Sarah Bekessy
Biographic Data
| ID | 1574557 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah Bekessy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah |
| FAMILY NAME | Bekessy |
| SIGNATURE | BEKESSY S |
| AFFILIATIONS | RMIT University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0503-1979 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Adapting and applying a group facilitator training model to support nature-based social interventions for alleviating loneliness in five countries
Implementing psychosocial health interventions in new target groups in different cultures requires rigorous training. The ‘Circle of Friends’ (CoF) model has proven to be effective for helping lonely older adults. The aim of this article is to describe in detail how professionals’ training in using the CoF model was modified to create the ‘Friends in Nature (FiN)’ intervention in the EU-funded ‘RECETAS’ project for use in five other countries (Sp…
Catalysing conservation
The biodiversity crisis demands effective strategies to shift human behaviour, rooted in understanding how people relate to nature and how those relationships may be cultivated to motivate conservation action. This study contributes to understanding of how conservation behaviour may catalyse the adoption of other conservation behaviours by examining whether engagement in a conservation behaviour (purchasing a cup of wildlife‐friendly coffee) in a…
Reimagining Health Care and Social Connection with Asylum Seekers and Refugees through Contextually Grounded Nature-Based Social Interventions
Nature-based social prescribing (NBSP) is gaining recognition as a means of addressing loneliness and fostering social connection, yet evidence of its effectiveness for socially marginalised groups remains limited. This explorative single-arm, pre-post study examined Friends in Nature (FiN), an eight-week NBSP program co-designed for and with 37 LGBTIQA+ asylum seekers and refugees in Melbourne. Participants were referred by a trusted partner org…
Challenges and lessons of implementing strategic environmental assessment in a critically endangered ecosystem
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) can help to ensure that development across a landscape is planned and implemented with minimum environmental and biodiversity impacts.Despite its growing prevalence, few studies have investigated the implementation of biodiversity conservation interventions associated with SEA.Here, we examine an Australian SEA case study, the Melbourne Strategic Assessment, which set out to assess the impacts of Melbourne…
Defining ‘adequate’ tree protection
Can conservation covenants help sustain nature and livelihoods? Factors associated with conservation covenant adopters in Australia
Biodiversity conservation on privately owned land often relies on the actions of individual landholders, such as participating in conservation covenant programs. Landholders' participation in conservation covenant programs depends on many financial and non‐financial factors and in many cases is closely linked to landholder livelihoods. We investigated whether landholders who participate in conservation covenant programs have different perceptions…
Evaluating Biodiversity Criteria in Green Building Rating Schemes
Aiming for a ‘nature positive’ future, built environment professionals increasingly adopt green building schemes as their roadmap. We review the most widely adopted green building rating schemes globally, focusing on evaluating their criteria for biodiversity action. We highlight key shortcomings in schemes, including that most do not specify biodiversity objectives (85%), lack monitoring plans (47%), lack ecological connectivity plans (76%) and …
Nature-based solutions for urban biodiversity
Protecting and enhancing biodiversity in urban areas is critical for meeting international conservation commitments, and has a vital role to play in the health and wellbeing of city residents. Yet, urbanisation can have devastating impacts on biodiversity, with urban development typically delivering landscapes in which habitat remains only as small, fragmented patches, surrounded by an inhospitable urban matrix. As cities begin to plan for urban …
Optimal investments in private land conservation depend more on landholder preferences than climate change
Effective private land conservation strategies that consider both landholder preferences and future climatic conditions are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet, the interaction and relative importance of these factors for conservation planning performance is unknown. Here, we assess the importance of considering landholder preferences and climate change for prioritising locations for conservation tenders to recruit la…
Sustainable coffee
With a global footprint of 10 million hectares across 12.5 million farms, coffee is among the world’s most traded commodities. The coffee industry has launched a variety of initiatives designed to reduce coffee’s contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance the socio-economic conditions of coffee producers. We systematically reviewed the literature on the sustainability and governance of coffee production and developed a typol…
Action research for transformative change
