Collaborating with the University of Edinburgh provides access to leading research, equipment, and expertise to explore solutions to nature and biodiversity related business challenges and opportunities.
Peter Baker is the primary point of contact for nature and biodiversity-related research and commercial engagement at the University of Edinburgh. He collaborates with colleagues across the University and public, private and third-sector partners to ensure that groundbreaking research being conducted across the University can be utilised to progress towards nature restoration and protection at scale in Scotland and worldwide.
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A new Europe-wide project to help businesses and the public sector recognise, measure and report on the value of nature has launched, with £1.2m for University of Edinburgh initiatives.
Two projects will receive funding – one exploring green cities, led by Professor Marc Metzger of the School of GeoSciences, and one focussing on investor hubs, led by Dr Theodor Cojoianu of the Business School. They will work with the University’s Forest and Peatland programme to test their biodiversity measuring methods.
In October 2021, the University of Edinburgh started a long-term, multi-million-pound project to restore peatland and expand forests in Scotland. This project will remove carbon from the atmosphere, increase biodiversity, connect woodlands, improve recreation and scenery for local communities, and preserve cultural heritage sites. In an era where environmental action is imperative, the University will sequester its unavoidable carbon emissions produced by essential travel as part of our ambition to be zero carbon by 2040. Over the course of the programme, several thousand hectares of native woodland and peatland habitats will be established, creating a haven for plants and animals.
The University of Edinburgh Business School and NatWest Group collaborated to design and deliver a flexible, scalable and impactful L&D initiative that equipped the banking group’s colleagues with the necessary technical knowledge, skills and awareness to deliver on its climate ambition – to be a leading bank in the UK, helping address the climate challenge.
NWG and the University agreed an innovative multi-year partnership that allowed greater agility in programme design to flexibly respond to and capitalise on the banking group’s real-time priorities and colleagues emerging needs from a climate L&D initiative.
Demand for voluntary carbon offsets is booming and projected to grow 15-fold by 2030, but at the same time, the market faces a new challenge. Every country has their own reduction target under the Paris Agreement, so how can voluntary offset projects reduce emissions below what would happen anyway with these targets now in place? In order to clarify and help resolve this issue Dr Matthew Brander, Senior Lecturer in Carbon Accounting at the University of Edinburgh formed a collaborative partnership with experts at the Stockholm Environment Institute and Gold Standard.
As the climate emergency intensifies, assessing the change to flood hazards becomes more and more crucial, particularly as flat land and waterside locations become increasingly attractive to developers as desirable locations on which to build.
For Edinburgh University Professor Lindsay Beevers, Chair of Environmental Engineering and Head of Research Institute, it is a core of element her work as she focuses on developing models to understand and quantify hydrological extremes, their evolution and how they impact society and the environment.
The University of Edinburgh's ARI research facility specialises in airborne data acquisition and innovation. ARI operates a fleet of manned and unmanned aircraft equipped with a broad range of imaging and atmospheric sensors, providing a unique multi-scale, multi-disciplinary, ultra-high resolution sensing capability. From incredibly high-resolution imagery at relatively small spatial scales to landscape and regional measurements, the aircraft aims to support measurements that shed light on the natural processes that shape our world, and to provide an understanding that will allow us to live sustainably within our environment.
