AWEI Expert Associate - Wildlife & CBNRM
Bio
Steve is a career wildlife conservation professional with over 45 years of experience in the field. His focus has largely been on Community-based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) across Africa. He is a ‘thought-leader’ across the conservation and sustainable development space, consulting to internationally to UNEP, UNDP, EU, AFD and regionally to African Parks, Peace Parks Foundation and other NGOs.
His early interest in community-driven conservation led to his becoming the SADC Regional NRM Advisor - overseeing the evolution and growth of CBNRM across southern Africa and continentally. In this field he has always leant towards the generation of benefits for rural communities living with and among wildlife, advocating for them to become shareholders and not be seen merely as stakeholders. As an executive member of the former IUCN Sustainable Use Specialist Group of Southern Africa (SASUSG) he promoted the sustainable use of natural resources. He was a co-conceptualizer and convenor of the UNEP Africa Wildlife Economy Summit for Heads of State held in Victoria Falls in 2019.
@AWEI
His links to AWEI stem back to its earliest days, working with many of it’s founders in various groups and forums, and recently initiating research into the processes of the global Ivory Trade – historically, with a view to identifying trends and lessons learned that could relate to the trade in our current era.
His research is uncovering interesting thoughts and ideas of what drivers of the trade shaped the rate of use, decline and in some cases extinction of elephants on the African and Asian continents.
Outputs
Some of the outputs that he has carried out include papers produced on the processes of devolution of rights to rural communities to manage and use their natural resources – suggesting methodologies to facilitate such devolution incrementally.
As mentioned before, he has spearheaded initiatives to encourage the greater integration of community governance with national governance systems – stimulating local wildlife economies to operate at scale.
He has produced numerous reports and publications on CBNRM through IUCN while he was the SADC NRM Advisor, given numerous presentations on a wide range of CBNRM related issues, over the past 40 years.