As major policy actors (e.g. governments, global organisations) grapple with 'wicked’ sustainability challenges, the use of demonstration projects or ‘living labs’ has promise in showcasing potential solutions. However, these projects can struggle to realise enduring change, with initial experimental deliverables tending not to be replicated and remaining as once-offs. As well as demonstrating solutions, projects also need to overcome the conside…
Integrating biodiversity as a non-human stakeholder within urban development
Contextual challenges for implementing strategic environmental assessment in the Global South
An increasing number of countries are implementing strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to support the development of environmentally sustainable policies, plans and programs. However, some Global South countries are yet to legislate for SEA and research is needed to understand the contextual challenges to implementing SEA effectively in these jurisdictions. Here, we examine Mexico’s first attempt at applying SEA to assess the potential impac…
Ethical considerations for conservation messaging research and practice
Conservation professionals are familiar with value‐driven research and practice. However, recent efforts to use strategic communication, specifically conservation messaging, to affect targeted behaviour change or influence values and attitudes towards conservation introduce new ethical dilemmas that conservation professionals may not have considered or are ill‐equipped to deal with. Drawing from strategic communication theory and professional gui…
A Review of Existing Ecological Design Frameworks Enabling Biodiversity Inclusive Design
Built environment practitioners currently seek options and opportunities to respond to the biodiversity emergency. Biodiversity Inclusive Design (BID) is an approach to design that seeks to foster functional ecological systems, enable species’ persistence within the built environment and (re) connect people with nature. BID can support designers’ quest toward biodiversity positivity. However, design projects that prioritise biodiversity are spars…
A transformative mission for prioritising nature in Australian cities
Australia is experiencing mounting pressures related to processes of urbanisation, biodiversity loss and climate change felt at large in cities. At the same time, it is cities that can take the leading role in pioneering approaches and solutions to respond to those coupling emergencies. In this perspective piece we respond to the following question: What are the required transformations for prioritising, valuing, maintaining and embracing nature …
The role of ‘nativeness’ in urban greening to support animal biodiversity
The classification of plant species as native or exotic has ramifications for how they are treated within urban green space policy and practice. Green spaces are built or managed to fulfil a range of ecological and social functions, and decisions must be made about which plants to include to achieve these functions. There is growing literary and policy emphasis on native-only planting strategies, under the assumption that native species will deli…
Biodiversity and ecosystem services in strategic environmental assessment
Many IUCN red list species have names that evoke negative emotions
Species common names underpin communication between researchers, stakeholders and the public. Changing unappealing (e.g., rough-skinned horned toad), misleading (e.g., lesser bird of paradise) or even immemorable (e.g., little grassbird) species names could be an effective, and inexpensive, way to improve engagement with and support for threatened species. We use two sentiment lexicons to analyze the common names of 26,794 IUCN Red List animal sp…
Bringing nature back into cities
Protecting nature is a fundamental aspect of local and Indigenous cultures that has more recently become an urban sustainability goal. The benefits provided by nature to people and other species have sparked an upsurge in research exploring how best to manage existing nature in urban environments. Here we expand this focus by drawing attention to an emerging pathway of research and practice that is engaged with the idea of bringing nature back in…
Achieving the promise of integration in social-ecological research
Guerrero, A. M., N. J. Bennett, K. A. Wilson, N. Carter, D. Gill, M. Mills, C. D. Ives, M. J. Selinske, C. Larrosa, S. Bekessy, F. A. Januchowski-Hartley, H. Travers, C. A. Wyborn, and A. Nuno. 2018. Achieving the promise of integration in social-ecological research: a review and prospectus. Ecology and Society 23(3):38. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10232-230338
Opportunities for biodiversity conservation as cities adapt to climate change
Cities are investing billions of dollars in climate change adaptation to combat the effects of sea‐level rise, temperature extremes, increasingly intense storm events, flooding and water scarcity. Natural ecosystems have enormous potential to contribute to city resilience, and so, actions that rely on this approach could sustain considerable co‐benefits for biodiversity. In this paper we identify the prevalence of key themes of human adaptation r…
The seven lamps of planning for biodiversity in the city
Cities tend to be built in areas of high biodiversity, and the accelerating pace of urbanization threatens the persistence of many species and ecological communities globally. However, urban environments also offer unique prospects for biological conservation, with multiple benefits for humans and other species. We present seven ecological principles to conserve and increase the biodiversity of cities, using metaphors to bridge the gap between th…
