INTRINSIC – Integrating Rights and Social Issues into Conservation

Biodiversity conservation is essentially a social process. It involves working with people to make decisions about how they will access, use, value and protect nature. Conservation inevitably entails both social costs and benefits, and the social context is likely to impact the efficiency and effectiveness of any conservation initiative.

However, conservation practitioners often lack the knowledge and skills to address and integrate rights and other social issues into their work. The INTRINSIC manual aims to help address this capacity gap and so to improve conservation policy and practice by increasing environmental and social sustainability and enabling positive, equitable outcomes for both nature and people.

Together with accompanying slide presentations, the manual provides a flexible package of training materials designed to be used by people with at least some basic training skills. It is expected that users will have some experience of working in conservation, but it is important to note that an in-depth knowledge of the specific social issues covered in the manual is not needed. Indeed, delivery of the training can be seen as a learning opportunity for trainers as well as participants.

The manual is the main output of INTRINSIC, a CCI Collaborative Fund project between BirdLife International, Fauna & Flora International (FFI), the Tropical Biology Association (TBA) and the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge.