Pioneering Ideas in Strategy and Design at the Convergence of International Conservation and Development Practice -- The Case for Working Differently

Elizabeth Walker

Executive Strategist & Field Advisor (Multiple Clients Including FFI)/Academic Affiliations with Harvard University & The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy

Elizabeth is a practitioner with more than twenty years' experience leading organizations, strategy, programming and funding portfolios for humanitarian, development and conservation entities. She has held appointments across government, public, and private sectors, including service as Executive Advisor, VP of Global Programs, and COO. She works now independently, supporting organizations and field teams with high-impact improvements to leadership, strategy, and on-the-ground performance. She works with teams to ensure cogent vision; probe, conceptualize and articulate strategy; interrogate and strengthen project design; re-steer and re-imagine funding and operational partnerships; excite thought leadership; and steward strategic alliances within and outside sectors to drive investment and innovation. She is in high demand as a strategist, change leader, and field mentor. Elizabeth has a keen interest in the convergence of development and conservation practice. She is actively developing potentially ground-breaking strategic models for field testing, opening new frontiers in our practice. She has led USAID grant-making field teams, worked in executive and advisory capacities with FFI, CARE, IRC, RI, PLAN and Counterpart International, led human rights investigations for the US State Department, served as a UN Senior Policy Advisor on Risk Reduction and Resilience, and worked as an expert advisor on civil-military affairs to the US Defense Department. Elizabeth has worked in nearly 40 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, across conflict lines, in refugee and IDP settlements, and in the aftermath of environmental disasters. She holds degrees from Harvard, Tufts School of Nutrition, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Abstract

Whether we are conservationists or development practitioners, we increasingly find ourselves in close proximity, working with the same communities within the same fragile ecosystems, where diverse threats compound and multiply. Distinctions between conflict, disaster and environmental loss blur. Our impact depends on each other’s, not just on each discipline doing its part but doing it well, with sound strategy, sound design, integrity of approach, and appreciation for the integral necessity of vision balancing objectives and outcomes. While twin disciplines, and despite decades of increasingly professionalized and specialized practice, our fields remain far apart, with evident cost. It is no wonder that conservationists question why development practitioners aren’t more attentive to habitat and biodiversity loss as pressing - compounding - events, and equally that development practitioners marvel at why wildlife managers call up development models whose promise, they believe, has long diminished.

What practical, field-focused insights sit untapped at the convergence of our disciplines that have potential to positively transform how we practice? What happens when we upend constraining assumptions about how we approach our work? What happens when we expand what falls within our responsibility to consider, balance or protect? What happens when we don’t accept that coordination meetings and project-level collaborations evidence progress? What happens when, instead of speaking of “complementarity,” “linkages,” “mainstreaming,” “integrated metrics” or “combining evidence base,” we elevate the conversation to one of unifying vision and common strategy across disciplines?

We change the conversation in fundamental ways. We stop confusing complementarity and tactics with vision and strategy. We re-imagine an approach that unites us in cause, elevates our dialogue, resists adherence to stale methodologies and metrics, replaces tired terminology, and keeps focus at once visionary and strategic. We move from an interdisciplinary to a transdisciplinary outlook.

Drawing on more than twenty years of field and strategy work, the author will examine the case for opening what may be a watershed frontier in our work together. She will introduce an illustrative concept with potential to institutionalize a foundational understanding of our reciprocal obligations to design differently, from a new, common strategic framework, whether alone or in partnership.

Authors

Elizabeth Walker (Executive Strategist & Field Advisor (Multiple Clients Including FFI)/Academic Affiliations with Harvard University & The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy)

Topic Areas

Topics: Enduring Issues in HDFW , Topics: The Changing Nature of Wildlife Conservation , Topics: Community-Based Conservation

Session

OS-C4 » Conservation, Development & Human Well-being Part I (16:30 - Monday, 11th January, Chui)

Presentation Files

The presenter has not uploaded any presentation files.

Email Support • Blog • Privacy Policy • Cancellation Policy