About this workshop

We made a great workshop!

Background: The study of how working (human-modified) landscapes evolve is crucial to understand both human welfare and conservation challenges out of protected areas. Business-as-usual, area-based conservation approaches have been criticized for limited results to deliver environmental justice and protection for biodiversity. Rural population, mostly composed of indigenous people and local communities (IPLC), safeguards most of the remaining natural areas under different kinds of management. Understanding how biodiversity and ecosystem services contribute to human wellbeing in these landscapes is amongst the most important conservation/restoration contributions for the sustainable development goals. The creation of networks of collaboration and knowledge sharing able to integrate both scientific and traditional ecological knowledge is an effective way to scale up the inclusive models of restoration and conservation that are, by definition, co-constructed by diverse stakeholders and actors drawing upon varying perspectives and specialities.

Aims and objectives: This proposal intends to seed-source the creation of a worldwide Network for Biocultural Restoration, starting from the enormous biological and cultural diversity of Kenyan social-ecological landscapes. We also have high hopes to acti globally, specially in tropical Global South countries.

Expected outputs: The main output of this workshop is the formalization of the BioRestNet - Network of Biocultural Restoration as a hub of diverse institutions and a research program based on the principles of sustainable management of landscapes and environmental justice. We also aim to leave the workshop with a draft of a ‘perspective paper’ calling for the need of biocultural restoration.