 Welcome to the inaugural e-newsletter of the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN). This new network was developed out of a need to build capacity for effective civic and private land conservation around the world. We believe that building capacity and empowering voluntary private and civic land conservation will strengthen the global land conservation movement and lead to more durable and effective resource protection. This new network is devoted to connecting people and nongovernmental organizations, building capacity, and sharing ideas to promote the more rapid and effective use of civic and private land conservation tools and strategies.
E-newsletters, in addition to our website, will share case studies, best practices, and resources from practitioners on every continent to foster a strong and connected global community of practice. We hope you will join our network and take part in the conversation.
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We want to hear from you. Please share your organization's updates, successes, and upcoming webinars and events with us at ILCN@lincolninst.edu.
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Proceedings of the First Congress of the International Land Conservation Network
In recognition of the growing importance of private and civic land conservation around the globe, conservationists from six continents joined together to mark the public launch of the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN) at the Network's First Congress in Berlin, Germany on October 19-21, 2015.
At the Congress, approximately 90 participants from 27 countries considered initiatives to advance land conservation projects - from New Zealand and New England, South Africa and Spain, China and Argentina, Ghana and Germany, as well as Myanmar, Belize and Armenia. In 20 different sessions, participants explored financial, legal, and organizational strategies that help to create and maintain privately protected land initiatives in different countries and settings. Throughout the three day conference, participants were engaged in sharing stories, comparing strategies, and discussing future collaborative efforts.
Overwhelmingly, Congress attendees called for a forum through which to share best practices, model documents, technology, case studies and professional development/career training opportunities across the globe to address shared challenges and empower organizations. In the coming year, the ILCN will work to implement these suggestions, beginning with this newsletter. Read on for some of the initiatives and partnerships that have already been catalyzed as a result of the Congress.
Important encouragement and support was also provided to the Congress through video messages from major international policymakers, including Daniel Calleja Crespo, European Commission Director-General for Environment; Rafael Asenjo, Chief Justice of the Environmental Tribunal of Santiago, Chile; Tim Kaine, United States Senator; Lisa Neville, Australian Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water; and Rand Wentworth, President Emeritus of the Land Trust Alliance, US.
Proceedings of the Congress, including summaries of presentations, are now available on the ILCN website. An A4 compatible copy is also available here.
The Congress also saw the premier of an inspirational music video, created through collaboration between Berklee College of Music faculty, an international student ensemble, the ILCN, and photographers from around the world.
Click here to watch "Everyday (Siku ni Siku)."
To see what others had to say about the Congress, check out Jordi Pietx's storify based on the congress tweets.
Thank you to all the attendees, local hosts, and the planning committee.
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Read on for stories of how the ILCN Congress sparked new partnerships and projects, as well as re-energized existing ideas.
Developing a European Land Conservation Network
The idea of creating a European network of organizations promoting private land conservation had been discussed at the 10th World Wilderness Conference in 2013 (Wild10, where the working title of the network was European Landowner Alliance for Wildlands & Nature – ELAWN) and the First European Land Stewardship Congress, organized under the framework of the LandLife project, in 2014. Participants at both conferences saw value in creating a network of private land conservation organizations across Europe; however, without concrete next steps, this idea did not move forward at that time.
The ILCN Congress provided an opportunity for European participants to revisit the idea of such a European network and chart a course forward. A group has come together, including Congress participants Tilmann Disselhoff, Nat Page, Eerika Tapio, Miquel Rafa, Stefano Picchi, Noah Janssen, Lindsay Mackinlay, and others, to lead the effort. At present, discussions are taking place about the foundation of European Land Conservation Network (ELCN), to determine the role of the ELCN, as well as to identify potential funding opportunities.
Once created, the ELCN may take on projects such as: developing an inventory of existing private land conservation organizations in Europe; producing studies on enabling conditions for private land conservation in various EU countries; drafting political recommendations; and facilitating networking opportunities for practitioners and landowners.
If you’re interested in participating, contact Tilmann Disselhoff at tilmanndisselhoff@gmail.com.
More information on the EU’s role at ILCN here.
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 Broadening the Australian Land Conservation Alliance
The Australian Land Conservation Alliance (ALCA) was established in 2010 to promote and support the conservation of private land in Australia. Currently, it brings together Australian organizations that engage in private land conservation through the use of covenants. However, the growing importance of private land conservation around the world has inspired them to broaden their network.
To begin thinking about this idea, the ALCA hosted the Private Land Conservation Forum in December 2015. Similarly to the ILCN Congress, this event provided an opportunity to share expertise and have a conversation about the future of the movement. About 150 participants attended and overwhelmingly saw the value of an Australia-wide network of private land conservation with annual forums.
Now, the ALCA is planning to expand to include organizations working in private land conservation in Australia, which is consistent with other country-wide and global efforts. Similar networks in other countries, such as the US Land Trust Alliance, reveal the value of bringing practitioners and landowners together to develop policy and practical management solutions. Likewise, the developing ILCN provides support for the importance, and increasing importance, of private land conservation around the world. These various networks provide models for the ALCA, as well as help to justify the need for an expanded network.
If you are interested in learning more about the ALCA, please contact Victoria Marles, CEO for the Trust for Nature: victoriam@tfn.org.au. Another Private Land Conservation Forum will be held in late 2016, with information forthcoming.
