Sydney Environment Institute announces 2025 collaborative projects

Nature-positive buildings: A framework for biodiversity lifecycle impact assessment

Theme: Biodiversity, conservation and culture

Buildings take a toll on the environment by contributing to biodiversity loss, land use and deforestation. The Living Planet Report has estimated that buildings are responsible for 29% of ecological impacts globally. Current nature-related metrics do not provide a consolidated approach for assessing the biodiversity impacts of buildings. 

With a multidisciplinary team including Dr Aysu Kuru, Dr Thomas Parkinson, Dr Eugenia Gasparri, Associate Professor Arianna Brambilla, Professor Thomas Astell-Burt (School of Architecture, Design and Planning), Associate Professor Arunima Malik, School of Physics, Faculty of Science & Business School, and Professor Dieter Hochuli, (Faculty of Science), this project addresses urban biodiversity loss by developing a novel biodiversity impact assessment framework for buildings, focusing on the University of Sydney campus as a case study. The research will lead to an enhanced capacity to integrate and assess nature protection into an ecological framework, to act as the backbone of developing and measuring nature-positive buildings.

AI-Empowered Evaluation of Project Biodiversity Commitments in the Renewable Energy Sector

Theme: Biodiversity, conservation and culture

Dr Jin Xue, Dr Petr Matous, (Faculty of Engineering) and Dr Firouzeh Taghikhah (Sydney Business School) will use AI capabilities to create an evidence base for future projects, by evaluating the biodiversity commitments of existing renewable energy projects, and assessing whether their declared biodiversity conservation efforts match their measured impact. 

Three major renewable energy projects in Australia will be used as case studies. Advanced LLMs such as GPT will be employed and fine-tuned on a curated dataset of environmental compliance and sustainability reports, including public statements, policy reports, environmental impact assessments, stakeholder surveys, and ESG reports. These offer valuable information for assessing project commitments. The findings will be compared to the projects' measured biodiversity impacts using GIS-based spatial analysis. An AI-empowered evaluation of biodiversity commitments in Australia's renewable energy projects has the potential for far-reaching implications: fostering social trust and inclusivity, driving technological innovation, and informing policy development.

The Importance of Traditional Knowledge Pathways for Conserving Sea Country: A Case Study with Indigenous Rangers

Theme: Environmental justices

Incredibly complex and nuanced Indigenous knowledges have been expertly deployed to care for Country for at least 65,000 years, utilising diverse approaches to manipulate entire ecosystems (such as Sea Country). This specialist knowledge positions Indigenous voices as uniquely placed to lead national conversations about urgently needed responses to climate change. Yet against this background, settler orientations persist in dominant approaches to conservation, whilst Indigenous voices are routinely not heard, undervalued, or ‘scientised’.

Dr Mitchell Gibbs, Dr Jacqueline Dalziell, Professor Pauline Ross, (Faculty of Science) will work with the Gamay Rangers and Bryce Liddell (Senior Ranger of Research) to understand the importance of traditional knowledge, and its process of transfer between Elders and members of current Indigenous Ranger groups and trainee Indigenous Ranger groups. The project will explore ways to to translate this information into formats that are accessible, reproducible and publicly available, such as resources for community advocacy and pedagogical purposes.

Reimagining resilience in disaster scholarship, policy and practice in Australia: lessons from building a community resilience alliance in the Northern Rivers, NSW

Theme: Climate disaster and adaptation

Australia is highly susceptible to extreme climate-related disasters. In just the past five years, devastating bushfires, storms and floods have seen losses of human and animal lives, property, economies and vast tracts of ecosystems. With increasing exposure to climate-related hazards, Australia centres ‘resilience’ as a core goal of disaster management, reflecting global trends for disaster risk reduction (DRR). 

The Northern Rivers is on the front line of the climate crisis, with compounding weather-related disasters in recent years including catastrophic floods and landslips in 2022. Place-based grass-roots community groups were pivotal in emergency and recovery efforts in the aftermath of the 2022 disaster. The need for a ‘regional alliance’ of these groups was recorded in the 2022-3 SEI study ‘Self-organising systems to minimise future disaster risk’ where participants repeatedly called for such an alliance. 

Informed by a close exploration of the ways ‘resilience’ is understood in policy, this project informs, records, and shares lessons from the emergence of a newly forming Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance (NRCRA). The project team includes Dr Billy Tusker Haworth (Faculty of Science), Rebecca McNaught (Faculty of Medicine and Health), Elly Bird (Resilient Lismore), Dr Rebecca Hamilton (Faculty of Science), Dr Jo Longman (Faculty of Medicine and Health), Associate Professor Kate Owens (Sydney Law School), Professor Susan Park (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences), Dr Anna Sturman (Faculty of Science), and Associate Professor Amanda Tattersall (Faculty of Science).

Transforming river management through art, science and ancient knowledges

Theme: Biodiversity, conservation and culture

Community-based watershed and waterway management is key to achieving transformational shifts from extractive river management practices to policies that can support the mutual and intersecting health of ecologies, cultures, and communities. 

This project aims to develop a unique knowledge creation cycle that integrates art, science, and ancient knowledges. The project aims to bring together Aboriginal Elders and First Nations researchers; scholars from geosciences / waterways sciences, health sciences, critical sociology and the health humanities; and partner organisations.The upcoming arts-based River Country project will hold rounds of creatively-driven discussion \to co-create and explore this knowledge cycle. The collaborative team, led by Associate Professor Claire Hooker and Dr Vic McEwan, will explore how to use this knowledge creation process to discover new ways of addressing the complex cultural, ecological, health, and multi-species challenges facing Australian Inland Rivers.

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