Shawati' Issue 64

64 å/°

Shawati’ 64

Q&A with M Sanjayan, CEO, Conservation International

Tell me about Peter Seligmann and Spencer Beebe who founded Conservation International in 1987. What were the goals of Conservation International in 1987, and how has this evolved over the years? The guiding principle behind our work today is the same as it was 36 years ago: people need nature to thrive. Nature provides the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, the food we eat; it sustains the climate that sustains humanity. When Peter and Spencer founded Conservation International, they recognised that the business-as-usual approach to conservation wasn’t working in many places. What if, instead of fencing off nature from humans, we could build new kinds of relationships between people and nature? What if we could find a way for humans and ecosystems to thrive together symbiotically? And what if we focus our energies not in the well-resourced Global North, but in the Global South where the majority of biodiversity exists? That mission hasn’t changed, nor has our “head in the sky, feet in the mud” approach. But the scale of our work certainly has. The world looks a lot different than it did four decades ago. Human activity has dramatically accelerated climate change and biodiversity loss, and scientists have made clear that these crises are deeply intertwined. At the same time, public opinion has moved quicker than we ever believed possible. Ten years ago, we were still trying to get world leaders to acknowledge these problems; today, nearly every country on earth has signed onto historic conservation and emissions agreements. Now, the pressure is on organisations like ours to execute; in just five years, we have expanded our team by 50 per cent, growing to 1,500 people in over 30 countries, primarily in Africa, Asia, and South America. To maximise the impact of every dollar invested, we remain stubbornly focused on projects that have the potential to scale across entire countries, regions and continents – and jointly address climate change, biodiversity loss and sustainable development, all at once.

M Sanjayan, CEO Conservation International. . © Conservational International

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Aerial view Essequibo River, Guyana. © Pete Oxford/iLCP

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opinion has since shifted, and today, governments, regulators, financial institutions and corporations are accelerating their net-zero pledges. But even if fossil fuels were immediately phased out, temperatures would continue climbing unless the destruction of nature comes to a halt. In 2022, Conservation International’s scientists released a game-changing roadmap for increasing nature’s climate- stabilising potential to the greatest possible degree; conceived an atlas of the planet’s most essential carbon-rich ecosystems; and published never-before-seen research on pandemic prevention. Recently, nature-based solutions leveraging the carbon-storing power of earth’s vital ecosystems have earned widespread backing at global gatherings, such as the World Economic Forum and United Nations climate talks, and among many Fortune 500 companies. Conservation International will once again have an international platform at the 28 th session of the UN Climate Change Conference – more commonly referred to as COP28 – to be held from 30 November to 12 December 2023 at Expo City Dubai in the UAE. It will continue on its multipronged trajectory, scale existing solutions and expand its reach worldwide, relentlessly pursuing its mission to protect and restore nature.

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