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Sharing Conservation Technology
 Jeff Allenby, Director of Conservation Technology at the US nonprofit the Chesapeake Conservancy, has pioneered new data, analyses, and web-tools to advance the conservation movement in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. His Congress presentation on how the Conservancy and partners are using his precision conservation techniques to prioritize land conservation and restoration to maximize water quality benefits was met with lively discussion. Since his presentation, Jeff has been advising several of the conference attendees on how they may integrate new analyses and web-tools into their own organizations’ frameworks.
For example, after meeting Lisa McLaughlin, Chief Conservation Officer at the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC), in Berlin, Allenby was invited to present to NCC staff and 17 partner land trusts at NCC’s bi-annual Meeting. NCC is looking to the Chesapeake Conservancy as a model for spatial data management and integration of precision decision making into conservation projects. What started as a conversation between two people in Berlin has expanded exponentially. Allenby is now connected with a range of land trusts across Canada, and he connected NCC with not-for-profit arm of the US-based company Esri, a leader in geospatial technology. NCC will continue to work with Allenby to create a plan for how they may provide high quality data, analyses, and web-tools to their own staff and partners in the coming years.
Allenby is also corresponding with Simon Saunders, Chair of the New Zealand Farm Environment Trust (NZFE Trust). The NZFE Trust has developed the Ballance Farm Environment Awards to showcase farmers who have carried out exemplary sustainable farming practices that protect and enhance the environment. Each year the national winner becomes an “Ambassador” for the promotion of sustainable and profitable farming in New Zealand, traveling the country and taking an international study. This year, the winner will go to Washington, DC, where Allenby is serving as a local host and will facilitate knowledge sharing by connecting the winner with various programs and landowners.
Click here to learn more about the Chesapeake Conservancy’s precision conservation work. Examples of the tools and analyses can be found here.
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 Welcome Emily Myron
Emily Myron has joined the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy as the Program Manager for the ILCN. Before joining the ILCN team, she facilitated large landscape conservation collaboration in the Chesapeake Bay. She holds a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University and a B.A. in Biology from St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Please contact her with your thoughts and suggestions for the ILCN at emyron@lincolninst.edu
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Steering Committee Spotlight
Sristi Kamal
 Sristi is originally from the small north-eastern state of Assam in India - home to some of India’s most majestic animals, such as Asian elephant, Indian tiger, one-horned rhino, hillock gibbon, and clouded leopard. Growing up in in a developing country with such rich wildlife, yet exponentially growing human population pressures, she witnessed human-nature conflicts and people’s struggle to co-exist with nature every day.
This experience motivated her to pursue a career in wildlife conservation, but she quickly realized that the best intentions and efforts in conservation can fail if they do not involve local communities. Therefore, she decided to focus on making people part of the conservation equation, gathering experiences from India, US, and Poland. Her interest in a participatory approach to conservation drew her focus to private lands and their potential to contribute to the conservation of our rich natural resources. After working with indigenous communities in India to promote conservation, she pursued a PhD in private land conservation by exploring different stakeholders’ perspectives.
It was through her PhD research that Sristi became involved with the ILCN, and she has been a part of the network since 2014. Her research found that private land conservation efforts are often isolated from one another, and she sees the ILCN as providing a common platform where organizations can help one another by sharing knowledge, tools, and experiences. She is currently part of the Steering Committee of ILCN and is leading ongoing global private land conservation census efforts. Sristi currently resides in Portland, Orgeon, USA.
Sristi's PhD thesis was submitted as a series of publications, available at these links:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09640568.2013.875463
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10531-014-0857-5
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10531-014-0744-0
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901115300484 |
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Upcoming Events:
EU Green Week 2016 -- May 30-June 1
Green Week 2016 is focusing on the theme "Investing for a greener future." It hopes to contribute to answering a broader question of how to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe.
Green Week 2016 has an ambition to become a truly participatory event, with a legacy lasting beyond its actual dates. It aspires to become a forum for stakeholders and citizens across Europe to engage and express their views or show examples of how today's investments can help the idea of a 'greener future' become a reality for the generations to come. Learn more about how your event can be a part of the effort.
 Rally 2016 - National Land Conservation Conference
-- October 28-30 in Minneapolis, MN
Hosted by the Land Trust Alliance, Rally is an annual gathering of nearly 2,000 inspired and passionate land conservation practitioners from the US, Canada, South America and beyond, who are dedicated to conserving cherished places in local communities. Serving as the premier training and networking conference, Rally ’16 offers more than 130 educational sessions focused on land conservation topics, special networking events, field trips highlighting the region’s natural treasures, exhibits, a plenary session presentation, a Welcome Dinner and an awards presentation celebrating conservation leadership. Learn more and sign up here.
The ILCN will host a special session for international participants on Thursday, October 27th at the Marquette Hotel. The session will be focused on cross-boundary collaboration. Look for details in the next newsletter, or contact Emily Myron for more information.
See more on the ILCN's Calendar of Events.
Upcoming Webinars:
Conservation Innovation Webinar -- April 5, 11am EST
The session will feature two leaders who are instrumental in shaping new models for land conservation in the northeastern United States and around the globe. The first is Nan Jenks-Jay, Dean of Environmental Affairs at Middlebury College, who will describe Middlebury's multiyear effort to protect in perpetuity a key 2,100-acre area in Vermont's Green Mountains. Then, Laura Johnson, Director of the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN), will consider the ILCN's recent progress, including the hosting of its first Congress in Berlin, Germany.
Register to attend the webinar here.
This webinar is sponsored by the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; the Program on Conservation Innovation of Harvard Forest; and the Highstead Foundation.
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Many thanks to our content contributors: Jeff Allenby, Tilmann Disselhoff, Sristi Kamal, Lisa McLaughlin, and Victoria Marles.
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