By The Conversation
Conservationists don’t always agree about the best ways to reinforce the protection of nature. Debates about it can become confrontational.
But at the heart of the issue is how to include more people in conservation efforts. As a group of scientists, we believe it is important to steer the discussion towards a more diverse and inclusive blueprint for protecting biodiversity and ecosystems.
In a letter to the journal Science, we argue that the model of trophy hunting in Africa to finance conservation is neither sustainable nor equitable. We offer some alternatives. We suggest meeting the needs and values of a variety of stakeholders and local communities. Doing so involves empowering people to participate in decisions that affect them.
We support the following strategies for conserving natural landscapes and their ecological functions.
Connecting local needs with the wider world
One approach is to connect small and big investors directly to communities that are associated with wildlife wealth. This can be done through blockchain technology and carbon and biodiversity credits.
An example is GainForest, an app that aims to help maintain and restore forests. GainForest gets funding from the crypto community to provide finance to community members if they maintain their patch of land for an agreed duration. The GainForest team uses publicly available data from GlobalForestWatch to monitor and evaluate community success. It is also developing advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to help forecast future forest cover.
