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The Durrell Trust for Conservation Biology
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CV
PhD research entitled "Indigenous Community Conserved Areas vs. Private Protected Areas: differences in policy and practical implications for governance and biodiversity conservation”. Supervisors: Dr Helen Newing and Dr Bob Smith Biodiversity conservation within and surrounding protected areas is interlinked to the landscape in which they are inserted and its management. It is now widely recognised that effective solutions for environmental problems and socially marginalised people should incorporate local knowledge, schemes of governance, history and context to understand how they create and are created by social and environmental systems.
Funding Further funding is needed to develop the fieldwork.
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Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) are natural sites, resources and species’ habitats conserved in voluntary and self-directed ways by indigenous peoples and local communities throughout the world. Despite being the oldest conservation practice it is also the least understood, and it is currently facing several challenges, since the experience has showed that even supporting ICCAs effectively is a very challenging task. Currently, the establishment of ICCAs, private conserved areas and co-managed areas in Mexico aim to conserve biodiversity within and outside official state’s protected areas network in a way that considers the different social sectors and stakeholders’ rights over lands and their management. 
This research aims to develop a comparative case study in Mexico, where the trend of social involvement in conservation effort has been reflected in the establishment of conserved areas under different forms of governance. This is likely to have different implications for the stakeholders involved as well as for the environment they are part of. Through the use of geographic information systems to map social and biological features shaping conservation outcomes in southern Mexico, a highly bio-cultural diverse region, this study means to contribute to the international discussion for policy regarding the recognition, better support and long term sustainability of ICCAs.