Lots of academics worry that focusing too much on the real-world impact of research threatens pure, curiosity-driven science. But really the two go hand in hand, especially when it comes to solving the complex question of how we achieve sustainability despite increasing human pressures on our planet.

As a tropical field ecologist studying rainforest destruction in Borneo, I saw the impact of the expanding palm oil industry on tropical biodiversity first hand, and so it was always a high priority to ensure the research I was doing made a difference. I was driven by scientific curiosity about how nature responds to the most drastic human activity, but also by the motivation to find solutions.

'It's like tobacco funding health research': should universities take money from fossil fuel? Read more

A Natural Environment Research Council-funded fellowship allowed me a rare opportunity to devote all my energies to using science to teach palm oil companies how to look after biodiversity. In just under four years I was able to translate the pure ecological research I had done for my PhD, studying the responses of ants and butterflies to the destruction of tropical forests, into practical knowledge which will actually save rainforests.

I worked with the industry to develop a practical toolkit for stopping deforestation in tropical commodity industries, by showing how big rainforest reserves need to be to conserve biodiversity in land dominated by plantations. The toolkit, spearheaded by Greenpeace and several key palm oil industry players, has so far been used to conserve half a million hectares of forest in multiple countries – not only in the palm oil sector, but also in rubber, pulp and paper, and cocoa. Last month the major certification standard for palm oil, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), voted to use the toolkit to strengthen its “no deforestation” policy. Hopefully this will lead to larger areas of forest being protected from an industry that has been responsible for worrying levels of habitat destruction.

Work like this doesn’t just have an immediate impact on the environment; it has a multiplier effect on the wider research landscape. The government’s research excellence framework, the exercise that assigns universities funding, is coming up in 2021, and much discussion has focused on whether it’s fair that it places a lot of emphasis on research projects being able to demonstrate impact through case studies. My experience has confirmed their importance: work on the toolkit has secured nearly £2m in new research funding. An understanding of the knowledge needs of the industry has resulted in repeat funding from the RSPO for our socially and environmentally sustainable oil palm research programme aimed at testing the impact of certification.

The work has also helped me forge new academic collaborations. My links with Indonesian academics resulted in a project with the Universities of York and Leeds and the Zoological Society of London to investigate the impacts of peatland restoration in Sumatra. This wouldn’t have come about without those critical local partner contacts.

The UK's green discoveries: plastic-eating enzymes and seawater biofuels Read more

These varied perspectives have also been a source of new routes of scientific enquiry. For me, questions about how to develop conservation policy changed the debate from “How do species respond to habitat fragmentation?” to “How big is big enough to support biodiversity?”.

So why aren’t we seeing more of this in UK academia? Positions in universities focused on building links between pure research and the industries, organisations and individuals that will use it tend to be short-term or administrative. To really make a difference, we need long-term networks led by academic staff who are experts in working with industry.

There is no reason why science with a social or environmental impact should compete with the need for pure research. As with my own example, applied science is usually generated from the building blocks of blue skies research. The presence of permanent knowledge exchange expertise in universities can help identify and translate unforeseen links between pure science and its applications, as well as generate funding from unexpected sources. Equally, a wider pool of ideas will produce more exciting research directions than academia can provide alone. This will bring the vital new thinking required to help balance the need to provide for our growing global population with the importance of protecting our planet for future generations.