Event details
Andrew Balmford FRS is Professor of Conservation Science at University of Cambridge.
The world’s governments failed to meet their pledge of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Wild populations, their habitats, and the benefits they provide for people, are continuing to decline. But is the situation hopeless? In this talk Professor Andrew Balmford will examine a series of case studies where things are getting better rather than worse. He will explore how the motivations for conservation, the approaches adopted, and the people involved are changing and becoming increasingly diverse. He will investigate what lessons these examples yield about how conservation might increase its success rate - and examine what together these stories tell us about the prospects for nature in the 21st century.
Professor Balmford's main research interests are in the costs and benefits of effective conservation, quantifying the changing state of nature, identifying efficient conservation responses and exploring how conservation efforts might best be reconciled with farming. To try to have most impact he focuses his research in developing countries and on collaborations with conservation practitioners and with colleagues in other disciplines. He has recently finished writing Wild Hope (University of Chicago Press, 2012), a popular-level book examining conservation success stories from around the world.
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