From a Farm in the UK to Europe's Conservation Policy Table: A Conversation with Stephen Venn

2026-10-30 13:53:00

With SCB Europe Voices, we want to bring the people behind SCB Europe forward. For our first conversation, I sat down with Stephen Venn, Board Member and Chair of the SCB Europe Policy Committee

SCB Europe Voices: an interview series by the ComCom team. Episode – 1 by Mehedi Hasan.

Most people meet the Society for Conservation Biology Europe at a congress, during poster sessions, talks or in coffee queues. Far fewer know who keeps it running, or how it brings together conservation professionals and aims to turn research into protection for nature. With SCB Europe Voices, we want to bring those people forward. For our first conversation, I sat down with Stephen Venn, Board Member and Chair of the SCB Europe Policy Committee, project researcher at the University of Oulu, Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki, and one of the eight Chairs on the Executive Committee of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group. He is an urban and grassland ecologist, and was Associate Professor at Lodz University, Poland, until last year.

A late start, and a persistent one

Stephen grew up on a farm in the UK and travelled widely before turning to biology. He was already 30 when he began studying it. He moved to Finland in 1991 and completed his bachelor's, master's and PhD at the University of Helsinki. While almost everyone around him studied forests, he chose grasslands and alongside them, urban ecology, then a very new field in Finland. His early work looked at how cities change insect and plant communities.

His path into SCB took patience. He attended the first European Congress of Conservation Biology in Hungary in 2006 as a PhD student and kept going to every congress after that. Around 2009, he asked to join a committee, gave his email address and heard nothing. In 2018, he tried to nominate himself for the Board and was told no, because another Finnish member already sat there. Since then the rules have changed, so nationality no longer matters in the same way. He nominated himself, was elected to the Board and the Policy Committee, and is now its Chair.

His advice to anyone thinking of standing for the Board is simply “come along”. The Board benefits from older and younger members, and from people with connections in practice and policy, not only biologists. One caution for PhD students is to be careful about how much organizational work they take on, because it can eat into the thesis.

What a Board actually does

Stephen compares the SCB Europe Board to the management board of any organization. Each region has its own board and they cooperate through a regional council and a global level based in the US. The Board meets about once a month, reviews what each standing committee is doing (communications, DEIJ, Policy, Students and Education, Membership), watches the budget and plans ahead. Earlier this year, most of its time went on organizing the ECCB congress in Leiden, and now it is discussing what went well and what could be done better for the next one (ICCB/ECCB in 2029).

Policy that moves, and policy that stalls

The Policy Committee exists to connect conservation science to decision-makers, politicians and corporations, whose choices affect biodiversity. Stephen is clear that SCB works in an academic way, not through direct action, like chaining oneself to trees, and that the aim is to stop things that harm biodiversity. Many biologists, he says, are frustrated that they produce evidence about harm but fail to change what policymakers and companies do.

He remembers the European Green Deal as a promising moment, with strong laws and apparent seriousness at the highest level. Since then, he says, lobbying from corporate and other interests has weakened the rules through repeated exceptions. SCB responded last year with a statement, endorsed also by other organizations and individuals, warning that the Green Deal had been diluted too much to be effective.

30x30: a good idea that needs money

On Europe's commitment to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, Stephen's message is that agreements are not the same as implementation. Many European countries agree to the targets but do not put enough money into national budgets to deliver them. They are "talking the talk", he says, "but the action and the funding are what's missing". His analogy is a family with a tight budget deciding how much it can afford, only on a national scale.

Quality is harder still. What matters for one species group may not matter for another. In Finland, he says, less than 1% of old forest remains, yet large forest companies, including state-owned ones, still fell stands of old forest. Elsewhere, strong farming lobbies make governments cautious about reducing the land used for farming. Politics matters too. Governments that value sustainability make progress and governments that don't can undo it. Scientists, he argues, can't lock the door when the "wrong" government is in power: "We have to argue with them, debate with them. That's how the political system works."

Cities as conservation ground

Urban nature, Stephen's own specialty, is getting more attention through urban green infrastructure and nature-based solutions, which municipalities are enthusiastic about. His concern is that many such projects don't generate significant and measurable benefits for biodiversity and he wants to change that. He also sees promise in the Nature Restoration Regulation, because governments now have habitat restoration targets to meet. Cities can contribute by converting former industrial areas and by replacing hard concrete stream banks with wet and semi-aquatic habitat, restoring small streams and wetlands that were destroyed during construction.

He also sees the "common language" between ecologists and policymakers growing. Terms like "nature-based solutions" and "ecosystem services" were once vague, but now researchers, municipal practitioners and policymakers use them confidently, and the vocabulary keeps evolving.

Reaching beyond the academic bubble

SCB Europe is well known to academics and, at some levels, to policymakers. Stephen agrees that the general public hears much less about it. Some conferences are purely academic, with nothing visible outside the venue, while others include site visits and local events that residents notice. He liked the idea of linking congresses to public events such as European Researchers' Night, which I had just attended in Lisbon and, he said he would raise it with the Board. The Society is also looking at updating its guidelines for congress organizers. He recalled the energy of outreach events for the Night of the Museums in Poland and Latvia, where visitors came to look through microscopes and see entomological light traps, for instance.

On scientific communication, he points to a "catch-22": many researchers do good work but don't know how to reach policymakers or the public, and academia rarely rewards it. He notes that funders such as Horizon Europe value public-facing outputs, and he wants Congress participants to write more for society and policy audiences. He is also exploring the possibilities of organizing a summer school, focused on policy, with early-career and senior researchers working together on outputs aimed at the public and policymakers.

Quick-fire round

• Must-read: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, though he would rather people read widely than all read the same thing.
• Favorite habitat: high nature value grasslands, especially calcareous grasslands and the steppe region. He spent two years during the COVID period surveying riparian flood meadows in the Oulanka National Park, Kainuu, northern Finland, which he calls very special.
• Message to the public: "If you think money is more important than nature, try eating it." He adds that sustainability rests on three pillars, ecological, social and economic, and that conservation cannot succeed by ignoring the last two.
• Advice to young scientists: "Follow your nose" and do what interests you without waiting for someone senior to advise you. Also find ways to engage with society. Blogs, podcasts and social media can reach far more people than his generation ever could, and he believes digital tools can help conservation.

What’s next for the Board?

The new Board term for two new members and one new President-Elect begins in January 2027. As Stephen’s own story shows, you don’t have to be a senior academic to get involved, and connections in policy, practice and communication are especially welcome. Keep an eye on SCB Europe’s channels for election updates and future opportunities to take part. The board is now planning their activities for 2027 and beyond.