The i4cNature Fellowship
Our i4cNature Fellowship unites our core programs to offer a stipend and opportunity for selected individuals to step back from their work, reflect, and create a personal and professional strategy for an innovative and realistic 21st Century plan for nature. Fellows are selected from groups working with conservation finance and conservation science initiatives, and then pairs them with practitioners from fields that have traditionally been less visible in the work of nature conservation, despite their clear connection to the ultimate targets – entrepreneurs and business operators, finance and banking professionals, artists, educators, health practitioners, legal and civil activists, among others. A gathering of 20 Fellows is carried out twice each year, with each one-week program building on the ideas and actions developed through collaborative sharing of experience and expertise. Each fellowship program is located in a setting that tailors the training, dialogue, and collaborative learning to specific regional or institutional needs. In the course of each one-week retreat program, the Fellows concentrate on building measurable planning, decision-making, and communication tools, with a particular emphasis on methods to incorporate cutting edge science into sustainable finance actions. Fellows have an opportunity to work with experts from finance, business, science monitoring, self-actualization, and communications media to develop personal and institutional skills that will support financially viable, effective, and scientifically sound conservation programs that are measurable, adaptive, and resilient. Fellows also translate their experience in the fellowship to construct implementable pilot projects that include the following characteristics:
Development of a common language that allows entrepreneurs, financial interests, rural communities, scientists, artists, and managers to work together towards a shared vision for the world’s protected natural areas.
More democratic decision-making, with nature conservation decisions driven by a broad cross-section of public actors, including the business and entrepreneur community.
Greater gender, ethnic, and economic diversity, to significantly broaden the community of stakeholders participating in conservation planning, decisions, and management.
Identification of innovative streams of funding to create an independence from vested interests.
The fellowship pilot projects serve as evidence-based models intended to inspire, motivate, and act to create viable responses to our growing biodiversity and climate challenges.
The fellowship places a particular emphasis on South to South learning. The work of the Fellows ultimately creates a community of practitioners working across a wide range of sectors who speak a common language to support financial investments, business developments, community and individual health that includes the needs of resilient and thriving nature.