Matti Troiano

Navigating nature recovery landscapes: towards equitable and effective outcomes for planet and people

I am a DPhil student in the Land, Society & Governance Lab in the ECI on the collaborative studentship project funded by the ESRC Grand Union DTP Navigating nature recovery landscapes: towards equitable and effective outcomes for planet and people in partnership with the conservation policy organisation Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership (ONLP) and supervised by ECI senior researcher Mark Hirons. I am also a research assistant on a newly awarded John Fell Fund looking at national to local disconnects in greenspace policy and exploring synergies in health, nature and climate resilience through an equity lens, with principal investigators Martha Crockatt and Alison Smith based at ECI and Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery.

My work aims at broadening the analysis of mainstream conservation initiatives from an environmental and social justice perspective. By drawing on critical political economy of the environment and political ecology as key scholarship areas and through various qualitative and participatory research methods, my work aims at uncovering inequitable social and institutional arrangements emerging as part to the UK's efforts towards nature recovery. While working mostly on a UK-level, my research critically engages with the relevance and applicability to wider global environmental governance questions around the use of market-based initiatives and processes of financialization of nature especially in fellow highly advanced capitalist social-economic contexts.

I previously worked as research assistant under the Agile Initiative at the Oxford Martin School supporting the core team with programme-level research. More recently, I worked at the ECI and Department of Biology, on a specific one-year research project funded by Agile Initiative (Sprint 11). My work stream unveiled opportunities for and tensions between inclusive and collaborative governance models fostered by different organisations under the recently introduced English biodiversity market (Biodiversity Net Gain).

Previously, during my MPhil project part of the Environmental Change & Management degree at the School of Geography and the Environment, I worked across participatory social science and art-based methods in Oxford. Through the lens of recognitional equity, I explored how community values and relations with institutions across different social-economic groups in Oxford affect their access to green spaces and participation in local governance.

• Troiano, M. et al. (in prep.) How Institutional Models Shape Inclusion and Collaboration in Biodiversity Markets. Preprint available at: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/txepv_v1
• Troiano, M. et al. (under review) How Recognitional Justice (Re)Shapes Access and Participation in Urban Green Space Governance. Submitted to Landscape and Urban Planning.
• Troiano, M. et al. (2024) Impact and Collaboration in Environmental Research: Moving universities from evidence producers to co-producers. Discussion Paper. The Agile Initiative. University of Oxford, UK.
• Wright-Arora, G. et al. (2024) The role of publics and deliberation at the environmental science-policy interface. Discussion Paper. The Agile Initiative. University of Oxford, UK.