Wetlands Expert Workshop 2019

Stockholm, Sweden - March 2019

March 2019 - Good morning from Stockholm! Today I get to present at the International Arctic Wetlands Expert Workshop and challenge us to think of Indigenous participation not as an obligation or part of some ethical narrative, but as an opportunity to broaden our base of evidence from which we as conservation planners draw. So far the meeting has been very interesting, especially for the contributions given by our Russian colleagues as so much research is conducted in Russia but is difficult to access if not a language speaker.

As I work on getting the data together for the CAFF wetlands study, I’ve been happy to be pointed to good examples of Indigenous participation in conservation planning in other parts of the world. One Russian researcher who is quite well known for her work in biodiversity conservation showed me a project called Arctic to Africa about the migration of wetland’s related species and the collaborations that have been done Senegal and Northwest Russia (read more here). I haven’t had the chance to go through all of the reports yet, but it seems very interesting! I’m very much looking forward to learning more.