Capturing residents’ values for urban green space
Planning for green space is guided by standards and guidelines but there is currently little understanding of the variety of values people assign to green spaces or their determinants. Land use planners need to know what values are associated with different landscape characteristics and how value elicitation techniques can inform decisions. We designed a Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) study and surveyed residents of four urbanising suburbs in t…
Decline of ‘biodiversity’ in conservation policy discourse in Australia
Market-based instruments along with conceptualizing the environment as a collection of ‘ecosystem services’ has become increasingly common within environmental and conservation policy. This kind of thinking is also increasingly prominent in the public discourse surrounding environment and conservation policy, particularly in the context of communicating the importance of policy measures. Language used in public discourse can have a powerful influ…
The seven lamps of planning for biodiversity in the city
Cities tend to be built in areas of high biodiversity, and the accelerating pace of urbanization threatens the persistence of many species and ecological communities globally. However, urban environments also offer unique prospects for biological conservation, with multiple benefits for humans and other species. We present seven ecological principles to conserve and increase the biodiversity of cities, using metaphors to bridge the gap between th…
Locating financial incentives among diverse motivations for long-term private land conservation
Selinske, M. J., B. Cooke, N. Torabi, M. J. Hardy, A. T. Knight, and S. A. Bekessy. 2016. Locating financial incentives among diverse motivations for long-term private land conservation. Ecology and Society 22(2):7. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09148-220207
Biodiversity and ecosystem services in strategic environmental assessment
Bringing nature back into cities
Protecting nature is a fundamental aspect of local and Indigenous cultures that has more recently become an urban sustainability goal. The benefits provided by nature to people and other species have sparked an upsurge in research exploring how best to manage existing nature in urban environments. Here we expand this focus by drawing attention to an emerging pathway of research and practice that is engaged with the idea of bringing nature back in…
Framing the private land conservation conversation
Insights into the value of a ‘stand‐alone’ course for sustainability education
Education for sustainability (EfS) is emerging as an urgent imperative and challenge for higher education. But what exactly does it mean to put sustainability into higher education? How do we bring sustainability themes into university curriculum, across the enormous diversity of academic disciplines? This paper describes the experience of teaching a large ‘stand‐alone’ EfS subject which sits within the professional contexts of the large first‐ye…
A transformative mission for prioritising nature in Australian cities
Australia is experiencing mounting pressures related to processes of urbanisation, biodiversity loss and climate change felt at large in cities. At the same time, it is cities that can take the leading role in pioneering approaches and solutions to respond to those coupling emergencies. In this perspective piece we respond to the following question: What are the required transformations for prioritising, valuing, maintaining and embracing nature …
Opportunities for biodiversity conservation as cities adapt to climate change
Cities are investing billions of dollars in climate change adaptation to combat the effects of sea‐level rise, temperature extremes, increasingly intense storm events, flooding and water scarcity. Natural ecosystems have enormous potential to contribute to city resilience, and so, actions that rely on this approach could sustain considerable co‐benefits for biodiversity. In this paper we identify the prevalence of key themes of human adaptation r…
Action research for transformative change
As major policy actors (e.g. governments, global organisations) grapple with 'wicked’ sustainability challenges, the use of demonstration projects or ‘living labs’ has promise in showcasing potential solutions. However, these projects can struggle to realise enduring change, with initial experimental deliverables tending not to be replicated and remaining as once-offs. As well as demonstrating solutions, projects also need to overcome the conside…
Decline of ‘biodiversity’ in conservation policy discourse in Australia
Market-based instruments along with conceptualizing the environment as a collection of ‘ecosystem services’ has become increasingly common within environmental and conservation policy. This kind of thinking is also increasingly prominent in the public discourse surrounding environment and conservation policy, particularly in the context of communicating the importance of policy measures. Language used in public discourse can have a powerful influ…
Insights into the value of a ‘stand‐alone’ course for sustainability education
