University of Kent

Professor Stuart Harrop         Director of DICE Professor of Wildlife Management Law
Room: 15 E-mail: S.R.Harrop Extension: 7074

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Research interests

My research interests encompass the full spectrum of the regulation of the human relationship with wildlife.  The context of my research is predominantly the international policy and regulatory matrix with occasional excursions into the regional and national. These interests may be categorised as follows:

• The relationship between trade and environment. The debate within the World Trade Organisation concerning its relationship with multilateral and unilateral conservation interests that deploy trade instruments, the role of technical conservation standards, “eco-labels”, the mechanisms of CITES and trade measures to support marginalised conservation practices e.g. by indigenous and rural communities.
  
  
• Animal welfare. The relationship between animal welfare and conservation and its positioning at the international level within conservation regulation.
  
  
• The evolution of conservation law. The role of the NGO sector and indigenous lobbying groups etc. and the dynamics between epistemic communities concerned with the evolution of environmental legislation.
  
  
• Hunting, fishing and the harvesting of wildlife. The link between traditional practices and contemporary institutional and legislative strategies to conserve habitats and species.
  
  
• The international regulation of traditional practices as they support conservation. This area integrates human rights, land tenure regulation, intellectual property in traditional ecological knowledge, traditional agriculture systems and traditional approaches to conserving the diversity of genetic resources. It also examines the relationship between human culture, myth and religion with the natural world and analyses the extent to which international law and policy deals with this relationship.
  
  
• Agriculture and the environment in international law and policy. The conservation of the diversity of plant and animal genetic resources as insurance against the consequences of accelerated climate change.

Current grant funded research projects

I have raised funds for and worked on a number of grant funded projects in the past ranging from: an analysis of the biodiversity consequences of hunting with hounds in the UK, a review of international and EU hunting law,  the preservation of traditional conservation practices in Sabah, Borneo and bryophyte conservation in Southern Chile.

I am the Leader of a Darwin Initiative funded project in South East Asia: Integrating religion within conservation: Islamic beliefs and Sumatran forest management. (2009-12) Working with a number of key local and international partners, and with Jeanne Mackay as the DI Project Officer in Sumatra, this project involves evaluating and strengthening the capacity of religious beliefs and local customs to contribute to conserving crucial species and habitats in one of the most bio-diverse locations in the world.  For more details see the project website: http://www.kent.ac.uk/dice/research/islam_conservation.html

Currently I am the Project Leader- UK  for: EU INTERREG IVa:  CHARM 3 (Channel Habitat Atlas for Marine Resource Management)- An integrated appraoch to managing the natural resources of the English Channel. Click here. This is an extended version of CHARM 2 and 3 which I previously project managed. The current project involves 17 French and UK parties and encompasses mapping the biodiversity, and other data within the English Channel, the southern North Sea and a section of the Atlantic Ocean in order to provide conservation and other decision-makers with key information.

I have also recently raised funds from the Christensen Fund for four Masters studentships at DICE for capacity building in Southern Ethiopia.

External activities and advisory positions

Trusteeships/Company Directorships

I have been a trustee and company director of a number of organisations concerned with conservation and animal welfare. My current affiliations are as follows:

• Global Diversity Foundation (Trustee and Company Director of affiliated companies)
  
  
• Gilchrist Educational Trust (Trustee)

External Activities

• Adviser to the UK government’s Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England and Wales and primary author of Appendices 8 and 9 of the resultant final report.
  
  
• Advisor to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO) in relation to its GIAHS (Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems) project.
  
  
• Advisor to the UN FAO on international legislative and policy strategies to conserve the diversity of domestic animal genetic resources useful in agriculture and on the concepts and text within the Strategic Priorities For Action For The Commission On Genetic Resources For Food And Agriculture


• Wildlife photography
  

Editorial

• Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy (Co-editor)

Selected publications (click here for fuller list)

Bhagwat SA, Dudley N, Harrop SR (2011). Religious following in Biodiversity Hotspots: challenges and opportunities for conservation and development. Conservation Letters 4, 234-240.

Harrop SR (2011). Climate Change, Conservation And The Place For Wild Animal Welfare In International Law. Journal of Environmental Law doi:10.1093/jel/eqr017

Harrop SR (2011) ‘Living In Harmony With Nature’? Outcomes of the 2010 Nagoya Conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Journal of Environmental Law 23, 117-128

Harrop SR and Pritchard (2011) A hard instrument goes soft: the implications of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s current trajectory. Global Environmental Change 21 474-480