Friday, December 05, 2025

Social justice should not be tokenistic but at the heart of global restoration efforts

University of East Anglia

Social justice must be at the heart of global restoration initiatives - and not “superficial” or “tokenistic” - if ecosystem degradation is to be addressed effectively, according to new research.

Led by researchers the University of East Anglia (UEA) the study sought to explore what can make restoration effective for people and nature. Publishing their findings today in Nature Sustainability, they argue that placing social justice at the centre of restoration practice remains vital to success, with ecological targets aligned to local social, economic and cultural ones.

Around the world, almost all kinds of ecosystems have been degraded and converted, eroding both the biological and cultural foundations of human wellbeing. It is estimated that 3.2 billion people have already been adversely affected by land degradation and there are growing concerns for the future food security of all.

This crisis has driven pledges, funding and programs for wide-scale ecological restoration, often as part of biodiversity and climate policy.

The team, led by Prof Adrian Martin, Dr Neil Dawson and Prof Iokiñe Rodriguez of UEA’s School of Global Development, reviewed the published literature on restoration in theory and case studies of practice worldwide. They found a need to reflect on, and reframe how, restoration is defined and implemented.

“In the face of the climate and biodiversity crisis, global targets for the restoration of degraded lands have become ever more ambitious and urgent,” said Prof Martin. “Whilst placing justice at the heart of restoration practice is increasingly accepted, there is an unfortunate tendency to address justice in superficial ways, through tokenistic forms of participation and benefit-sharing.

“Restoration projects are often very short-term and ecologically focused. Many different initiatives are being labelled restoration and it is often assumed all must be doing good, but the core focus tends to be ensuring in the short term that the ecosystem is restored in some way - replanted, reforested, rewetted, species reintroduced etc.

“We know from many years of experience that externally led forms of conservation can have negative impacts on communities, so safeguarding rights, securing land tenure, ensuring consent and protecting cultural identity is important.”

The UN Decade on Restoration 2021-2030 - which has influenced pledges to restore a billion hectares of degraded land - and other major programmes have principles for engaging local communities and providing fair benefits, with projects often including incentives or compensations such as resources and training for alternative livelihood options.

However the team, which included researchers at the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy, Queen Mary University of London and the University of Sheffield, found there is a significant gap between what is considered good practice in global guidelines and what is happening on the ground.

There is growing evidence that this inadequate attention to social dimensions is undermining ecological outcomes, while major global reviews have consistently found that restoration is more successful where governance is based around local institutions and leadership.

Based on the results of their analysis, the authors propose a categorisation of the extent to which justice is integrated into restoration practice, from shallow to deep forms of engagement.

Specifically, they say designing and implementing transformative restoration projects requires a reorientation of focus to the relationships, knowledge systems and structures that are foundational to restoration practice. There should be increased attention to revitalising communities, their knowledge and institutions and ensuring their stewardship is central to more holistic and long-term thinking and approaches.

Prof Rodriguez said: “Success will depend on how implementation programmes are designed and, in particular, whether ecological targets are aligned with local social, economic and cultural ones.

“We are concerned that progress made in gaining global commitments, securing billions in funding, and developing ecological know-how has not been matched by progress in how to meaningfully incorporate social justice into restoration practice.

“Too often there is a superficial consideration of justice, creating unjust interactions and outcomes which impede the effective long-term restoration and protection of both nature and human wellbeing.

“However, there are increasing numbers of ‘bright spots’ of just and transformative restoration, many involving Indigenous Peoples, and these case studies provide evidence of what works and illustrate how deeper justice leverage points are actionable in practice.”

The authors cite the successful example of kelp forest restoration initiatives in the Haida Gwaii archipelago of British Columbia. This saw external conservation scientists working with local communities to identify Indigenous values of nature, then adapting the design of the intervention to focus on local norms such as respect, responsibility, interconnectedness, balance and seeking wise council.

'Towards just and transformative social–ecological restoration’, Adrian Martin, Neil Dawson, Iokiñe Rodríguez, Rajanya Bose and Isabel Cotton, is published in Nature Sustainability on December 12.

Journal

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-025-01702-w

Article Title

Towards just and transformative social–ecological restoration

Article Publication Date

5-Dec-2025

When you’re happy, your dog might look sad

ASU study reveals surprising twist in how we read canine emotions

Arizona State University

Study dogs — image:
The three dogs used in the study videos, from left to right: Canyon, Henry and Oliver.
view more
Credit: Arizona State University

When people are feeling happy, they’re more likely to see other people as happy. If they’re feeling down, they tend to view other people as sad. But when dealing with dogs, this well-established psychological effect ceases to work as expected.

That’s according to a new study by behavioral scientists at Arizona State University. In one experiment, nudging people into positive emotional states by showing them pictures that usually cheer people up did not significantly impact how they perceived dog emotions. In a modified experiment, the effect actually worked in reverse: people prompted to feel upbeat tended to rate dogs as being sadder. Those nudged into a negative mood deemed dogs to be happier.

“In this domain of how people understand dog's emotions, I'm continuously surprised,” said study co-author Clive Wynne, a professor of psychology and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at ASU. “I feel like we are just scratching at the surface of what is turning out to be quite a big mystery.”

The research is part of a broader effort to uncover the biases of the human mind that shape our perceptions of animal emotions.

“If we can better understand how we perceive animal emotions, we can better care for them,” said first author Holly Molinaro, president and senior animal welfare scientist at Animal Wellbeing Solutions. She and Wynne published their findings in the journal PeerJ.

The researchers recruited a trio of dogs to help with the work: Oliver, a 14-year-old mixed-breed; Canyon, a one-year-old Catahoula dog; and Henry, a three-year-old French bulldog. They needed videos of the canines reacting in a positive, neutral or negative state, so they asked the dogs’ owners to prompt their pets with emotional cues.

For the positive nudge, a treat worked for Oliver and a toy for Canyon. Henry only had to hear he was going to see “Grandma.” To kill the mood, Oliver was shown a cat. Viewing a vacuum cleaner did it for Canyon and Henry. Neutral mood videos showed the dogs resting or waiting for their owner to present another prompt. The researchers edited the video clips so that only the dog was visible on a black background.

In the first experiment, 300 undergraduate students viewed images from a standardized set used by psychologists to bring about a positive, neutral, or negative mood. After watching short video clips of the dogs in positive, neutral, or negative states, the participants rated how happy or sad each dog looked, and how calm or excited it seemed.

While the priming successfully shifted people’s moods, it did not affect how people rated the emotional state of dogs.

“It just didn't work the way that it does when you do this with humans,” Wynne said.

To make sense of the surprising result, the researchers decided to run a second experiment. The wanted to find out if the priming didn’t work as expected because it relied largely on pictures of people.

“We thought what if we use priming images that were actually dogs – a dog playing in the park, a puppy in a teacup, for example, or a dog that looks sad behind bars or a dog left on the side of the street,” Molinaro said.

They recruited another 300 undergraduates to repeat the experiment with dog-only images used to prime their mood.

“This time what we found was an effect, but in the opposite direction,” she said. “All those that saw the happy dog images rated the dogs as more sad. And all those who saw the sad dog images rated the dogs in the videos as happier.”

Also noteworthy, the researchers found that merely watching the videos of dogs against a black background – even dogs shown in negative mood – lifted the emotional state of study participants.

In all, the remarkable findings highlight how much remains to be learned about our relations with dogs.

“People and dogs have been living intimately with each other for at least 14,000 years. And in that time, dogs have learned plenty of things about how to get along with human beings,” Wynne said. “And yet our research suggests that there are quite big gaps in how we understand what dogs are feeling.”

That matters because misreading or overlooking emotional cues can lead to inappropriate handling, delayed intervention, or unmet behavioral and psychological needs for animals in human care. Molinaro and Wynne believe their research can improve human-animal interaction and support more accurate, empathetic, and welfare-conscious care.

ASU Psychology Professor Clive Wynne poses for a portrait with his greyhound Ginger at his home in Tempe on Nov. 4, 2025.

Credit

Photo by Samantha Chow/Arizona State University