̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Arcadia

How to restore a landscape

lkm37 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 12:04:29 +0000

Inside the programme protecting Europe's land, sea and species.

Restore, rewild and rejoice: the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme

jg533 — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 08:43:18 +0000

̽��ֱ��Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes programme is demonstrating that large-scale restoration of nature is possible - and beneficial to people too. New funding will support ambitious projects to restore Europe's land and seas.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� receives $72 million gift for habitat restoration projects across Europe’s land and seas

jg533 — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Arcadia has made a major new philanthropic donation to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, taking its total support for the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme to over $138 million.

̽��ֱ��Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme supports the large-scale restoration of Europe’s most treasured but endangered ecosystems, enriching biodiversity while revitalising local economies.

̽��ֱ��work recognises humanity’s dependence on healthy, functioning ecosystems - for example in preventing urban flooding, and reducing the impacts of climate change.

̽��ֱ��Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme is managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, a partnership between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and ten of the world’s leading international biodiversity conservation organisations.

̽��ֱ��Programme supports partners across Europe to deliver ambitious, large-scale restoration projects, aiming to inspire an inclusive and impactful approach. Through partnerships between local communities, policy makers and landowners, projects work to reverse environmental declines to create places where people and nature can thrive.

̽��ֱ��new funding includes over $30 million dedicated specifically to efforts to restore Europe’s seas. This will be reflected in the retitled ‘Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme’.

Seas regulate the Earth’s climate, generate oxygen, and provide livelihoods and food for hundreds of millions of people. But Europe’s seas are suffering from pollution, biodiversity loss, seabed damage, overfishing, underwater noise, ocean warming, acidification, and spread of invasive species.

In the EU, 46% of coastal waters suffer from eutrophication - a process that causes excessive plant and algae growth leading to oxygen depletion, and 79% of the coastal seabed is disturbed due to bottom trawling.

̽��ֱ��funding will support up to eight new seascape restoration projects that will start the process of restoring damaged marine ecosystems.

Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, founders of Arcadia, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme has become a vibrant network of nature-restoration projects and practitioners across Europe. We are inspired by the commitment of the projects’ teams, and are grateful to them, to the programme’s panel and to the coordinating team, for their invaluable role in realising the programme’s vision.

“As the programme launches its third phase, we look forward to seeing new projects join the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme network, helping to create resilient, self-sustaining and biodiverse ecosystems that benefit nature and people.”

Dr David Thomas, Director of the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme, said: “Restoring ecosystems at scale is urgent if we are to address the linked biodiversity and climate emergencies. This new funding from Arcadia will allow a significant expansion of the projects supported by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme.

“It’s especially exciting that we will now be able to fund more projects focused on Europe’s seas, where many habitats are in poor condition and species are in decline. Experience shows that with the right interventions, marine ecosystems can recover.”

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ��, said: “It is now widely accepted that reversing the damage humans have done to our natural landscapes and seas is vital for our future prosperity. With this magnificent gift from Arcadia, the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme can increase investment in projects that help restore ecosystems on a large scale.”

Natural ecosystems support all life on earth, and the damage that has been done to them by human activities has huge costs to our lives and wellbeing. We have reduced nature’s capacity to support us through ecosystem services, such as climate regulation, and provision of clean water and fresh air that we all depend on.

Existing projects funded by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme include dam removal in the Danube delta to support migratory fish and vegetation recovery, and work to restore marine ecosystem connectivity in south-western Turkey. Already, these are demonstrating the benefits from restoring nature at the landscape scale.

All projects are underpinned by capacity development, lesson-learning, and robust monitoring to determine what does and doesn’t work in restoration, with results made available through open access to help build knowledge in the wider restoration field.

̽��ֱ��UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs from 2021 to 2030, is motivating action to restore the world’s degraded ecosystems. And the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference has set ambitious targets to have restoration completed or underway on at least 30 percent of the world’s lands, inland waters, coastal areas and oceans by 2030. ̽��ֱ��new funding will provide a much-needed boost for delivery of these goals.

Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1 billion to organizations around the world.

