Wageningen (NL): Artistic results of “What did nature do for you today?” in South Africa are on show for the coming two weeks in the Forum Building at Wageningen University. In this fantastic initiative aimed at celebrating next week’s International Day of Biodiversity, former PRESENCE student Lucie Chuchmakova is presenting the results of her thesis which asked children of the Baviaanskloof about their relationship with nature…

During the exposition, Lucie will display the colourful drawings made by school children from the Baviaanskloof. These drawings formed part of the responses obtained by her research which focused on the children’s perceptions of – and interactions with – ecosystem services and biodiversity.  The results of Lucie’s thesis research are being used by Living Lands, PRESENCE partners and the eyes4earth initiative to help guide the design of future environmental education programmes as part of a broader strategy to help reconnect youth to nature and further support restoration efforts in the area.

Lucie’s initiative needs to be congratulated as an excellent outreach effort for communicating scientific understanding of ecosystem services into the public domain in a simple and attractive way.

Lucie’s thesis research and internship was supervised through Wageningen University’s Environmental Systems Analysis Group and hosted by the PRESENCE  network and Living Lands in South Africa. Her reserach was co-funded by the Anne van den Ban Fund.