The last ten years have seen a shift in environmental discourse from a focus on 'mitigation of the effects of climate change' to the idea of 'transformational adaptation' (Feola 2014). Responding to a failure to curb emissions and meet targets, transformational adaptation argues that incremental change is now insufficient (Lonsdale et al., 2015). A deeper and more holistic change has become both necessary as a societal strategy and/or inevitable as a reaction to scarcity of resources and overreliance on unsustainable practices. What this transformation will look like, we are only beginning to understand. Breaking with present structures of behaviour on such a grand scale should be both a feat of radical imagination and ambitious implementation. This project aims to work with this radical imagination - utopian, dystopian or, more likely, both tangled together, 'ustopian' as Margaret Atwood has it (Atwood 2011). It will look at ways in which literary writing concerned with the environment can help its readers to confront both the need for, and the inevitability of, radical change in our relationship with landscape, wildlife and climate. Where literature might engage with the potential for transformative adaptation, it requires a critical orientation towards the future that goes beyond the narrow focus on catastrophe that we have seen in much 'cli fi' and its associated criticism. Jameson has been critical of such work's repetitive articulation of contemporary anxieties, suggesting a failure to really imagine a future of radical 'Difference' (2007). For Jameson, a break with the impasse of contemporary conditions happens most prominently through formal innovation as authors reach towards that which may be unsayable in the present. This project promises to work at just such a level of form. Bringing together scientific research on future climate and biodiversity scenarios and literary critical research concerned with nature writing conventions (including the conventions of some of this scientific research), the project promises to experiment with form in ways that intervene in dominant modes of thinking and begin to articulate possible futures. It aims to shift current debates about nature writing away from retrospective and symptomatic critiques and asks instead how critical and creative work together might help to produce fresh and unsettling writing with a prospective orientation. At its heart, there is an attempt to confront necessary and inevitable change by providing affective footholds in a future that seems chaotically and abstractly uncertain. Climate science (IPCC Report 2018) and biodiversity research (IPBES Report 2019) from around the world offer profoundly disturbing information about earth-system breakdown, wildlife extinction and the inadequacy of the current political response to the crisis. But the interconnected ('wicked') complexity of the problem and the sheer scale of the data can produce paralysing feelings of inadequacy. There is what Timothy Clark has called a 'derangement of scale' at work here as one tries to connect a partial and localised agency to such abstract, high-level data. Epitomising this predicament, wildlife conservationist Hugh Warwick was asked a question at a recent public event - 'What is the one thing I should do in my garden to help hedgehogs?' - to which he replied: 'Bring down capitalism.' Speculative nature writing is uniquely equipped as a narrative model that can offer its reader an uncannily grounded and embodied 'walk-through' of a particular landscape or 'life-world' that does not yet exist. But it will use playful and innovative experiments with the familiar conventions and modes of this popular non-fiction genre to register possibilities it is difficult to apprehend in the present, unnerving and provoking and stretching the moral imagination.

Birds inspire people, their cultures and faiths. More than any other wild animals, these vocal, colourful and charismatic creatures fuel human imagination. Myths, stories and religious practices connected to birds are engrained in many cultures, from saluting magpies to relying on vultures in religious burial practices of the Tibetan plateau. At the same time, birds provide essential services to communities and the environment they share with them. Birds may act as pollinators or seed dispersers, but also eat farmland pests, benefiting humans. The presence and abundance of different kinds of birds can also act as an indicator for the state of the natural environment that they inhabit. Because of their interest to people, there are many more volunteer birdwatchers than their are volunteers to document the fortunes of any other creatures. Through 'Citizen Science' approaches involving thousands of volunteers, we are therefore able to monitor changes in bird distributions and numbers on a national scale in ways that would be inconceivable for other animals or plants. Birds are therefore of great importance to conservation and biodiversity research. The environmental and cultural significance of birds can be integrated together to serve communities and their cultures, aid conservation research, and preserve both cultural and biological diversity. Many people possess knowledge of birds that is not rooted in scientific, but in cultural understanding of the world around them. This knowledge is largely undocumented, but is no less valid than scientific knowledge. Being able to share that knowledge can bring inspiration to communities in the realisations that their knowledge, and birds, are important. It can be empowering for people who otherwise might not have a voice in the world, to have the value of their local or traditional knowledge recognised and valued by a global community. But opportunities for such recognition are few, and for Traditional and Local Ecological Knowledge (TEK and LEK), do not exist on the Internet. Individual communities already engage with local conservation organisations and get involved in community conservation projects. A means of sharing the local lore and information can be crucial for successful community involvement, and to build local pride in nature projects. The Internet is recognised as the most powerful means to access a global audience and share information on a global scale. Its potential is constantly growing. Working directly with our Project Partner, Birdlife International, the largest conservation collaborative in the world with partners in 126 countries, and especially its Local Empowerment Programme, the EWA project aims to connect local communities and groups of researchers by creating an open database of cultural knowledge about birds, free to access by individuals, communities and researchers. We will work with communities, as well as local organisations to help preserve the rich cultural diversity present in local stories, myths, or names of birds etc. By encouraging individuals, community leaders or local organisations to submit data such as stories, recordings of songs, or photographs of works of art or cultural artefacts, we will build an archive that will help to bring out the rich cultural and natural heritage inherent in many communities. By linking cultural and biological information, especially through the web-based Handbook of Birds Alive (Lynx Edicions Project Partner) we will achieve a greater integration between conservationists and local people on-the-ground, including greater understanding of the cultures of all stakeholders, including indigenous communities, and to promote the celebration of the cultural diversity of people living in a close relationship with nature. The project is timely in relation to the project partnership, but it is also urgent because TEK and LEK, which is transmitted orally, tends to be held by ageing people and declines daily.