̽��ֱ��gift from Arcadia will support the next phase of the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme for the large-scale restoration of Europe’s most treasured but endangered ecosystems.

With this magnificent gift from Arcadia, the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme can increase investment in projects that help restore ecosystems on a large scale.

Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor

Zafer Kızılkaya

Fish near Turkish coastline

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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$10m endowment will secure the future of world leading environment conservation initiative at ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

ts657 — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 08:40:12 +0000

As life on earth comes under pressure as never before, with threats including habitat destruction, pollution, invasion by alien species and climate change, a complex, multifaceted response that transcends disciplines, organisations and borders is critical to the protection of the planet’s diversity. ̽��ֱ��future of humanity is also dependent on the living resources that we share this planet with, which provide many fundamental services such as oxygen, clean water and food.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) is a collaboration between 10 institutions, working together to address the most pressing issues facing our natural world. Cambridge is a natural home for this endeavour; in addition to the world-class research by ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge academics, the city is home to the largest cluster of conservation organisations in the world. These range from local, grassroots organisations through to long-established, international charities, as well as representatives of the United Nations, national government agencies, and intergovernmental secretariats. CCI bring these diverse networks together in new and innovative ways, generating novel ideas and approaches that no one institution could deliver alone.

Two years ago CCI moved into a specially-created conservation campus within the David Attenborough Building, in the centre of Cambridge, which provides a unique collaborative hub in which CCI can integrate research, policy development and capacity building. Sir David Attenborough, after whom the building housing the CCI Conservation Campus is named, said: “I am delighted to see the work that the Cambridge Conservation Initiative is doing – it is clear to me that the most effective solutions to protecting nature are achieved by collaboration, which is exemplified by CCI’s vision and ethos. By making this gift, Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin are investing to protect our planet’s life support system and providing an incredible legacy for the natural world.”

CCI’s Executive Director, Dr Mike Rands, confirmed that the endowment would provide the financial security to enable CCI to focus on scaling up its collaborations and engaging others, especially in business, governments and civil society, in the conservation of nature. “Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, through Arcadia, have been incredible partners to CCI. Their investment in the core of this Initiative is both brave and brilliant; brave because it is supporting a completely new approach to the conservation of biodiversity and brilliant because it adds value to worldwide conservation efforts by uniting the critical mass of skills and expertise that exists amongst CCI partners to work collaboratively and beyond organisational boundaries.”

By endowing the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Arcadia are ensuring CCI’s future financial stability. In announcing the Arcadia grant, Lisbet Rausing referred to the unique nature of CCI and its potential, saying “CCI brings together leading academics and conservation practitioners to focus on the greatest problems facing our planet. We hope our grant will help these experts find new ways to protect nature and biodiversity.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, said: “Arcadia’s investment in this unique Initiative will ensure that Cambridge sustains a long term leadership role in conservation research, teaching and practice that will have a global impact. CCI is a great example of the benefits that can be achieved by bringing together practitioners and academia”.

Thanks to a $10 million endowment from Arcadia, the charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, a world-leading initiative in Cambridge is now developing unique new approaches to some of the biggest challenges facing the planet today

Arcadia’s investment in this unique Initiative will ensure that Cambridge sustains a long term leadership role in conservation research, teaching and practice that will have a global impact.

Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

Executive Director, of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative Dr Mike Rands, Sir David Attenborough and Dame Alison Richard in conversation

More information

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI; www.cambridgeconservation.org) is a unique collaboration between nine conservation organisations and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge seeking to transform biodiversity conservation.
̽��ֱ��CCI partners are: BirdLife International, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Cambridge Conservation Forum (CCF), IUCN, Fauna & Flora International (FFI), RSPB, TRAFFIC, Tropical Biology Association (TBA), UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge
In 2015, over 500 conservation professionals moved into a new shared working space, a ‘conservation campus’ within the David Attenborough Building. ̽��ֱ��David Attenborough Building in central Cambridge provides a highly visible and accessible hub for the Cambridge Conservation Initiative to raise the profile of nature conservation. Named in recognition of Sir David's pioneering work in bringing the wonders of the natural world to a global audience, the building provides an environment designed to encourage transformational approaches to understanding and conserving these wonders and the natural capital they represent.
̽��ֱ��Dear World…Yours, Cambridge fundraising campaign for the ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges was launched in autumn 2015 to raise £2bn to attract the brightest minds, create the most inspiring environment for world-class research and give the freedom to develop more world-changing ideas. To date more than £945m has been raised towards the total, including the $10 million grant from Arcadia. ̽��ֱ��campaign focuses on the ̽��ֱ��’s impact on the world, and through it Cambridge is working with philanthropists to address major global challenges. ̽��ֱ��gift to CCI represents an investment in a pioneering model of collaboration and engagement, which allows the ̽��ֱ�� to work directly with partners involved in conservation policy and practice, for the future of life on Earth.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Creating a shared resource for the endangered culture of the Kalmyks

amb206 — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 11:00:00 +0000

Early in the 1600s, several groups of Mongols travelled thousands of miles west in search of new pastures for their herds. ̽��ֱ��migration of the people who became known as the Kalmyks was prompted by tensions between Mongol communities. Their journey lasted several decades and they travelled around 3,000 miles to settle in the wide pastures west of the Caspian Sea. Here they formed the Kalmyk khanate.

In 1771, more than half the Kalmyk population attempted to return to their original homeland of Dzungaria, a region of central Asia then depopulated as a result of the Qing-Dzungar war. Only a third of those who set out on this return migration survived the perilous journey. Those Kalmyks who remained on the southern edge of Europe were incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire.

Today the Kalmyk communities living in the Republic of Kalmykia and the neighbouring region of Astrakhan (part of the Russian Federation) are remarkable in being the only Buddhist nation in Europe. Kalmyk culture, however, has long been considered critically endangered by Western scholars. Existing Western research on their distinctive way of life has been directed chiefly at the relatively small Kalmyk diaspora in the USA.

Now researchers at the Mongolia & Inner Studies Unit of the Department of Social Anthropology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have started work on an ambitious project to document the cultural heritage of a people who are estimated to number around 300,000 worldwide. ̽��ֱ��objective of the project is to provide Kalmyk communities with a resource that can be used to compare, revive and popularise their endangered culture.

Making use of audio and video, the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project will document Kalmyk culture in its broadest sense, including traditional songs and melodies, musical instruments, dances, oral literature, cuisine, crafts, festivals and many other. This unique body of knowledge will be deposited in open-access digital archives so that it can be shared worldwide.

̽��ֱ��five-year project is being funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund dedicated to the preservation of at-risk cultural heritage and the environments. ̽��ֱ��principal investigator is Dr Uradyn Bulag, a social anthropologist known for his research into transnational studies of people, politics and culture – and particularly for his work on Mongolia and Chinese minorities.

“ ̽��ֱ��project will focus on the Republic of Kalmykia and the adjoining Astrakhan region which is home to more than half the worldwide Kalmyk population. It will also look more broadly at Kalmyk communities in China and elsewhere in order to understand the inter-connectedness of Kalmyk culture in the Eurasian context,” said Dr Bulag.

“From the outset the project will involve local Kalmyk scholars and students. We hope that the resource we create will provide a means for long-separated communities to understand, communicate and exchange cultural information with each other.”

Throughout history, the Kalmyk people have been repeatedly displaced and oppressed. Many of the Kalmyks who attempted to return to Dzungaria in the second half of the 18th century perished. Those who survived the trip found themselves divided into various segregated settlements by the powerful Qing Empire. In the late 19th century they suffered major devastations in the Muslim rebellions in Xinjiang.

̽��ֱ��increasingly marginalised Kalmyks who remained in south west Russia were drafted by the Russian government to fight various wars of conquest which exerted a heavy toll on the population. Between 1943 and 1957 the entire community was exiled to Siberia and Central Asia, charged with betraying the Soviet motherland and collaborating with the invading German army.

̽��ֱ��fractured nature of the Kalmyk community – and the shifting identity of groups within it - represents a challenge to those seeking to document their culture. “In terms of the project, we are defining as Kalmyk the people who separated from the Oirats of Dzungaria in the 17th century, travelled to Russia where they formed the Kalmyk khanate, and later scattered,” said Dr Bulag.

“We hold that these people have a common culture even though, as a result of historical migration processes, some of them later adopted other identities and are now no longer called Kalmyk. In China and Mongolia, for example, they are known as Torghut.”

Under the Soviet Union, observance of traditional cultural practises was discouraged or banned. With the collapse of the Soviet regime, opportunities opened up for minority cultures to rediscover themselves.

“ ̽��ֱ��Kalmyks in Russia lost many of their traditional knowledge bearers in exile and, when were allowed to return in 1957, they found themselves living as a minority in the autonomous republic that bears their name. In these circumstances, post-Soviet Kalmyk cultural revitalisation has been slow and ineffective,” said Dr Bulag.

"We hope that the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project will help to redress the balance by capturing and archiving an endangered culture and thus breathing new life into its richly distinctive practices.”

̽��ֱ��team contributing to the project reflects its ambitious transnational reach. Dr Bulag and Dr Borjigin Burensain ( ̽��ֱ�� of Shiga Prefecture, Japan) will be overseeing the gathering of material among Oirat/Kalmyk groups in China. Dr Baasanjav Terbish and Dr Elvira Churuymova (both ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge) will be working in Kalmykia in collaboration with local Kalmyk scholars. ̽��ֱ��project benefits from the expertise of Professor Caroline Humphrey ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge) who is renowned for her work on Mongolian cultures.

Inset images: a pagoda in the centre of Elista; opening of a stupa in Shatta village, Kalmykia; an interview in progress (Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project)

Arcadia is the charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Since its inception in 2001, Arcadia has awarded grants in excess of $326 million. Arcadia works to protect endangered culture and nature. For more information please see: www.arcadiafund.org.uk

Almost four centuries ago, ancestors of the Kalmyk people trekked across central Asia to form a Buddhist nation on the edge of Europe. Today Kalmyk communities are scattered across Eurasia, with the largest group in the Republic of Kalmykia.

A new project will document Kalmyk heritage to produce an open-access online resource to help Kalmyk communities revive their culture.

From the outset the project will involve local Kalmyk scholars and students. We hope that the resource we create will provide a means for long-separated communities to understand, communicate and exchange cultural information with each other.

Uradyn Bulag

Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Project

Dancing at the opening of a stupa in Shatta village

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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Climate change: can nature help us?

Anonymous — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:05:19 +0000

Flooding, landslides, crop failure, water shortages. Across the globe, the frequency with which humans are suffering the ill effects of climatic variability and extreme weather events is on the increase. Can natural environments be used effectively to help people adapt to the effects of climate change? ̽��ֱ��first systematic review of this question – facilitated by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) Collaborative Fund for Conservation – finds much evidence of their effectiveness.

" ̽��ֱ��delays in international agreements on ways to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions mean that planning to counter the impacts of climate change is a necessity,” said Robert Munroe, Climate Change Officer at BirdLife International. “Governments of all countries should be making plans to protect us against these impacts.”

One adaptation option is to invest in costly, large-scale structures such as sea walls, irrigation systems and dams. But while their short-term impact is clear, these solutions lead to ever-increasing maintenance costs and often have negative impacts on local ecosystems and biodiversity.

“International policy makers are having to think about the different approaches they could take, but the problem is that they don’t have enough information to make informed decisions,” said Munroe.

“Hard-engineered sea walls have a limited life span, and we know that they change wave and tidal currents, often to the detriment of saltmarshes or mangroves that act as a natural buffer to storm surges and coastal erosion. Do we really want to lose these buffers and face increasing costs of sea wall maintenance?” asked Dr Iris Möller, Deputy Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit in the Department of Geography.

“There’s anecdotal evidence from events like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that villages surrounded by mangroves were significantly less affected by the tsunami than more exposed areas,” she added. ̽��ֱ��mangroves may have saved thousands of lives and properties by absorbing a large proportion of the energy in the waves.

But local anecdotal evidence is not enough to provide a reliable measurement of the effectiveness of an approach. Now a review has been completed of the effectiveness of natural approaches to buffering the effects of climate change. Termed Ecosystem-based approaches for Adaptation (EbA), this relatively new concept incorporates approaches that have been used for a long time to address climatic variability, but not necessarily in the context of adaptation to climate change.

“We wanted to understand what the research evidence tells us, in terms of the relative importance of ecosystems as opposed to hard-engineering solutions to the same problem,” said Dr Bhaskar Vira in the Department of Geography. Vira, Möller, Dr Tom Spencer (Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit) and Dr Andreas Kontoleon (Department of Land Economy) worked with climate change policy expert Munroe at BirdLife and climate change expert Dr Nathalie Doswald at the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, as well as with the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. They looked at published studies from around the world in which a wide range of EbA had been assessed. ̽��ֱ��step-by-step detail of their systematic review method was published in Experimental Evidence in 2012, which will enable it to be replicated for consistency in future studies.

“ ̽��ֱ��systematic review is very specific: we sifted out the most relevant published studies and compiled evidence from them on the different interventions being used and how effective they have been,” said Vira. ̽��ֱ��team found that activities related to EbA have been used across the globe to address a broad range of climatic hazards and impacts.

Interventions include the sustainable management of wetlands and floodplains to act as floodwater reservoirs and provide important water stores for times of drought, and the conservation and restoration of forests and natural vegetation to stabilise slopes and regulate water flows, preventing flash floods and landslides due to increased rainfall. Most of the approaches were reported by the studies to be effective in reducing human vulnerability to the effects of climate change, climatic variability or natural hazards.

“ ̽��ֱ��results are providing general guidance on the circumstances in which an EbA may be useful,” said Vira. “There are cases where it isn’t necessarily going to be helpful – if you live in Gloucestershire and you’re about to get flooded, you can’t start planting trees, you have to use sandbags. These interventions take time, and there are limitations to their effectiveness.”

“It’s important to work towards fully informed decision-making between alternative adaptation approaches,” said Munroe. “Large-scale infrastructural solutions may tend to be pursued because the financial costs are clear and their short-term effectiveness at buffering hazards has been tested by engineers. But by constraining natural ecological cycles, they may increase social vulnerability in the medium to long term. We found some discussions on the comparison between ecosystem-based and other kinds of approaches to adaptation, which are valuable for policy makers.”

“We also realised there are some real knowledge gaps,” added Möller. “We need information on the costs as well as the benefits, and on whether monitoring systems have been put in place to assess the long-term effectiveness of these approaches. With respect to ecosystems as coastal protection, for example, we need to know exactly how much energy mangroves and marshes absorb and what we can do to maximise and maintain the effect.”

̽��ֱ��project collaborators recognise that the divide between scientific research and policy making must be bridged if governments are to make the best decisions for long-term adaptation to climate change. “Our partnership with NGO colleagues meant the project has both academic rigour and a built-in pathway to impact,” said Vira. ̽��ֱ��Collaborative Fund for Conservation, which was established with the generous support of the Arcadia Fund, was set up explicitly to foster these innovative partnerships.

̽��ֱ��team’s collective range of contacts has enabled them to disseminate their results and recommendations. Their presentations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban in December 2012, and the distribution of briefing papers and guidance documents, have drawn the attention of decision-makers at the highest levels to the possibilities of ecosystem-based approaches.

“A technical workshop on EbA, likely to involve 70 countries, was recently convened by the Climate Change Convention,” said Munroe. “Our work contributed to the momentum that resulted in this decision. It’s really exciting as it’s the first time the Convention has met to discuss this approach.”

“EbA is an important tool in the adaptation toolkit, which has often been ignored because the evidence base had not been made clear,” said Munroe. “Employing it alongside other adaptation options will result in much more sustainable responses to the effects of climate change in both developed and developing countries.”

Hard-engineered sea walls have a limited life span. Could saltmarshes and mangroves offer a different approach to buffering against storm surges and coastal erosion?

Do we really want to lose these buffers and face increasing costs of sea wall maintenance?

Iris Moller

Saltmarshes starting to be inundated by the tide at Abbots Hall, Cumbria, UK

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Conservation clusters: making the case

lw355 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:00:32 +0000

Silicon Valley, Bangalore, Shanghai. At one time or another, each of these locations, among others, has become home to a successful ‘business cluster’ of industries. Although the term was coined as recently as 1990, clustering of businesses in the same geographical locality has taken place for centuries, driving productivity, innovation and expertise.

A comparatively new phenomenon is the co-location of institutions whose goal is to protect and manage biodiversity worldwide. Whereas business clusters are built on inter-firm competition resulting in enhanced economic growth, conservation clusters are built on inter-organisation collaboration resulting in innovative solutions to a global threat.

Now, a study by Vena Kapoor, a student on the MPhil in Conservation Leadership Programme in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's Department of Geography, has explored how conservation clusters function optimally, highlighting best practices and lessons learnt for current and future conservation clusters.

“Probably the most important aspect for success is for a cluster to be based on a social network that initiates and facilitates a trusted collaboration,” she said. “Those clusters that began with an injection of funds but no underlying social network have been less successful.”

Kapoor identified 17 conservation clusters currently in existence globally. Clustering, as she explained, brings advantages: “Like their business counterparts, conservation clusters benefit from the physical proximity of similar organisations in terms of the potential for knowledge spill-over and a growing pool of skilled employees.”

Cambridge is home to the largest conservation cluster in the world. Comprising eight conservation organisations, a conservation network and departments of the ̽��ֱ��, the cluster has been co-ordinated as the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) since 2007, and is also a Strategic Initiative of the ̽��ֱ��.

“In Cambridge’s case, the network took the form of the Cambridge Conservation Forum (CCF),” explained Dr Mike Rands, Executive Director of CCI. “Out of CCF bubbled a series of programmes that people wanted to do together. Then came the process of co-ordinating these collaborative programmes and raising the funds to deliver them.”

A representative and democratic governance mechanism and a neutral facilitator to guide the collaboration were also identified as key features of successful clusters. ̽��ֱ��study concludes that ideally these features should take the form of a ‘cluster initiative’ that improves the collaborative potential of the cluster and raises independent funds for it. Although rare in conservation, cluster initiatives have become a popular feature in business, often with government support.

“Collaboration between organisations linked by a common cause has the potential to unleash synergies and spur innovation that can positively impact the world,” added Rands. “But even the best initiatives can be derailed. At this early stage in the creation of conservation clusters, it’s important to be aware of the challenges as well as the rewards.”

For a cluster to be successful, the advantages of being part of the collaboration must continue to outweigh the disadvantages, as Kapoor explained: “In the beginning, members get something from each other – they all learn about each other’s practices, research agendas and tools. But tension can develop when a member perceives a growing competitive overlap with another member, a feeling of dominance by a single or few members, or a lessening of their branding or niche position.”

“This is where a neutral facilitator can continually bring value,” said Dr Stelios Zyglidopoulos, from the Cambridge Judge Business School, who co-supervised the study with Dr Rands. “ ̽��ֱ��purpose is to bring oil and water together – to forge links between different organisations. It’s through bringing together different kinds of people and organisations that innovation happens.”

Dr Rands agrees: “If there is a lesson that I’ve learned it’s to keep fostering the mixing of researchers and practitioners across disciplines. Only then can we demonstrate that together the members are able to do things that they could never have done on their own, and yet still progress their own individual organisation’s mandate and interests. This study makes a strong case for the global conservation community to harness the concept of clusters to deliver stronger and better conservation solutions for the world’s biodiversity and the natural capital it provides.”

This research was funded through the MPhil in Conservation Leadership Programme by the MAVA Fondation pour la Nature and a scholarship from the Ravi Sankaran Inlaks Fellowship Programme.

A new study reveals how the gathering together of conservation organisations in one location – a ‘conservation cluster’ – can work best to reap global rewards.

Collaboration between organisations linked by a common cause has the potential to unleash synergies and spur innovation that can positively impact the world.

Dr Mike Rands

Strelitzia on flickr

Clusters

CCI: collaboration and funding

CCI is a collaboration between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and nine internationally renowned conservation organisations in the Cambridge area committed to the study and protection of global biodiversity. ̽��ֱ��founder members of CCI are:

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge: six Departments – Zoology, Geography, Plant Sciences, Land Economy, Judge Business School and the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership – founded the Cambridge Conservation Initiative along with the partner organisations listed below. Each of these departments has a growing programme of research and teaching in conservation, and work closely together on interdisciplinary programmes as part of CCI.

United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre: a branch of the United Nations that undertakes synthesis, analysis and dissemination of global biodiversity knowledge for conventions, countries, organisations and companies.

Fauna and Flora International: acts to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, delivering global and regional programmes of conservation and community projects.

BirdLife International: is a strategic global partnership of conservation organisations in over 100 countries, working to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, and to promote sustainability in the use of natural resources.

Traffic International: is a global wildlife trade monitoring network that works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature.

International Union for Conservation of Nature: is the world’s largest professional global conservation network, and supports scientific research, manages field projects and unites conservationists to develop and implement policy, laws and best practice.

Tropical Biology Association: is dedicated to building the capacity and expertise of people and institutions to conserve and manage biodiversity in tropical regions.

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB): is the largest wildlife conservation organisation in Europe, and works to secure the conservation of biodiversity – especially wild birds and their habitats – through research, education, habitat management and advocacy.

British Trust for Ornithology: is an independent scientific research trust specialising in impartial evidence-based knowledge and advice about populations, movements and ecology of birds and other wildlife.

Cambridge Conservation Forum: is a network that links the diverse Cambridge-based community of conservation practitioners and researchers working at local, national and international levels.

To deliver its ambitious programme CCI works closely with like-minded funding partners. CCI is particularly grateful to Arcadia, who has provided core support for the leadership of CCI and grants for the CCI Collaborative Fund, the Miriam Rothschild Programme for Conservation Leadership, the Miriam Rothschild Travel Bursaries for the Student Conference in Conservation Science and the Miriam Rothschild PhD Studentships. CCI is also deeply grateful to the MAVA Fondation pour la Nature for their support to establishment a unique MPhil in Conservation Leadership.

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̽��ֱ��crystal ball of conservation

lw355 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:00:47 +0000

Humanity faces a breadth of environmental challenges that will continue to put pressure on policy makers, industry and civil society groups to develop solutions, and on researchers to provide evidence. What if we could look ahead to predict the emerging issues at an early stage, enabling knowledge to accumulate in advance of crucial decision making?

For the past four years, just such a ‘horizon-scanning’ process has been undertaken in Cambridge by a group of experts from academia, conservation organisations and government. Led by conservation scientist Professor Bill Sutherland, the Miriam Rothschild Professor of Conservation Biology, the group aims to spot trends, novel technologies, new issues and even solutions that relate to biodiversity conservation. ̽��ֱ��idea is to identify serious potential conservation issues and opportunities before they turn into major challenges.

Take biofuel, for instance. Planting crops as a fuel source could help mitigate our dependency on fossil fuels. But when President George Bush announced the United States’ commitment to biofuels in 2006, and the European Union followed suit, many of the ecological, climate-change and social impacts of an expansion in biofuels were poorly known and, crucially, not prepared for. “What followed were some actions that arguably caused more damage than the burning of fossil fuels, such as the chopping down and draining of ancient peat-rich tropical swamp forests to make way for biofuel crops,” explained Sutherland. “Once the issues were identified, there was then some acrimonious debate and calls for back-peddling of policies that could have been avoided if society had identified the merits and problems of biofuels earlier.”

For the horizon-scanning exercise to be really useful, the group must identify emerging issues that are not well known but could have substantial impacts on the conservation of biological diversity. This year, over 250 individuals contributed to the identification of a starting list of 80 issues that were deemed under-considered yet potentially important either for maintaining species or ecosystems or regions of global environmental interest. A 22-strong international panel, including horizon-scanning experts from across a wide range of institutions and agencies, then independently scored each issue to derive a shortlist of over 40 emerging issues of importance. It was these issues that were reviewed at a workshop in Cambridge in September 2011, where another round of voting resulted in a final line-up of 15 issues that have just been published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Global conservation issues

Several of the issues identified by the horizon-scanning exercise relate to the deep oceans, which are rarely observable by the public and yet are strongly affected by changes in human activity. Deep-sea temperatures, which have been low and stable for millions of years, are known to be increasing. ̽��ֱ��report highlights concerns related to the warming seas, including the potential release of plumes of methane previously trapped beneath the sea bed, and the spread of predators, such as red king crabs, which normally live only in the colder parts of the ocean.

Also affecting the oceans are rich deposits of rare earth elements, such as yttrium used for electronics and as a source of green energy, which have been discovered in the deep-sea mud of the Pacific Ocean. ̽��ֱ��report recognises that increased deep-sea mining could become more frequent in the event of a global shortage of these precious minerals.

̽��ֱ��horizon-scanning process also highlights areas that will grow in prominence over the coming years. For example, the experts have identified an increasing demand for two new technologies that may have as-yet-unknown environmental impacts – nuclear batteries and graphene. Nuclear batteries hold promise in providing a safe, cheap and almost endless supply of energy, particularly for remote communities that lack energy infrastructure. Graphene is the thinnest and strongest material ever detected and, given the magnitude of research in this area, could be seen in products in the home within the next few years.

Human behaviour also comes under scrutiny. As a result of an ageing population, there has been an increased release of pharmaceuticals into the environment through waste water and sewage discharge, prompting concerns relating to the spread of antibiotic resistance through the ecosystem.

̽��ֱ��full list of 15 issues is as follows:

Warming of the deep sea
Mining in the deep ocean
Methane venting from beneath the ocean floor
Climate-driven colonisations in Antarctic waters
Increases in pharmaceutical discharges as human populations age
Sterile farming to increase food safety
Transferring nitrogen-fixing ability to cereals
Increased cultivation of perennial grains
Rapid and low-cost genomic sequencing
Electrochemical seawater desalinisation
Rapid development and extensive application of graphene
Nuclear batteries
Effect of increased cement demand on karst forest and cave ecosystems
In-stream hydrokinetic turbines
Arctic tundra burning

Evidence-based conservation

Horizon scanning is a key priority for the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), many of whose partner organisations are involved in the process that has created the latest report. Fitting with CCI’s philosophy, the exercise involves policy makers and practitioners at all stages of the discussion process.

Sutherland is a keen advocate of ‘evidence-based conservation’ and has created a free web resource (www.conservationevidence.com/) that helps busy practitioners base conservation decisions on hard evidence, without having to keep up with the research literature.

He believes that a forward-thinking shift in focus has an enormous role to play in conservation: “We can’t hope to spot all potential issues. But if some of the issues prove to be important, then identifying and publicising them early on will better prepare us for future environmental challenges. Our hope is that horizon scanning will foster research to examine the advantages and consequences of possible changes.”

An innovative horizon-scanning exercise, which has just delivered its latest report, highlights emerging topics of relevance to the world’s natural environment and the diversity of its species.

We can’t hope to spot all potential issues. But if some of the issues prove to be important, then identifying and publicising them early on will better prepare us for future environmental challenges.

Professor Bill Sutherland

©Evan Leeson

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CCI: collaboration and funding

Fauna and Flora International: acts to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, delivering global and regional programmes of conservation and community projects.

Traffic International: is a global wildlife trade monitoring network that works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature.

Tropical Biology Association: is dedicated to building the capacity and expertise of people and institutions to conserve and manage biodiversity in tropical regions.

Cambridge Conservation Forum: is a network that links the diverse Cambridge-based community of conservation practitioners and researchers working at local, national and international levels.

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