Education for sustainability (EfS) is emerging as an urgent imperative and challenge for higher education. But what exactly does it mean to put sustainability into higher education? How do we bring sustainability themes into university curriculum, across the enormous diversity of academic disciplines? This paper describes the experience of teaching a large ‘stand‐alone’ EfS subject which sits within the professional contexts of the large first‐ye…
Taming a Wicked Problem
The rising popularity of biodiversity offsetting as a tool for balancing biodiversity losses from development with equivalent gains elsewhere has sparked debate on many fronts. The fundamental questions are the following: Is offsetting good, bad, or at least better than the status quo for biodiversity conservation outcomes, and what do we need to know to decide? We present a concise synthesis of the most contentious issues related to biodiversity…
Cities are hotspots for threatened species
Framing the private land conservation conversation
The Role of Social Networks and Trusted Peers in Promoting Biodiverse Carbon Plantings
Social capital has the potential to influence the success of biodiverse carbon plantings in the face of uncertainty amongst rural landholders about the need or efficacy of efforts to address climate change through tree planting. We conducted 17 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with landholders in Victoria, Australia who voluntarily participate in biodiverse carbon plantings on their land, focusing in particular on the role of social capita…
Capturing residents’ values for urban green space
Planning for green space is guided by standards and guidelines but there is currently little understanding of the variety of values people assign to green spaces or their determinants. Land use planners need to know what values are associated with different landscape characteristics and how value elicitation techniques can inform decisions. We designed a Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) study and surveyed residents of four urbanising suburbs in t…
Decline of ‘biodiversity’ in conservation policy discourse in Australia
Market-based instruments along with conceptualizing the environment as a collection of ‘ecosystem services’ has become increasingly common within environmental and conservation policy. This kind of thinking is also increasingly prominent in the public discourse surrounding environment and conservation policy, particularly in the context of communicating the importance of policy measures. Language used in public discourse can have a powerful influ…
Locating financial incentives among diverse motivations for long-term private land conservation
Selinske, M. J., B. Cooke, N. Torabi, M. J. Hardy, A. T. Knight, and S. A. Bekessy. 2016. Locating financial incentives among diverse motivations for long-term private land conservation. Ecology and Society 22(2):7. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09148-220207
Achieving the promise of integration in social-ecological research
Guerrero, A. M., N. J. Bennett, K. A. Wilson, N. Carter, D. Gill, M. Mills, C. D. Ives, M. J. Selinske, C. Larrosa, S. Bekessy, F. A. Januchowski-Hartley, H. Travers, C. A. Wyborn, and A. Nuno. 2018. Achieving the promise of integration in social-ecological research: a review and prospectus. Ecology and Society 23(3):38. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10232-230338
Opportunities for biodiversity conservation as cities adapt to climate change
Cities are investing billions of dollars in climate change adaptation to combat the effects of sea‐level rise, temperature extremes, increasingly intense storm events, flooding and water scarcity. Natural ecosystems have enormous potential to contribute to city resilience, and so, actions that rely on this approach could sustain considerable co‐benefits for biodiversity. In this paper we identify the prevalence of key themes of human adaptation r…
The seven lamps of planning for biodiversity in the city
Cities tend to be built in areas of high biodiversity, and the accelerating pace of urbanization threatens the persistence of many species and ecological communities globally. However, urban environments also offer unique prospects for biological conservation, with multiple benefits for humans and other species. We present seven ecological principles to conserve and increase the biodiversity of cities, using metaphors to bridge the gap between th…
Many IUCN red list species have names that evoke negative emotions
Species common names underpin communication between researchers, stakeholders and the public. Changing unappealing (e.g., rough-skinned horned toad), misleading (e.g., lesser bird of paradise) or even immemorable (e.g., little grassbird) species names could be an effective, and inexpensive, way to improve engagement with and support for threatened species. We use two sentiment lexicons to analyze the common names of 26,794 IUCN Red List animal sp…
Bringing nature back into cities
Protecting nature is a fundamental aspect of local and Indigenous cultures that has more recently become an urban sustainability goal. The benefits provided by nature to people and other species have sparked an upsurge in research exploring how best to manage existing nature in urban environments. Here we expand this focus by drawing attention to an emerging pathway of research and practice that is engaged with the idea of bringing nature back in…
The role of ‘nativeness’ in urban greening to support animal biodiversity