<< Background >>It’s Time to get young people involved and contributing effectively in the fight against the biodiversity and climate crisis. According to the United Nations, we have a decade to take action before it is too late. Generation Z are often seen as victims, rather than valid contributors who can make a difference (Rousell, D and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A (2019) A systematic review of climate change education: giving children and young people a ‘voice’ and a ‘hand’ in redressing climate change. Children’s Geographies. ISSN 1473- 3277)The overwhelming nature of the crisis and urgency of the language surrounding media reports can lead to eco-anxiety. Eco- anxiety describes the ‘challenging emotions experienced to a significant degree, due to environmental issues and the threats they pose’ (Pihkala, Panu. 2019. Climate Anxiety. Helsinki: MIELI Mental Health Finland). Without hope in the tangible actions that young people can do to prevent and reduce the crisis, eco-anxiety will spread and debilitate this generation. We need to be providing tangible ways that young people can take action, ensure their generation have a voice and be more effective in the fight against the biodiversity and climate crisis now and in the future. It’s Time for this generation of young people to have a platform to do this and that’s why this project is so important. BirdLife International is the world’s largest conservation network, there is no other global conservation organisation who works in as many different countries across the world. Therefore, the impact of having young people at the centre of decision-making, representing their generation and the environmental issues that are important to them could be one of the most impactful ways to engage young people and achieve the global systemic changes needed to reduce and improve the environmental crisis.<< Objectives >>The main project aim is to create the first BirdLife Europe Young Leaders Council. This council will be used as a mechanism to achieve the project objectives of improving engagement of young people in environmental issues, particularly those with fewer opportunities, providing recommendations to BirdLife International on young people’s environmental priorities and finally creating a series of meaningful actions decided by the youth council to protect nature across Europe.<< Implementation >>The project has three stages. The first stage will be kick-started with a transnational meeting to decide the outline of three intellectual outputs. Output 1 is the terms of reference for the BirdLife Europe Young Leaders Council, outlining the aims and objectives, structure, selection process and guidelines for implementing the council. Output 2 is the training programme to build the capacity of young people to participate to their full potential. There will be two main training modules, the first will provide an induction and context to the work of BirdLife International, and the second module will focus on leadership with an emphasis on communication skills. The third output will create the communications materials needed for two communications campaigns. This will include social media packs, a promotional video, branding and graphics so the BirdLife partners have all of the necessary materials to implement the campaign. The 2nd project stage will be the implementation of intellectual outputs 2 and 3. The first communications campaign will celebrate the achievements of young people in conservation and invite young people aged between 18-24 years old to apply to participate in the council. The communications campaign will be disseminated across at least 15 different European countries through the local BirdLife partner. The selection process for the council will also take place during this stage. In September 2022, the first cohort of the young leaders council will participate in a learning, teaching and training activity, hosted by BirdLife International in the U.K. Here, they will meet the BirdLife partnership, receive training on leadership and communications and lead a multiplier event engaging with external conservation organisations. The third project stage marks the first year of the BirdLife Europe Young Leaders Council. During this stage, the young people will design and implement a communications campaign with the support of Station Europe to engage young people with fewer opportunities with environmental issues. They will also deliver multiplier events with the guidance of their local project partner and provide their recommendations to BirdLife International on how to engage with young people and the environmental priorities which are important to this generation. The final intellectual output, the volunteer brochure, created by BirdLife Poland in consultation with the council and other BirdLife partners will provide tangible ways for young people to volunteer and create meaningful actions to protect nature across Europe.<< Results >>The expected outcomes from these activities are that young people in 15 European Countries, particularly those with fewer opportunities, are given motivation, support and opportunities that will enable them to fight the biodiversity and climate crisis. The council will provide a platform for young people to represent their generation and their country in sharing the environmental priorities and concerns that are important to them, and as a result, enable the BirdLife Network to address these priorities and concerns to work for young people more effectively. We want to start a movement across the conservation community that ensures young people are at the centre of the conservation actions over the next decade. The decade that will be the turning point of determining whether humanity and nature can thrive together, or ultimately destroy each other.

