About CICR

Introduction

The Center for Integrative Conservation Research (CICR) was established in January 2007 to respond, through research and training, to one of the key challenges facing conservation today: identifying conservation practices and policies that simultaneously preserve biodiversity and serve human needs.  CICR promotes the synthesis of social and biological science research methods and conceptual approaches in conservation through an integrative approach to conservation research.

CICR was created with a confluence of support from several sources.  Core funding of $370,000 for the center is provided by a $4.3 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to CICR partner institution, The Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University to support the research initiative Advancing Conservation in a Social Context: Working in a World of Trade-offs (ACSC).  Over the last two years the MacArthur Foundation provided $130,000 in planning and transitional support to UGA.  For the next three years MacArthur will provide $120,000 for annual core support of CICR activities in support of the ACSC initiative, with additional funding for specific research projects developed as part of ACSC.  Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Dean Garnett Stokes has provided temporary space and furnishings in New College while CICR seeks a permanent home on North Campus.  ACSC grant administration will be provided by the UGA Institute for Behavioral Research, which has provided substantial logistical support during the process of creating CICR.  IBR also provides funding to support the establishment of a speaker series.

CICR Background and Vision

The idea for creating a center at UGA dedicated to promoting the integration of social and biological sciences in conservation originated in 2003 with a conference entitled Defining Success in Conservation: Toward an Interdisciplinary Dialogue.  Co-organized by Peter Brosius and former Institute of Ecology Director Ron Carroll, this conference was supported by a “State-of-the-Art” conference grant provided by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.  Subsequently, Dr. Brosius created the Conservation and Community Lab (CCL) within the Department of Anthropology.

In 2003, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a foundation with a long history of supporting global conservation efforts, decided to initiate an R&D initiative to reassess the effectiveness of global conservation efforts.  In June 2004, Dr. Brosius was invited by the MacArthur Foundation to become one of six core members of a group charged with developing this new initiative.  In late 2004, the Planning Group prepared a proposal for an $800,000 planning grant for the ACSC project.  It was approved by the MacArthur Foundation board in December 2004 and the planning process began in January 2005.

Just prior to the start of the ACSC planning phase, planning group members identified as a priority the need to create a repository for key documents and references relevant to the planning effort, and Dr. Brosius was asked to coordinate this effort through the CCL.  As a result, during the two-year planning phase, the MacArthur Foundation provided funding for the development of a resource center to support the planning process.  The CCL served as the ACSC information node, developing a website and database, and providing logistical and communication support to the planning process.  MacArthur funds supported two graduate research assistants each semester.

Building on this foundation, as the ACSC planning process was nearing completion, Dr. Brosius began developing a framework for creation of a center that would provide substantive support for the ACSC initiative for the duration of the project, but that would also persist and develop beyond the five-year project cycle.  He was able to garner support from the Dean of Franklin College, the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Institute for Behavioral Research, and the UGA Space Allocation Advisory Committee for the creation of CICR.  In September 2006, CICR was allocated temporary space in New College, and in December 2006, the MacArthur Foundation board approved the ACSC proposal.  Thus CICR became operational in January 2007, with offices for researchers and administrators, a library, a seminar room and workroom for photocopying/scanning in support of ACSC activities.  As described in more detail below, CICR has three support functions for the ACSC initiative: (a) active participation in the global research component, (b) network development, and (c) communication and information management.

CICR has the potential to play an important role in the intellectual life of the university.  Despite a remarkable breadth of conservation expertise at UGA, this expertise is fragmented and there are too few contexts in which those with an interest in conservation can actively interact or collaborate across the disciplines.  Through establishment of a speaker series, CICR will serve as a bridge between faculty and students from different disciplines and units on campus.  It will maintain a comprehensive collection of publications, reports and other materials available to UGA faculty, graduate students and other interested researchers.  Eventually, as part of our long-term strategic plan, we hope to be able to offer seed grants to graduate students for preliminary dissertation research and host post-docs and visiting researchers.  Over the next few years, we will be working with the Franklin College Development Office to create an endowment to realize these goals.

Integrative Conservation Research

At the beginning of the 21st century, as global environmental change proceeds at an unprecedented pace, conservation has emerged as a central element in civic and political debates in the nations of both the Global North and Global South.  Responding to these debates, new forms of conservation practice are emerging.  Some years ago we witnessed the proliferation of bottom-up models under the rubrics of community-based conservation and community-based natural resource management.  More recently, the “requiem for nature” argument raised fears about mixing development and conservation and called for enlarging and defending protected areas.  All the while in many parts of the world, especially places characterized by extreme poverty, conservation is not working.  The reasons for this failure vary and there is widespread disagreement over how to account for it.  Many conservation scientists feel that the emphasis on community participation, development and equity dilutes the main goal of conservation initiatives: saving species and habitats.  Many social scientists believe that conservation strategies that ignore the human element are bound to fail.  Between these two positions lies a series of heated debates in an increasingly politicized international conservation domain.  No single discipline can possibly address the complexity of this domain.  Understanding it requires that we bring the insights of multiple disciplines to bear on contemporary conservation debates.

In recent years, calls to undertake interdisciplinary research have become commonplace.  Yet rarely are the challenges to doing effective interdisciplinary research addressed as an element in the design of a research program.  Activities carried out by CICR will be informed by a broader effort to understand and respond to the challenges of interdisciplinary research in two ways: (a) by drawing on the experience of previous interdisciplinary research initiatives, and (b) by incorporating mechanisms designed to promote collaboration.  This will require defining more constructive social science engagement with contemporary conservation policies and practices.  It is a challenge that numerous scholars and scientists have faced in a variety of other fields, and there is significant experience in dealing with the issue.  The insights derived from analysis of past successes and failures in interdisciplinary research will be incorporated into the integrative research component of CICR from the outset.

An integrative approach to conservation research recognizes that valuable insights can emerge not only from conservation biology or other natural sciences, but also from the social sciences and humanities.  From this perspective, the social sciences are more than a generic toolkit of methods that can be applied to conservation problems.  An integrative approach recognizes the particularity of different disciplines and the variety of perspectives that specific disciplines bring to the conservation realm.  It takes seriously the promotion of engagements between the academy and the domain of conservation practice, and it uses those engagements to inform academic approaches to conservation.  Finally, integrative conservation research is a process, not an endpoint; it is integrative, not integrated.  That is, it does not seek consilience, a singular paradigm that claims to provide exclusive insights into complex conservation problems.  Instead, the integrative perspective accepts and embraces the value that accrues from considering a diversity of ways of perceiving and analyzing complex conservation issues.