Making Conservation Work for People

Dr. Peter Kareiva, Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy will talk about “Making Conservation Work for People”. Nature provide benefits to people –everything from clean water and flood control, to fiber from forests, and fish from aquatic ecosystems. The scientific and practical challenge lies in developing credible tools that allow routine consideration of nature’s assets (or ecosystem services) in a way that informs the choices we make every day at the scale of local communities and regions, all the way up to nations and global agreements.

A former university professor, Dr. Kareiva’s responsibilities at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) include reporting to the Board of Directors on the state of science in TNC, mentoring TNC scientists, identifying opportunities and shortcomings that warrant science attention if TNC is to fulfill its mission, advising leadership on emerging conservation challenges and serving as one of several external spokespeople. Dr. Kareiva is a co-founder and director of a pioneering collaboration between World Wildlife Fund, Stanford University and The Nature Conservancy called the Natural Capital Project. His current projects emphasize the interplay of human land-use and biodiversity, resilience in the face of global change and evidence-based conservation.