Friday 6th May 2016
Effective conservation relies on willing participants to implement conservation actions. Thus, there’s emerging research on how to identify ‘conservation opportunities’ in order to create or exploit windows of opportunity to achieve conservation goals. Conceptualizations of conservation opportunities place emphasis on social, political and economic aspects of conservation. Here I discuss how we have tackled understanding the social and economic dimensions of conservation opportunities in the Daly catchment, NT. I describe research undertaken over a period of 5 years culminating in spatial planning for conservation in the catchment that draws together stakeholder preferences relating to life in the catchment and willingness to participate in different conservation actions.
Dr Vanessa Adams is a conservation biologist and is currently a research fellow at the University of Queensland. Her research applies economic concepts and social consultation to make environmental policy more effective. She is also an adjunct staff member with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University. Vanessa was raised in New Mexico (USA) but currently calls Australia home. She has worked in a variety roles ranging from actuarial analyst for global consulting firm Mercer HR to research scientist at universities. She spent a year as a Fulbright scholar conducting research at University of Queensland (2004-2005) and returned to University of Queensland in 2015 for her current research position.
