Strengthening the mitigation hierarchy for greater conservation gains

Professor Bhaskar Vira FAcSS is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability, and Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Geography, a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College.

Trained as an economist, Professor Vira’s research focuses on the political economy of land-use and landscape level strategies, water use and management, forest management, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and human well-being, with a specific focus on South Asia. He works with a number of PhD students and early-career researchers on his broad interests in the political economy of environment and development, and has collaborations with colleagues in both academic and non-academic institutions in South Asia and around the world. Professor Vira is currently leading a major initiative on Decent Work and Youth Livelihoods. He has led large-scale applied research projects that involve interdisciplinary conversations across the natural and social services, and contributes regularly to policy advisory processes across the science-policy interface.

I am a conservation biologist with a background in research on the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity, and on how food production and biodiversity conservation might be reconciled. I am now based in southern Brazil, where my focus is on the conservation of one of the regions with most endemic and threatened birds in the world – the Atlantic Rainforests.

Pippa Howard directs FFI’s engagement with the corporate sector, leading programmes to both advise and steer biodiversity management whilst leveraging change through critical interventions. Pippa brokers collaboration and cooperation between business, government and civil society to address both practical and policy challenges to biodiversity conservation. Through sector level engagement she works to leverage change and commitment, advising the oil & gas sector through IPIECA and the mining sector through the ICMM. Pippa sits on The De Beers and Centrica Stakeholder Forums, the LaFarge Specialist Advisory Group, the CSI NGO Forum, The Uranium Strategic Environmental Assessment Steering Committee and the Business & Biodiversity Offsets Programme. Pippa also contributes to Areva’s Stakeholder Forum, BP’s Strategic Review Forum, The Better Coal Initiative, The Responsible Jewellery Council and the RSPO.  Pippa has led FFI’s engagement with the financial sector through programmes and initiatives such as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), the Natural Value Initiative and the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project: three critical programmes focusing on the dependencies of business on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Through FFI’s engagement with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Pippa also has an in-depth understanding of the issues and impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services associated with palm oil, biofuels and REDD programmes, delivering expert opinion to BP Biofuels Sustainable Resilience Series.  Pippa also lectures on the MPhil Conservation Leadership Programme at Cambridge University and is a mentor and tutor on the MBA programme at the Judge Business School.  Pippa loves to share her travels and experiences in environmental management and conservation with local schools in Cambridge.

Sharon is a Senior Programme Officer in the Business and Biodiversity team at UNEP-WCMC that supports improved corporate performance regarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. Sharon’s work aims to address a number of key business and biodiversity challenges focusing on assessing potential threat to biodiversity from private sector activities, and improving drivers and strategies to mitigate impact and assess progress. Project themes have included governance of the oil industry; voluntary standards; biodiversity offsetting and the mitigation hierarchy; Critical Habitat screening and threat assessments. Sharon has an MSc in Applied Ecology and Conservation and a PhD in the field of Conservation and Development and a background of conducting field-based research and conservation projects.

Currently I manage BirdLife International’s partnership with CEMEX, one of the world’s largest building materials companies. My academic roots in conservation stem from an MSc in Ecology, Evolution & Conservation at Imperial College. Experience as a practitioner in the ‘real world’ started at the British Ecological Society, focussing on the ecology-policy interface before moving onto the RSPB and the world of mineral extraction and restoring wildlife, through the Nature After Minerals programme. Key aspects of my current role include brokering strategic partnerships between BirdLife Partners and national CEMEX operations, policy issues – including the recent facilitation of joint policy statement on the EU Nature Directives – and guiding the implementation of site Biodiversity Action Plans (BAPs) through local partnerships; BAPs are CEMEX’s principal tool for applying the mitigation hierarchy. The global conservation programme now has a growing portfolio of best-practice from flyway site conservation in Asia to Sonoran grassland restoration in Mexico.

I started my professional career working for a number of planning authorities in England, in both development control and strategic planning, before a stint working for a planning consultancy, after which I completed an MSc in Conservation Science, prior to joining the RSPB around four years ago – for whom I have worked in a number of roles within the Conservation Policy department. During this time, I have developed and advocated the RSPB’s position on England’s National Planning Policy Framework, the Government’s recent review of the Environment Agency and Natural England, and latterly on biodiversity offsets – including oral evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee. I am also Chair of the planning sub-group of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Biodiversity, and Vice-chair of the Wildlife and Countryside Link Land-use Planning Working Group.

As Head of Business and Biodiversity, I manage UNEP-WCMC’s business engagement and support for the global development of business and biodiversity approaches. I oversee Proteus, which aims to improve the quality and dissemination of global information on biodiversity and provide resources to business to facilitate biodiversity management. UNEP-WCMC’s business and biodiversity work involves engagement with the private sector through partnerships and company-specific projects; provision of resources for business; support for the development of globally standardized mechanisms for achieving biodiversity conservation through business practice; and analysis of development activity within biodiversity sensitive areas.

I am a primatologist by training, with much field experience in research and conservation and have worked extensively in Indonesia (and other Southeast Asian countries) and Madagascar. Prior to my current role at UNEP-WCMC, I worked within the oil palm sector as a conservation manager, implementing conservation strategy and management at project sites and facilitating partnerships with non-governmental organizations and governments for collaborative conservation projects. I have spent much time in the field and lived and worked with forest-dependent human communities and speak fluent Indonesian.

Genevieve works on policy relating to cocoa, palm oil, coffee and a range of other commodities, with a focus on voluntary standards and procurement policy. She has previously worked on for BirdLife on the CCI project “Strengthening the mitigation hierarchy for greater conservation gains”, specifically focusing on best practice implementation of the avoidance stage. She holds an  MSc from Oxford, where her thesis focused on achieving and measuring Net Positive Impact in relation to one of BirdLife’s corporate partners.