Communities Matter: Decolonizing conservation management

Dr. Paige West and Mr. John Aini

Barnard College - Columbia University

John Aini is the founder and director of Ailan Awareness, an indigenous NGO in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. He is also a Mai Mai, a traditional cultural leader, in New Ireland. Trained in Fisheries Science at the National Maritime College, Aini is one of the foremost experts on indigenous knowledge of marine environments and conservation practice in the Melanesian Pacific. He is the recipient of the Seacology award for international conservation and has served as a partner to The Nature Conservancy, The Wildlife Conservation Society, and Global Witness during their work in his country. Mr. Aini has held awards from the Asian Development Bank, The United Nations, The United States Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, The Christensen Foundation, and Columbia University. He is an advisor to the National Fisheries College, The National Fisheries Authority, and has worked with the IUCN to teach conservation workers about the importance of indigenous management practices.

Paige West holds an endowed chair and is the Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University. For the past twenty-one years she has conducted research on conservation in the Melanesian Pacific. West is the author of three books, the editor of five more, and the founder and editor of the journal Environment and Society. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology and Environment Junior Scholar award (2002), the American Association of University Women Junior Faculty Fellowship (2004), and the American Council of Learned Societies Faculty Fellowship (2004), the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Fellowship (2006), The Mack Lipkin Man and Nature Fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History (2013), and the Tow Family Foundation Professorship (2016). She has served as a distinguished lecturer for Phi Beta Kappa (2017/2018), the United States National Social Environmental Synthesis Center (2016), and the Leonard Hasting Schoff Memorial Lectures (2013). In 2003, she founded the Seminar on Politics, Society, Environment and Development at Columbia University, and in 2012, she became the chair of the Ecology and Culture University Seminar at Columbia. West currently serves on the board of directors for the Center for the Study of Social Difference, The University Seminars of Columbia University, the Barnard College Center for Research on Women, and as co-chair for the Pacific Climate Circuits project. She is the past chair of the Association of Social Anthropology in Oceania and the past president of the American Anthropological Association Environment and Society section. In 2017 her most recent book, “Dispossession and the Environment” won the Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award. In addition to her academic work, Dr. West is the co-founder, and a board member, of the PNG Institute of Biological Research, a small NGO dedicated to building academic opportunities for research in Papua New Guinea by Papua New Guineans.