The impact of British colonial rule on the landscapes and communities they controlled in countries such as Kenya and Nigeria have had far reaching effects on people's perceptions of what constitutes natural landscapes and how people interact with and manage their environments. These colonial legacies have raised further challenges in contemporary attempts to improve inclusion in addressing environmental issues due to the legacies of exclusion and racism that have hampered efforts to engage diverse communities in environmental sciences and in environmental justice agendas. Anthropological collections such as those in the Pitt Rivers Museums (PRM), containing a wide range of biological materials, objects, photographs and manuscripts collected by colonial scientists, have created a wealth of archives relating to the environmental histories of these landscapes, and importantly about indigenous knowledge systems, many which have been lost through the process of colonisation. Utilising these archives, the project aims to explore the link between colonial science perspectives and the different value systems placed on ecological knowledge that resulted in these legacies of exclusionary environmental histories. The project will address three main questions: 1. How is environmental history materialised through objects and photographs collected by colonial officers and scientists held in museum collections? 2. How are landscapes and natural resources valued differently from diverse cultural perspectives and how did actions of colonial governments affect ecological knowledge and land use which create these environmental histories? 3. What sustainability solutions do the collections from Africa hold to respond to current environmental challenges? What does the forgotten past teach us about a better future? To address these questions the project will use a series of workshops to bring together a group of contributors across different disciplines and cultural backgrounds to interact with collections of materials from Kenya and Nigeria. Our project brings together academics in anthropology, archaeology, and environmental science alongside freelance journalists, artists, NGOs and museum curators. Through the use of digital methods developed at the PRM for conducting object handling sessions, the contributors at the workshop will be able to engage 'live' with the museum collections that have been put together and evaluate the themes and identify key connections that help answer the research questions posed. These will then be developed into outputs such as exhibitions, public engagement activities, interdisciplinary databases of the curated collections and frameworks for improving engagement in, and perceptions of, environment sciences across disciplines and cultures in the UK.

Food security and the ongoing loss of biodiversity are two of this century's greatest challenges. Recent modeling work shows that identifying how best to meet rising food demand at lowest cost to other species requires information on how their populations respond to changes in agricultural yield. Only two studies have so far collected such data. This project will be the first to do so in Europe, and will thereby generate urgently needed information which the CASE partner, BirdLife International (a global partnership of national conservation organisations with representatives in 42 European countries, including all EU Member States, and a European Secretariat in Brussels), can use to guide ongoing reforms of European agricultural and conservation policy. Two divergent solutions have been proposed for addressing the conflict between food production and biodiversity conservation. Wildlife-friendly farming (WFF) involves making farmland itself as beneficial to wildlife as possible. Land-sparing (LS), on the other hand, stems from concerns that WFF usually lowers farm yields and so requires more land under farming: LS instead proposes increasing yield on existing farmland and thereby sparing remaining habitat from conversion (or freeing redundant farmland for habitat restoration). Early results from two tropical studies indicate that most species there would do best under LS. In Europe, however, agri-environment subsidies encourage WFF. This latter approach might be justified if strong selection from exposure to past glaciation and millennia of agriculture mean that surviving European species are less sensitive to farming - but to date no studies have tested this idea by quantifying how population densities of a wide range of European species respond to variation in yield. This project will fill that gap. Working in Poland - which offers an exceptional range of farming systems as well as some of Europe's most intact habitats - the student will measure population densities of all species of birds, butterflies and trees across 25 study sites, ranging from unmodified forest and wetland through to high-yield farming. By quantifying gross and agricultural yields for the same sites the student will characterise how each species responds to increasing yield. These density-yield curves can then be compared to test whether resident European species are indeed less sensitive to disturbance than migratory or tropical species. To evaluate which approach would allow most species to persist the student will then work with Polish collaborators to generate plausible scenarios of how demand for food production might change by 2050, and compare the consequences for species' viability of meeting those demands under either LS or WFF. Last, the student will use the output of the scenarios to design choice experiments to establish which approach people would prefer - and thereby explore whether there is a conflict between the cultural and biodiversity values of these alternative solutions. The strong track record of the CASE partner as well as that of that of our collaborators in RSPB and OTOP (its Polish equivalent) will ensure the results of the study are used as effectively as possible to inform European farming and conservation policy at both EU and national level. By providing the first temperate assessment of species' density-yield curves the project will also add significantly to our understanding of global patterns of species' sensitivity to land use change.