GIA2 Working Group on Biocultural Conservation: Envisioning academia’s role with NGO and community partners

The UF/TCD GIA project — a learning network of UF students and faculty with conservation practitioners from NGOs, community organizations and regional universities – concluded with a call for a biocultural approach that integrates conservation of tropical forests and rivers with the well-being of Indigenous and traditional communities.   

We invite interested students and faculty to work together during Spring semester to envision how UF/TCD can move this agenda forward.  Together with partners, we will:

• articulate how and why the biocultural approach can be effective,
• assess needs and opportunities for training, capacity building and research to enhance the effectiveness of biocultural approaches by NGOs and Indigenous peoples and other local communities, and
• propose actions for UF, in partnership with regional universities, to support local partners’ implementation of biocultural conservation.

There are many ways to participate!  Identify and document positive approaches; consult with partners; review literature.  Work on the synthetic overview or conduct more specific review and analysis of sub-topics such as sociobioeconomy, rights, leadership, strategic communications, transdisciplinary research, academic-community collaboration, etc.  This is both a rich learning opportunity and a chance to contribute to TCD’s strategic planning.

For further information or to discuss possible participation, please contact Bob Buschbacher, Andrea Chavez or Sinomar Fonseca (rbusch@ufl.edu, achavez@ufl.edu, sinjunior@ufl.edu).