Scaling nature-based solutions for climate resilient infrastructure

Role: Former MSc candidate, 2025
Project: Rooted in inequality? An Environmental Justice assessment of Freetown’s urban reforestation campaign
Affiliation: Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, Climate Compatible Growth
ORCID ID: N/A
Email: max.ryding24@imperial.ac.uk

Maxwell Ryding is an MSc student in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London, specialising in Environmental Assessment and Management. His thesis, Branching Out Equity, investigates how urban tree planting under the FreetownTheTreetown campaign contributes to distributional, procedural, and recognitional equity in ecosystem service delivery and livelihood generation across informal settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Maxwell utilises a mixed-methods approach that integrates geospatial canopy and risk mapping, household surveys, Principal Component and Impact Matrix Analysis, and coded interviews with residents, civil community actors, and municipal officials. Anchored in Ecosystem Services, Sustainable Livelihoods, and urban political ecology frameworks, his research examines how different demographics engage with and experience Freetown The Treetown interventions, such as tokenised tree care, slope replanting, and species selection.

He has worked alongside local partners, including the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre, aligning his fieldwork with Freetown The Treetown Phase II objectives and the Transform Freetown Agenda (Pillars 3 and 4). His work contributes to equitable urban climate adaptation by highlighting context-specific needs, governance asymmetries, and community-defined priorities in NbS planning.

Maxwell joined the African Nature Futures Lab in 2025 to support research at the intersection of urban resilience, environmental justice, and participatory ecological design.