CCI Conservation Seminar - Dr Hollie Booth, University of Oxford
Sharks, communities & corporations: research and practice for a Nature- and People-Positive world
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Abstract:
Large, long-lived marine animals – such as sharks, rays, turtles and cetaceans - are amongst the world’s most threatened taxa, primarily due to overfishing. Small-scale fisheries (SSFs), which are ubiquitous throughout tropical coastal waters in biodiverse regions, are a significant source of marine megafauna mortality with high household reliance on fisheries, where all catches have economic or subsistence value. Therefore, protecting marine species in SSFs can lead to trade-offs between conservation and community wellbeing, with coastal communities often bearing the cost of conservation. In parallel, wealthier and more powerful groups, such as commercial fisheries and the tourism industry, may benefit from marine resources or cause significant harm, yet rarely contribute towards the costs of conservation. Incentive-based approaches (e.g., paying resource users for conservation actions or outcomes) offer a promising solution, with payments made to coastal communities to encourage pro-conservation behaviour without harming community livelihoods, which are funded by ‘compensatory levies’ from the private sector as part of their proportional contributions to global biodiversity goals. However, the effectiveness of incentive-based approaches in SSFs remain empirically untested, and there is an absence of systems and mechanisms for channelling polluter- or beneficiary-pays financing into community-based projects. This talk outlines a 5-year journey from research to action in Indonesia, in which we designed and tested incentive-based approaches for biodiversity and wellbeing outcomes in SSFs and long-term financing mechanisms. I will share a generalisable process and methods that could be adopted and adapted by others, preliminary findings and insights from the world's first randomised control trial of a pay-to-release scheme for Critically Endangered sharks and rays, and ways forward for driving investment into community-based conservation projects while holding private sector companies accountable for their biodiversity impacts and dependencies. My findings demonstrate both the promise and pitfalls of incentive-based conservation programs, and offer lessons learned for delivering a Nature- and People-positive future.
Biography
I am an applied researcher and strategy & project design specialist, with over 12 years of experience working on interdisciplinary conservation issues within NGOs, academia and the private sector. I am committed to designing and empirically testing ambitious and evidence-based approaches to halt and reverse biodiversity loss - working at multiple scales from corporations to local communities - to create a future where nature and people can thrive together.
I completed my DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2021 on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Shark and Ray Conservation, and since then have been working as a part-time post-doc at Oxford University and Strategic Director at The Biodiversity Consultancy, as well as establishing and running a small local NGO in Indonesia – Kebersamaan Untuk Lautan - to put my findings into practice together with local and international stakeholders. Before completing my PhD I worked for several big international NGOs in East Africa, South East Asia and Cambridge, and completed a Masters in Conservation Science at Imperial College London and a BA Hons in Nature Sciences and Management Studies at University of Cambridge.