On February 16 – 17, 2024, the Center for Integrative Conservation Research held its biennial Integrative Conservation Conference (ICC), which brought together over 90 participants from more than 18 academic institutions and representatives of tribal agencies, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and the private sector. Since the inaugural conference in 2018, ICC has brought students, researchers, and practitioners together to share their work and collaborate towards different futures for environmental conservation.
The 2024 conference theme was New Visions for Conservation: The concept of “conservation” has come under scrutiny in recent years. Critiques leveled against conservation highlight its tendency to separate people from the non-human world, its elevation of formal expertise at the expense of local knowledge, its role in dispossession and the disruption of lifeways, and the persistent disparities that conservation scholars and practitioners confront throughout higher education and later career stages. What would it mean to re-envision conservation as something other than its most troubling legacies? How might conservation be reconciled with paradigms, practices, and knowledges that have traditionally been excluded? How are students, researchers, and conservationists doing conservation differently, and how are Indigenous and other people with longstanding ties to place asserting their visions for more just and livable futures? This conference aspires to bring diverse perspectives together to explore the past, present, and possible futures of this complex and contested concept.
We are grateful for the support of our 2024 conference sponsors, including the UGA Owens Institute for Behavioral Research, the Graduate School, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the UGA Arts Collaborative, the Departments of Anthropology and Marine Sciences, the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, and the Odum School of Ecology.
INFORMATION ON PREVIOUS CONFERENCES
CICR has coordinated the Integrative Conservation Conference since 2018; programs from past events are included below:
For questions about the conference, please contact icc-cicr@uga.edu.
