration projects. I am then taking Groundworks objectives into the university setting, and working alongside my supervisors and academic colleagues to determine how the latest innovations in sustainability research can be applied in practice to deliver restoration projects with high ecological and scientific integrity.

Focusing on the role of carbon sequestration for a moment, how do you envision the role of green and blue infrastructure evolving as part of global climate solutions?

I think it’s going to become increasingly important, in the wake of the 2030 and 2050 net zero commitments. Within that timeframe, organisations are not going to be able to make of the systemic changes necessary to mitigate all their own emissions. In my opinion they will eventually have no option but to purchase off-setting credits. Even if they can mitigate, as they should, there will be unabated emissions within government and businesses, that they will have to offset, and that will be bigger in certain industries like aviation. It’s here that carbon offsetting mechanisms for green and blue infrastructure can be very effective, in my opinion.

How can policymakers better support the work of researchers like yourself?

A really important thing is transparency on the part of government and their policy frameworks. So there needs to be total transparency in carbon and biodiversity offsetting frameworks, particularly in terms of habitat classification criteria and how the monitoring will take place over long time-scales. Recent scandals questioning the integrity of international voluntary carbon markets and the Environmental Offsets Policy in Australia highlight transparency as a key issue.  The government needs to take the lead on this and bring all other ecosystem service market stakeholders to task.

“In this project I am most excited about having meaningful impact in the way Groundwork goes about it work, potentially opening a whole new world for them relating to ecological restoration and finance.”

What’s the most rewarding thing about working in research and this particular project that you’re working on?

Conceiving something new about the world and synthesising the information on a subject. Behind every good paper is a philosophical debate, so I enjoy trying to hash out where I sit within that in the literature. Getting a paper published didn’t feel particularly rewarding, but writing the paper itself and learning how to write concisely and effectively certainly did. And it helps you think better. It clarifies things, not only for your readers, but for yourself. In this project I am most excited about having meaningful impact in the way Groundwork goes about it work, potentially opening a whole new world for them relating to ecological restoration and finance.  

Advice to other early-career researchers

You have to be able to sell your very specific expertise and outputs from your research, whilst also being able to synthesise the themes of wider relevance from your research into practice. It’s important to understand how these input into the wider conversations in society. Debate, philosophical underpinnings, how does this study relate to policy etc.

It’s so important as a researcher to get in there and get applying for lots of different jobs that are all relevant to what you’re doing and where you want to be going. To be acknowledged by today’s job market, is to be able to sell yourself to people, which is to feed your specialist expertise back into those broader motivating questions. Those will be what the organisations you’re applying for are moved by, with your technical qualifications being the prerequisite to your application amongst many.