About Us
The Global Conservation and Sustainability Lab uniquely tackles the world’s most pressing conservation and environmental problems by integrating quantitative models with decision and policy analysis, taking a strongly interdisciplinary approach, and co-developing problem-oriented research questions with end-users.
Major conservation and sustainability questions that we work on include:
- How do landscape and climate change affect species and ecosystem services?
- How effective are conservation policy settings?
- How can we influence private landholders to conserve biodiversity on their land?
- How does international trade drive conservation and environmental policy outcomes?
We develop innovative quantitative models
We specialise in developing innovative quantitative and mathematical models that allow us to solve problems that would not otherwise be possible. These models mean that we can make predictions of the likely outcomes of alternative environmental policy or management settings. We then seek effective strategies and analyse trade-offs between ecological, social, and economic outcomes by formally integrating these models with decision analysis.
We are highly interdisciplinary
Our work emphasises the importance of interdisciplinarity in tackling complex environmental problems and this is a central plank of our success. Bringing together different perspectives, expertise, and skills is critical to solving environmental problems that span ecological, economic, social, and political dimensions. This also necessitates the need for diverse methodological approaches that complement our quantitative focus. We have therefore built a diverse team that integrates across multiple disciplines, including ecology, environmental sciences, spatial sciences, economics, and social sciences with expertise in different methodological approaches.
We explicitly integrate research with environmental decision-making
Our research plays a critical role in shaping conservation and environmental policy in Australia and internationally. To achieve this, we purposefully co-develop our research with decision-makers and policy-makers right from the start. We work particularly closely with Commonwealth, State, and Local Governments in Australia and national and international non-governmental organisations. This targeted co-development approach is foundational to ensuring our work is actually useful and there is a pathway from research to societal impact and benefit.
