Professor Amy Dickman and colleagues publish paper in Nature on racial and social injustices in conservation

How can the field of conservation overcome racial and social injustices? This is the question Pembroke Professor Amy Dickman and her colleagues, led by Moreangels Mbizah, seek to answer in a new paper published in Nature this January. 

Conservation’s commitment to environmental goals can sometimes prioritise individual animal lives over human wellbeing. In their paper titled ‘A framework for addressing racial and related inequities in conservation’, Amy and her colleagues offer an alternative, more inclusive approach to conservation practice that addresses the marginalization of Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) communities. 

This new framework would recognise and support human rights, ensure local community agency, challenge entrenched norms in BIPOC engagement, and foster educational opportunities led by and for BIPOC communities. 

You can read the paper here and find an audio summary here.

Credit: John Cairns

Amy Dickman is Pembroke’s Kaplan Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Wildlife Conservation at Oxford University. She has 20 years of experience working with large carnivores in Africa, specialising in human-carnivore conflict. She runs the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), aiming to achieve practical solutions to conservation problems through original scientific research, and she is co-founder and joint CEO of Lion Landscapes.