Right now, all over the world, people are asking hard questions: How can conservation be effective in the face of challenges from climate change, poverty, a growing human population, and increasing demands on all our natural resources, from water to timber to food?

The Nature Conservancy recognizes that these immense challenges cannot be addressed alone – it will take working with others around the globe to respond to these extraordinary conservation challenges.

The Conservancy will host more than 1,000 leading conservation practitioners, philanthropists, corporations and academics for a global forum to share, learn and discuss solutions to the most pressing issues facing the planet today.

Conference Structure

ConEx is aligned along six conceptual themes that encompass thought-provoking and pressing environmental issues, and will both share current successes as well as challenge us to make conservation more relevant. ConEx’s rich discussions will feature and highlight many of the Conservancy’s Campaign for a Sustainable Planet priorities and projects and will help advance and sharpen the conservation direction of high priority strategies and high priority places.

ConEx core themes:

• Climate Change & Energy (Managing One Problem without Creating Others)
• Poverty, Population Growth & Consumerism (Understanding the Next Inconvenient Truth)
• Ecosystem Services (Making Biodiversity Conservation More Relevant)
• Science & Technology (Investigating Frontiers)
• Working with Others (Creating Unusual New Allies)
• Values & Society (Constructing the Future)

Panel Description

Synopsis: Are blogs, wikis and virtual realities just toys and mischief or can conservationists and conservation organizations adapt them to achieve conservation goals (not to mention cut their carbon footprint)? Experts in each of these fields discuss their experience with these techno tools and advise attendees on how they could deploy them to further their work and reach.

Learning objective: Understand what blogs, wikis and virtual realities are and how businesses and scientists are using them to do work and build expert communities. How can conservationists use blogs, wikis and virtual realities to make their work more efficient and achieve conservation goals?

Pre-Conference References Readings: Blogs, Wikis, and Virtual Realities

Watch the video here

View the presentation here