The Luc Hoffmann Institute, the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) and Impact Hub are pleased to announce the winners of the future of conservation NGOs Innovation Challenge. Nine innovative ideas have been selected, challenging dominant conservation narratives, redesigning conservation approaches and reimagining the conservation space to create a more just, equitable and regenerative future. Listed below (in no particular order) is a brief description of the winning ideas including the themes that they primarily focus on and the location where they will be piloted/implemented.
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Human Nature
Human Nature aims to transform conservation practice by supporting conservation organisations to fully engage with and understand the social complexity they are working within. Human Nature aims to create conservation practice that listens to and works with more marginalised voices. To achieve this, Human Nature intends to carry out context-specific social science and conflict resolution and equip conservationists with the tools to communicate, collaborate and engage more effectively with a diversity of voices.
Team: Lauren Evans, Fleur Nash
Location: Kenya and Cambridge
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Herding 4 Health (H4H)
H4H aspires to catalyse system change by enabling community-driven rangeland restoration and wildlife protection. The H4H model uses skilled herding, strategic kraaling, and livestock management to regenerate Africa’s rangelands, enable wildlife-livestock coexistence, unlock livestock value chains, and enhance climate change resilience of pastoralist communities.
Team: Anna Haw, Jacques van Rooyen
Location: South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana & Zambia with imminent expansion across Africa
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Kyklos
‘Kyklos’ (‘Circle’) aims to create a new approach to involving local communities and co-creating a circular neigbourhood. The project aims to build a new collective local mentality that will lead to changes in everyday habits and thus reduce dependence on the linear models of production and consumption.
Team: Sofia Petridou, Ilias Papagianopoulos, Sophie Sarri
Location: Greece
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Gabon Women’s Platform
Gabon Women’s Platform is an inter-community platform that will support rural women across four Gabonese villages in documenting, managing, and defending biocultural diversity of their territories of life, and to create solidarity among them through the exchange of experiences and mutual learning. It is an initiative of the Nsombou Abalghe-Dzal Association.
Team: Savana Nnang-Obiang, Charlotte Bayossa, Martine Bidzime Nkoulou
Location: Gabon
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Empowering women through ocean opportunities
Empowering women through ocean opportunities aspires to drive systemic change for an equitable future by enabling women and girls in ocean-dependent states to access and (re)connect to the ocean through community-led swim and snorkel training programmes.
Team: Florence Barraud, Maeesha Mohamed, Alun Morgan
Location: Maldives
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Young Stewards of Migratory Birds Ecosystem
The project aims to build a more just, equitable and sustainable future by motivating young people to protect the different ecosystems along migrating birds flyways. The idea lies on the intersection of environmental conservation and mental health as it places the psycho-social needs and potentials of rural adolescents and young adults at the center of the design of educational, communicational and activism experiences.
Team: Elena Iraida Blanco
Location: Venezuela
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Project In/Visibility
Project In/Visibility challenges the status quo by bringing narrative-shifting stories from the grassroots to classrooms, conferences and workplaces in the conservation sector. It is a conduit between academia and NGOs, channelling the diverse and plural voices at the forefront of social and ecological justice.
Team: Samirah Siddiqui, Hannah McGurk, Tasnim Elboute
Location: UK, Germany, and Morocco
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: RewilDAO
RewilDAO aims to enable communities to gather around a cause, fund, acquire, govern and restore close-to-home; for human and non-human nature. The concept aims to utilise blockchain-based social concepts of DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) to enable collective decision-making in a self-tailored, transparent, non-hierarchical manner – while providing livelihood opportunities to local entrepreneurs and their communities.
Team: Gal Zanir, Stav Mushkat
Location: Israel
| Operational and Funding Models | Communication and Narratives | Interdependence and Inclusivity | Power and Legacy |
Title: Boola Boola Yoka Dandjoo (Many Women Together)
Project Boola Boola Yoka Dandjoo is a regenerative agriculture project that centers the critical role played by indigenous peoples in delivering conservation outcomes. It aims to include the women and youth in the community while also enabling intergenerational knowledge and skill exchange.
Team: Heidi Mippy
Location: Australia
