Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI)

Project objectives
Work planned or underway
Results
Image gallery
Who to contact
Partners

The CCI’s vision is: to help secure a sustainable future for biodiversity and humanity through an effective partnership between leaders in research, education, policy and practice. Its mission is: to deliver transformational approaches to understanding and conserving biodiversity and the wealth of natural capital it represents.

Project objectives

To quantify and communicate the values of biodiversity
To undertake interdisciplinary research for policy and practice
To develop and champion innovative conservation solutions
To enhance conservation capacity, learning and leadership

Work planned or underway

Each of the four programmes is progressing. A horizon scanning exercise will be undertaken in autumn 2012. Various collaborative projects will continue, and some will be successful in winning new resources from the Collaborative fund. New students are being sought for the 2012/13 cohort of the MPhil. A planning application for the conservation campus will be submitted by the end of 2012.

Results

The CCI (http://www.conservation.cam.ac.uk/) is a collaboration between six departments within the University of Cambridge (Judge Business School, Land Economy, Plant Sciences, Geography, Zoology, CPSL) and nine conservation organisations (UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge Conservation Forum, Fauna and Flora International, IUCN, BirdLife International, TRAFFIC, BTO, Tropical Biology Association, and RSPB). It was established in 2007. In 2009, an Executive Director and a Director of Conservation Leadership were appointed, and a Collaborative Fund launched. In 2010, the CCI was designated a University strategic initiative, and a Masters course was launched. In 2011, an Advisory Board was appointed. In 2012, a design team was appointed to oversee the refurbishment of an existing University building into a ‘conservation campus’.

Four programmes have been launched. These are: Conservation Futures; Research for Policy and Practice; Learning and Leadership; and Conservation Campus.

Conservation Futures: this programme has undertaken and published several horizon scanning exercises, and run numerous collaborative projects, providing the glue holding CCI together.

Research for Policy and Practice: the CCI Collaborative Fund has provided financial resources for a wide range of projects (for example development of an ecosystems services toolkit, linked indicators for CBD delivery), while a separate fund has enable workshops to be held on, for example, climate change impacts on biodiversity, and gaming and conservation.

Learning and Leadership: an MPhil in Conservation Leadership was launched in 2010, with 12 students on the course in both 2010/11 and 2011/12.

http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/graduate/mphil/conservation/

Conservation Campus: a site has been secured for the campus; outline design and layout has been developed and approved; and a design team has been appointed to turn these plans into reality by 2015.

All of these programmes have been underpinned by successful bids for funds.

A useful outline of CCI’s work can be found at:

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/themes/biodiversity-conservation/.