ACCE DTP project: Systematic evaluation of community resource-based management conservation

East Africa’s biodiversity is declining. Conservation in East Africa has typically followed ‘fortress conservation’, based on a colonial myth of empty landscapes. Recently, various types of community-based conservation (CBC) have become popular alternatives, encouraging local ownership of wildlife resources, enabling income generation from biodiversity protection. Countries operate within different regulatory environments, cultural contexts and ecologies, adding complexity to understanding what forms of CBC work where, why and for whom/what. Debates question the effectiveness of CBC in both supporting local development and enhancing conservation. Yet, considerable variation exists, allowing proponents of different approaches to cherry-pick examples to suit their preconceived notions.

This project will systematically unravel the complexity of CBC to characterise success in different socio-economic, governance, cultural and ecological contexts. It will be a great project for someone interested in interdisciplinary conservation work, providing experience working with ecological data and community perceptions.

In order to complete the project, you will undertake an extensive survey of conservation interventions in East Africa. Via systematic searches of funder databases, supervisor’s extensive contacts with conservation NGOs and searches of grey literature, you will identify candidate CBCs across East Africa and develop a database of ecological status, threats, funding and governance structures and processes. You will match CBCs and similar nearby areas without interventions, and where fortress conservation has been used, gaining strong statistical and data handling skills. You’ll use remote sensing analyses to evaluate landscape degradation and will source information on local poaching rates. Together these indicators provide independent evaluation of conservation success and you’ll use literature searches and participatory field methods to capture community perceptions and assess community development goals. These will provide the most comprehensive analysis of conservation success of CBC and other conservation models, and you’ll have opportunities to share these findings with major conservation partners.

The ACCE DTP is committed to recruiting future scientists regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation or career pathway to date. We understand that commitment and excellence can be shown in many ways and we have built our recruitment process to reflect this. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly those underrepresented in science, who have curiosity, creativity and a drive to learn new skills.