Violeta Berdejo-Espinola

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Postodctoral Research Fellow at The University of Queensland

Global assessments of people's values of nature should be based on multilingual evidence to capture the plurality of nature's values across cultures and languages, avoid overlooking valuable knowledge, and inform policy and decision-making on the basis of unbiased evidence. We propose practical approaches to conducting multilingual evidence synthes...

Language barriers can severely hinder the advance of conservation science and its contribution to addressing the biodiversity crisis. We build a framework for understanding how language barriers can impede the evidence-based conservation of biodiversity in three ways: barriers to (i) the generation of evidence by non-native English speakers; (ii) t...

Monitoring and quantifying vertebrate population trends globally are essential for understanding the impacts of human threats on species and ecosystems. Accurate population data are necessary to design and implement effective conservation actions. Global biodiversity databases often suffer from geographical and taxonomic biases, which can be partly...

Scientific communities need to understand and eliminate barriers that prevent scientists from reaching their full potential. However, the combined impact of individuals’ linguistic, economic, and gender backgrounds on their scientific productivity is poorly understood. Using a survey of 908 environmental scientists, we show that being a woman is as...

Access to urban nature is an important contributor to human health. Yet evidence of nature’s benefits comes overwhelmingly from the Global North and might not directly translate to cities in the Global South. Here, using survey data from 1,119 residents of Asunción, Paraguay, we found that the context and intentionality of nature exposure and the f...

Given the increasing sophistication of virtualreality systems in providing immersivenature experiences, there is the potentialfor analogous health benefits to those thatarise from real nature experiences. We call forresearch to better understand the human–nature–technology interaction to overcomepotential pitfalls of the technology and designtailor...

Scientific knowledge is produced in multiple languages but is predominantly published in English. This practice creates a language barrier to generate and transfer scientific knowledge between communities with diverse linguistic backgrounds, hindering the ability of scholars and communities to address global challenges and achieve diversity and equ...

Feeling unsafe is an important barrier to spending time in nature and therefore gaining the benefits that such experiences offer. Some research suggests that dense vegetation in green spaces can impede visibility, create hiding places for would-be offenders and reduce perceptions of safety among visitors. Drawing on data from 352 residents of a met...

Access to urban nature is an important contributor to global health. Yet, evidence on nature’s benefits comes overwhelmingly from the global north and such evidence might not directly translate to the global south. Using survey data from 1119 residents of Asuncion, Paraguay, we found that context and intentionality of nature exposure, and function...

The use of English as the common language of science represents a major impediment to maximising the contribution of non-native English speakers to science. Yet few studies have quantified the consequences of language barriers on the career development of researchers who are non-native English speakers. By surveying 908 researchers in environmental...

1. In the Anthropocene, the general public is a key part of biodiversity conservation since several aspects of their daily life are inevitably linked to major threats to biodiversity. It is thus important to improve their conservation awareness. While a growing body of research has demonstrated the potential of English-language nature documentaries...

Consulting the best available evidence is key to successful conservation decision-making. While much scientific evidence on conservation continues to be published in non-English languages, a poor understanding of how non-English-language science contributes to conservation decision-making is causing global assessments and studies to practically ign...

In the field of organismal biology, as in much of academia, there is strong incentive to publish in internationally recognized, highly regarded, English-language journals to promote career advancement. This expectation has created a linguistic hegemony in scientific publishing whereby scholars for whom English is an additional language face additio...

The use of English as the common language of science represents a major impediment to maximising the contribution of non-native English speakers to science. Yet few studies have quantified the consequences of language barriers on the career development of researchers who are non-native English speakers. Our survey demonstrates that non-native Engli...

Mobility restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic present a useful study system for understanding the temporal and spatial patterns of green space use. Here, we examine green space characteristics and sociodemographic factors associated with change in frequency of green space use before and during a COVID-19 lockdown in Brisbane, Australia...

Consulting the best available evidence is key to successful conservation decision-making. While much scientific evidence on conservation continues to be published in non-English languages, a poor understanding of how non-English languages science contributes to conservation decision-making is causing global assessments and studies to practically ig...

Invasive wild pigs (Sus scrofa) – also known as feral pigs, feral swine, and wild hogs – have been spread by humans outside of their native range and are now established on every continent except Antarctica (Barrios‐Garcia & Ballari, 2012). Through their uprooting of soil, they are known to affect food security, drive the loss of native plants and...

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent...

Most of Earth's terrestrial carbon is stored in the soil and can be released as carbon dioxide (CO2) when disturbed. Although humans are known to exacerbate soil CO2 emissions through land-use change, we know little about the global carbon footprint of invasive species. We predict the soil area disturbed and resulting CO2 emissions from wild pigs (...

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent...

Spending time in nature is one potential way to cope with the negative physical and psychological health impacts from major stressful life events. In 2020, a large fraction of the global population was impacted by restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID‐19 outbreak, a period characterised by marked health risks and behavioural changes. Here...

From 2018 to 2019, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in collaboration with UN Women, the Ministry for Local Government and three municipal councils (Suva, Labasa and Savusavu) undertook a study aimed at addressing barriers to women’s economic empowerment by improving gender equality and social inclusion of women seafood vendors in municipal m...

Fisheries are critical to food security and the livelihoods of coastal-dwelling communities throughout the Pacific region (Bell et al. 2009). Women play significant roles in fisheries and are often considered as primary income supporters for households, as they are increasingly engaged in a wide diversity of activities such as gleaning, fishing, po...