Sacred Sites, Shared Futures: Reclaiming Sacred Forests by Advancing Biocultural Governance in Europe and Globally

This project addresses the urgent need for innovative, participatory approaches to the conservation of Sacred Forests—landscapes with deep spiritual, cultural, and ecological significance. By bridging biocultural governance and spatial planning, the research develops and field-tests an interdisciplinary toolkit that integrates community knowledge, spiritual ecology, and policy co-design in partnership with academic and non-academic organizations across the UK and EU. The objectives are to map and valorise spiritual and ecological values in sacred forests; analyse governance systems using the Values-Rules-Knowledge model; co-design adaptive stewardship tools rooted in traditional ecological knowledge; and integrate biocultural frameworks into mainstream conservation policy.The project foregrounds equity and diversity by actively engaging marginalized and underrepresented communities, and builds global policy learning by elevating Indigenous and Global South voices. The fellowship will co-develop a Sacred Greenways Toolkit (SGT), an interdisciplinary, participatory framework that translates spiritual ecology and community knowledge into governance tools and spatial planning methods for the UK and Europe. Training objectives focus on participatory GIS, legal analysis, biodiversity monitoring, and public science communication. Impact will be realised through academic, policy, and societal pathways. Scholarly contributions include peer-reviewed publications, open-access datasets, and methodological innovations bridging spiritual ecology and planning sciences. Hosted at Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, with placements at Navdanya International and the Forest Peoples Programme, the fellowship enables advanced research and impactful career development in sustainable landscape governance, offering direct benefits to policy, practice, and community resilience. This innovation directly addresses the EU’s call for nature-culture integration.