Goal 15: Life on Land

Our organisation

Cranfield operates a university-wide environmental management system, ISO 14001:2015, which provides a framework for managing our environmental impacts, risks and opportunities, for setting environmental objectives and establishing programmes to achieve them. A successful re-certification audit was carried out by BSI in May 2023. Additionally, a surveillance audit was undertaken for ISO 50001:2018 which provides a framework for managing our energy use.

We achieved the Silver 'Hedgehog Friendly Campus' award by working towards improving our grounds for hedgehogs.

Policy development

The project Digital Tools to Help Agroforestry meet Climate, Biodiversity and Farming Sustainability Goals: Linking Field and Cloud is promoting agroforestry in Europe by developing digital decision-guidance tools so that trees are appropriately integrated on farms to achieve profitable food production, reduced net greenhouse gas emissions, and enhanced biodiversity. Several policy briefings were published throughout 2023.

Research

Progress was made on several research projects contributing to this SDG, including:

• The RestREco project, which continued to publish its findings through a series of blogs.
• The newly awarded DEFRAG: Defragmenting the fragmented urban landscape project led by Cranfield with several partners and stakeholders across Bedford, Luton and Milton Keynes, which aims to connect the green and blue spaces that support biodiversity and ecosystem functioning for healthier, more resilient towns and cities.
• Developing the use of UAV-RADAR for soil moisture assessment.
• The REGENERATIS programme, which reported its findings from investigations into regeneration of contaminated sites and opportunities for heavy metal recovery.

Partnerships

We worked with Forest of Marston Vale to plant over 320 trees and 800 hedging whips as part of the ‘Trees for Climate’ scheme and Earthwatch Europe to establish a ‘Tiny (Miyawiki) Forest’ on campus - part of a nationwide and international project to plant trees to mitigate climate change and to improve biodiversity.

Through a partnership with Kenyatta University (Kenya) and the Rainforest Alliance, ekaterra and Cranfield aim to co-develop a regenerative agriculture toolkit for the development of sustainable farming practices in East Africa for tea and coffee smallholders. The project will also establish a regional regenerative farmers' network to exchange best practice, learn from peers, build community and support small holders.

Outreach

Our 2023 Green Week launch event explored how entrepreneurship could help to drive sustainability with contributions from our partners, Green Future Investment Ltd (GFIL), two companies recently funded by GFIL – ManholeMetrics and SAGES London – and two of our leading experts on sustainability, Professor Chris Fogwill and Dr Rosina Watson. Green Week events included a popular talk on hydrogen research and development, fundraising for the Hedgehog Preservation Society, honey harvesting taster events, and an off-campus Wildlife Trust conservation volunteering trip.

A new Energy Champions network was created, and our Green Team set up the first ‘Clothes Swap’ shop in the Cranfield Students' Association. Our Green Officer Louisa Winch was a finalist for ‘Student Sustainability Champion of the Year’ Green Gown Award.

Our organisation

Our new Campus Biodiversity Action Plan included a target to increase net gain of biodiversity. The plan promoted biodiversity walks, spring watch events and tree planting, winning an award from the Wildlife Trust. Work with the Wildlife Trust and Forest of Marston Vale saw students take part in conservation events and tree planting both on and off campus.

We achieved the Bronze 'Hedgehog Friendly Campus' award by working towards improving our grounds for hedgehogs.

Policy development

In 2021/22, the final report from work to inform government policy on Peatlands in Wales was published. Find out more on the research project page.

The project Digital Tools to help Agroforestry meet Climate, Biodiversity and Farming Sustainability Goals: Linking Field and Cloud is promoting agroforestry in Europe by developing digital decision-guidance tools so that trees are appropriately integrated on farms to achieve profitable food production, reduced net greenhouse gas emissions, and enhanced biodiversity.

Research

Progress was also made on several research projects contributing to this SDG, including:

• The RestREco project, which collaborated on a special issue of IES’s environmental SCIENTIST journal on ecosystem restoration.
• Co-Opt – a new project begun with partners at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), the University of Liverpool and St Andrews University to develop environmentally sustainable solutions for future coastal and shoreline management.
• The REGENERATIS programme continued to investigate regeneration of contaminated sites and opportunities for heavy metal recovery.

Cranfield academics commented on drought in this particularly hot year.

Partnerships

The benefits of organic-based fertilisers are to be trialled as part of a new partnership with the fertiliser company Yara UK.

Outreach

The Sensing Soil project delivered several workshops with a group of refugees and migrants, exploring different methods for sensing soil and understanding its capacities to support life and capture carbon through sight, touch, smell and listening. They co-designed the Lewisham Way Garden and presented at a public open day attended by 60 people. It included sessions from environmental and community activist Graham Burnett and BlakOutside festival co-founder Carole Wright.

Our staff are developing a board game, Dirty Matters, to demonstrate the role of soil in meeting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Our biodiversity page sets out how, through collaborative management with our grounds contractor, we aim to increase conservation areas on campus. Since 2013 the University has been steadily improving habitats on site, increasing the areas targeted for biodiversity actions. This has risen from 1% to around 10% of the main campus area by 2020/21.

Cranfield's Urban Observatory is part of a network of observatories funded through UKCRIC for rapid trialling of solutions at scale, and gathering/curating large volumes of diverse data about the impacts of current and proposed infrastructure.

Ongoing projects in 2021 included:

• Valorising waste (vWa) from sugar and paper industries via innovations in pre-treatment, bio-transformations and intensification from waste-heavy sugar and paper industries – this Innovate UK/BBSRC-DBT-funded project aimed to valorise these waste products into renewable transportation fuels and high-value chemicals via innovations in pre-treatment, bio-transformation and process intensification.
• REGENERATIS focuses on regeneration of past metallurgical sites and deposits through innovative circularity for raw materials including urban mining for resources.
• Restoring Resilient Ecosystems (RestREco) is a four-year research project launched in 2021 and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council which aims to help tackle the biodiversity crisis by identifying how the UK’s most precious woodland and meadow habitats can be successfully restored. It will look at how all the different plants, animals and other organisms in ecosystems work together.