The PARTNERS Principles can be applied to a wide range of contexts and settings. We invited a set of guest speakers around the world–practitioners, researchers,academics- who work in community based conservation and explore how the PARTNERS Principles can be applied in their context.
- PARTNERS Webinar 1: Cats, cows and camera-traps: Community conservation in Tanzania’s Ruaha landscape (We apologize that the first part of the presentation was not filmed.)
Dr. Amy Dickman is the Kaplan Senior Research Fellow in Felid Conservation at Oxford University, and has over 20 years’ experience working on large carnivores in Africa, specialising in human-carnivore conflict. Amy shares with us her experiences of working to improve human and carnivore coexistence in Tanzania and how she has engaged with key PARTNER principles. She discusses how she used some of the key PARTNERS principles, particularly presence, aptness and responsiveness, to engage local villagers in conservation. This work has made significant headway in making wildlife presence beneficial for rural communities, and reducing threats to both people and wildlife.
- PARTNERS Webinar 2: Strategic Support and Community Based Conservation
This talk focuses on discussing how conservationists can navigate and engage with the governments in order to support conservation efforts (based on the case of the Kyrgyz Republic). Our guests share how building partnerships with governments can support wider conservation and community based conservation approaches. As an example they describe the Global Snow Leopard Forum in Bishkek in 2017 and how this initiative of the Kyrgyz President moved mountains for snow leopard conservation. Our guests then share more about how our teams can engage with members of the Parliament, local governments and small town/village administration.
Dr. Bermet Tursunkulova – PR and Fundraising Consultant for SLT/SLKF, Bermet is an Associate Professor at the American University of Central Asia and a former Advisor to the Prime-Minister of Kyrgyzstan. Ulukbek Visid Uulu- Program Coordinator & Benazir Kabaeva- Program Assistant, Ulukbek and Benazir work with the Snow Leopard Trust and the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation Kyrgyzstan on the Conservation-led Development Program, which engages with multiple level stakeholders to improve livelihoods of local communities and protect ecosystems.
- PARTNERS Webinar 3: Can a coffee company save forests in the Western Ghats of India?
In this talk, Arshiya explores some of the complexities of setting up a coffee company as a means towards participatory conservation and asks whether good conservation decisions make good business ones. Arshiya Bose is the founder of Black Baza Coffee (www.blackbazacoffee.com), a social and conservation enterprise that works with smallholder coffee producers to protect biodiversity on coffee farms. She completed her PhD on the political ecology of market-based incentives for conservation from the University of Cambridge, UK and is also an Acumen Fellow and National Geographic Explorer.
- PARTNERS Webinar 4: Living with leopards
Dr. Vidya Athreya is an ecologist who has spent over a decade trying to understand interactions between a large cat (the leopard) and humans when they share the same space. She has been interested in understanding the drivers of conflict in the backdrop of the socio-cultural ethos in India which inspires tolerance for other life forms. In her talk Vidya discusses the concept of shared spaces, shares some research findings and the way forward in terms of conservation interventions. She will also deal with the importance of heeding to the human dimensions of the issue because whether people want to share space with large wildlife is largely an issue of perception.
- PARTNERS Webinar 5: Valley of the cats; community based conservation tourism
Terry and Yuhan share insights about the community based tourism program “Valley of the cats”. The community-based tourism project is a community initiative and is designed to contribute to the local community and snow leopard conservation. Through the lens of the partners principles our guests share how the initiative started, challenges that were faced and lesson learned.
Yuhan is a conservationist from China. She is a Rhodes Scholar and a MPhil candidate at the University of Oxford. Before going to Oxford, she was a trainee of Shanshui Conservation Centre and managed the field station in the Sanjiangyuan National Park. She coordinated several community-based snow leopard conservation projects, such as human-wildlife conflict solutions and snow leopard eco-tourism. Terry Townshend is a Beijing-based conservation and climate change expert with specific expertise on legislation and wildlife conservation in China. Terry runs the Birding Beijing website (www.birdingbeijing.com) and works to save some of China’s rarest birds from extinction, including Jankowski’s Bunting and Baer’s Pochard.
- PARTNERS Webinar 6: Knowledge Brokers and Change Agents
James shares about the role of knowledge brokers and change agents in community-based initiatives, and how to support them. In essence they must act as the bridging people between outside stakeholders and communities, and must practice and exhibit many of the PARTNERS skills. James is currently running a program entitled ‘Knowledge brokering for Pacific climate futures’, which is designing participatory approaches to encourage the emergence of knowledge brokers, and then mechanisms to support them. Previously James has worked in resource conflict situations in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Zimbabwe and Scotland.”
- PARTNERS Webinar 7: Towards an ethical code of conduct for the use of camera traps in wildlife research
Dr. Koustubh Sharma presents the publication “Conservation and people: Towards an ethical code of conduct for the use of camera traps in wildlife research” and how this work incorporates the principles of Respect, Transparency and Empathy. The paper outlines a set of ethical guidelines for the use of camera trapping for conservation and research. It draws upon the PARTNER principles- especially the principles of Respect, Transparency and Empathy- providing examples of these principles in practice. You will also see that it also touches upon some of our discussions as part of the Partners Principles training and Solve my Problem sessions. The guidelines have been prepared as a step towards strengthening ethical practices and dialogue around camera trapping- we see this as a continuous process and welcome reactions and feedback on their use.