The Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) has recently completed a project working with nine other organizations to design and develop teaching materials which will enable early to mid-career conservationists to be trained in, and better understand the linkages between biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and climate change.
The resulting outputs are 10 factsheets which focus on priority topics such as ‘climate change’, ‘reducing impacts of climate change on biodiversity and adaptive management’, and ‘policy responses for the future’. Each fact sheet contains condensed and clear information identified and referenced by contributors; combined with Case Studies that demonstrate the material in action; Key Points; Key Questions and Key Tools for trainees to discover and utilise.
These training materials and tools not only aim to make the complex subjects of biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate change clearly understandable, but in a way that enables readers to then take this deepened knowledge forward to train others.
To help fine-tune the training materials, as well as build capacity, training workshops organised by the Tropical Biology Association in Tanzania and by BirdLife International in China allowed the tools to be tried and tested.
“Think of this project as a seed-dispersing machine, with 10 arms that are scattering packets of knowledge out to conservationists worldwide. Once sowed, these seeds have the potential to make a real impact on the ground for nature and people as the climate changes. This is capacity building for conservation,” said Kiragu Mwangi, Project Leader and Conservation Leadership Programme Manager.
