45th TB Macaulay Lecture - Professor Gretchen C. Daily

45th TB Macaulay Lecture – Valuing nature for transformation: innovations in policy, finance and practice around the world with Professor Gretchen C. Daily.

An awakening is underway, to the values of nature as an engine of well-being and prosperity – and to the risks and devastating costs of its loss. In her lecture, Professor Gretchen C. Daily will describe key frontiers in understanding human dependence nature – for material basics of nutrition, health, climate security, and economic security to ethereal senses of belonging, beauty, and spirit. Making this understanding accessible and actionable is crucial, to inform the profound societal transformations necessary to secure the biosphere and the human future.

Through vivid examples, Gretchen will bring to life the rapidly growing movement to bring the values of earth’s lands, waters, and biodiversity into the mainstream of decision-making. She will describe pioneering models of success for valuing nature in policy, planning, finance, and practice. These innovations – often born in small countries – use new forms of science, technology, and partnership. They are increasingly scalable, illuminating pathways toward green, inclusive development across the world.

As Scotland pursues a strategic approach to natural capital whilst aiming to have a Nature Positive Scotland by 2030, Gretchen will outline how crucial the role is of recognising the value of natural capital in transitioning towards a more sustainable economy and society and consider the policy and practices that other countries have adopted in approaching this complex yet hugely important and hopeful transformation.

Biography

Professor Gretchen C. Daily is the co-founder and Faculty Director of the Stanford Natural Capital Project, Bing Professor of Environmental Science; Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute; and Director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.

She is a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts, and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She has received numerous international honors including the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2020), BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2019), Blue Planet Prize (2017), Volvo Environment Prize (2012), Midori Prize for Biodiversity (2010), and the International Cosmos Prize (2009).

Event details

The TB Macaulay Lecture is delivered in partnership by the Macaulay Development Trust and The James Hutton Institute. It aims to connect scientific evidence with civic society on the big issues affecting our land and people and specifically to reach those who influence and make decisions on policy.

Date: Tuesday, 10th September 2024

Venue: Edinburgh International Conference Centre, EICC

Programme:

1700-1800: Pre-lecture exhibition

1800-1930: 45th TB Macaulay Lecture and Q&A session

1930–2100: Post-lecture reception

The event is free to attend. Please register now to reserve a seat.

Background to the TB Macaulay lecture

The annual TB Macaulay lecture is held to honour the vision of Dr Thomas Bassett Macaulay, President and chairman of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, whose benefaction founded the original Macaulay Institute for Soil Research in 1930. He was a descendant of the Macaulays from the Island of Lewis and his aim was to improve the productivity of Scottish Agriculture. This vision continues today in its successor the James Hutton Institute, a world-leader in land, crop, water, environmental and socio-economics science.

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