culture / conservation / regeneration // the tropics
ConnectThis week marks one year of work at Fauna & Flora International. As a new role within FFI’s Conservation Finance and Enterprise team, it has been extremely rewarding to develop and deliver a new area of technical support to our local conservation partners around the world. I have not had much opportunity to share with … Continue reading Happy one-year anniversary at FFI!
I’ve been wanting to develop a Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) for some time. NTFPs create incentives for communities to avoid cutting down the forest as they generate an income from natural community forests. Working with HEPA gave me the opportunity to develop one as an interesting side-project - Trá Cà Rừng or Wild Eggplant Tea. … Continue reading Conservation Enterprise Case Study: Wild Eggplant Tea
One of the organisations that I had the privilege to work with in Vietnam was the Human Ecology Practice Area (HEPA). HEPA is a 500 hectare rainforest and ecological farming practice and training area, and a network of people supporting rights-based ecologically sustainable development of ethnic minorities and rural people in the lower Mekong region. … Continue reading Conservation Enterprise Case Study: Knowlunteering
In the Northern Territory news at the moment are two stories, one of hope and one of failure. The appointment of Mick Dodson as commissioner to negotiate a treaty with the Territory’s first peoples contrasts with the public exposure of how the Northern Land Council has funneled Aboriginal and government money to the secretive Aboriginal … Continue reading Aboriginal Governance III: From Fragmented Governance to First Nations
At this stage, you’ve got the resources you need and they are working together to find clients and successfully deliver the value proposition. In short – you’re making and selling stuff. As a place-based conservation enterprise, you have certain opportunities and limitations vis-à-vis a regular social enterprise. In this post, I will run through what … Continue reading Conservation Enterprise Development: Options for Scaling
This stage is about turning ideas into reality. Fundamentally, you are acquiring the resources that you need and you are working out how to put them together to create the product. The end point for this stage is that you have demonstrated that you can reliably deliver your intended value proposition, that the value proposition … Continue reading Conservation Enterprise Development: Resource Acquisition and Piloting
The past week I have had the privilege of working with a Red Dao ethnic minority village in the highlands of Lao Cai, Vietnam, on their community enterprise. My organisation, CIRUM, with the financial support of the EU and CCFD, has been supporting them for nearly two years to develop the service, which is about … Continue reading Conservation Enterprise Case Study: Sai Duan Traditional Herbal Baths
This stage has two objectives – designing the enterprise and forming the team that is going to make it happen. Stage one was about understanding what you have to work with to develop a viable enterprise. Stage two was about understanding the people you are going to need to do influence in order to be … Continue reading Conservation Enterprise Development: Why and What to Collaboratively Design
Creating a business that conserves culture or protects the environment, sells a product and generates a return isn’t easy – being tied to a particular place offers both constraints and opportunities that are quite different to classic entrepreneurship. Here’s some options for an enterprise development strategy that aims to innovate in value creation beyond the usual suspects … Continue reading Conservation Enterprise Development: Choosing your Strategy
Running a business accountable to a community is hard, whether it’s an Indigenous corporation or an artists’ collective. Not only do you have to manage the business successfully, but you also have to address the expectations, aspirations and needs of the community. Managing this relationship well means that the business can draw on the support, … Continue reading Managing the “Community” in Community Business
tropicalism 