The classification of plant species as native or exotic has ramifications for how they are treated within urban green space policy and practice. Green spaces are built or managed to fulfil a range of ecological and social functions, and decisions must be made about which plants to include to achieve these functions. There is growing literary and policy emphasis on native-only planting strategies, under the assumption that native species will deli…
Biodiversity and ecosystem services in strategic environmental assessment
Ethical considerations for conservation messaging research and practice
Conservation professionals are familiar with value‐driven research and practice. However, recent efforts to use strategic communication, specifically conservation messaging, to affect targeted behaviour change or influence values and attitudes towards conservation introduce new ethical dilemmas that conservation professionals may not have considered or are ill‐equipped to deal with. Drawing from strategic communication theory and professional gui…
A Review of Existing Ecological Design Frameworks Enabling Biodiversity Inclusive Design
Built environment practitioners currently seek options and opportunities to respond to the biodiversity emergency. Biodiversity Inclusive Design (BID) is an approach to design that seeks to foster functional ecological systems, enable species’ persistence within the built environment and (re) connect people with nature. BID can support designers’ quest toward biodiversity positivity. However, design projects that prioritise biodiversity are spars…
A transformative mission for prioritising nature in Australian cities
Australia is experiencing mounting pressures related to processes of urbanisation, biodiversity loss and climate change felt at large in cities. At the same time, it is cities that can take the leading role in pioneering approaches and solutions to respond to those coupling emergencies. In this perspective piece we respond to the following question: What are the required transformations for prioritising, valuing, maintaining and embracing nature …
Integrating biodiversity as a non-human stakeholder within urban development
Contextual challenges for implementing strategic environmental assessment in the Global South
An increasing number of countries are implementing strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to support the development of environmentally sustainable policies, plans and programs. However, some Global South countries are yet to legislate for SEA and research is needed to understand the contextual challenges to implementing SEA effectively in these jurisdictions. Here, we examine Mexico’s first attempt at applying SEA to assess the potential impac…
Nature-based solutions for urban biodiversity
Protecting and enhancing biodiversity in urban areas is critical for meeting international conservation commitments, and has a vital role to play in the health and wellbeing of city residents. Yet, urbanisation can have devastating impacts on biodiversity, with urban development typically delivering landscapes in which habitat remains only as small, fragmented patches, surrounded by an inhospitable urban matrix. As cities begin to plan for urban …
Optimal investments in private land conservation depend more on landholder preferences than climate change
Effective private land conservation strategies that consider both landholder preferences and future climatic conditions are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet, the interaction and relative importance of these factors for conservation planning performance is unknown. Here, we assess the importance of considering landholder preferences and climate change for prioritising locations for conservation tenders to recruit la…
Sustainable coffee
With a global footprint of 10 million hectares across 12.5 million farms, coffee is among the world’s most traded commodities. The coffee industry has launched a variety of initiatives designed to reduce coffee’s contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance the socio-economic conditions of coffee producers. We systematically reviewed the literature on the sustainability and governance of coffee production and developed a typol…
Action research for transformative change
As major policy actors (e.g. governments, global organisations) grapple with 'wicked’ sustainability challenges, the use of demonstration projects or ‘living labs’ has promise in showcasing potential solutions. However, these projects can struggle to realise enduring change, with initial experimental deliverables tending not to be replicated and remaining as once-offs. As well as demonstrating solutions, projects also need to overcome the conside…
Challenges and lessons of implementing strategic environmental assessment in a critically endangered ecosystem
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) can help to ensure that development across a landscape is planned and implemented with minimum environmental and biodiversity impacts.Despite its growing prevalence, few studies have investigated the implementation of biodiversity conservation interventions associated with SEA.Here, we examine an Australian SEA case study, the Melbourne Strategic Assessment, which set out to assess the impacts of Melbourne…
Ecology (19 works) · Environmental resource management (19 works) · Geography (18 works) · Business (17 works) · Biology (16 works) · Environmental planning (15 works) · Biodiversity (13 works) · Land Use and Ecosystem Services (13 works) · Environmental Science (12 works) · Political science (12 works)