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Speaker: Dr Kate Schreckenberg, Reader of Development Geography, King’s College London
As we head for a sixth extinction, the need for biodiversity conservation has never been greater. We are in fact close to meeting targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve at least 17% of the world’s terrestrial surface and 10% of marine and coastal areas. Yet there is increasing concern about the costs these protected areas impose on local communities. In this seminar Kate Schreckenberg will draw on several projects funded by the UK’s Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) Programme to illustrate the varied impacts of protected areas on local communities and the often wholly inadequate attempts to provide compensation. She will further discuss the process of developing a framework for assessing equity in the context of protected areas which was recently adopted by the Conference of the Parties of the CBD. Kate will finish by outlining different initiatives for ensuring more equitable management of protected areas.
Kate Schreckenberg is a Reader in Development Geography at King’s College London. With an academic background in botany and forestry (both from Oxford) and geography (SOAS), Kate is an interdisciplinary researcher with a special interest in natural resource governance. Her research focuses on the institutional arrangements that deliver equitable and just development and support rural people to improve the livelihoods they obtain from managing their natural resources individually and collectively. Kate has 30 years of experience of research and policy engagement in the developing world, including extensive fieldwork in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She has previously worked for the University of Southampton, the Overseas Development Institute, GTZ (now GIZ), UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme and as an independent consultant. Until July 2018 she was Director of Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) Programme, an interdisciplinary research programme funded by DFID, NERC and ESRC.