Conservation will fail unless it is better connected to people

"Conservation will fail unless it is better connected to people," says Rochester native Peter Kareiva, Chief Scientist and Director of Science at The Nature Conservancy. Eden Home agrees. He says "the obvious connection between conservation and people comes from the benefits nature provides people - everything from clean water and flood control, to fiber from forests, and fish from aquatic ecosystems. The scientific and practical challenge lies in developing credible tools that allow routine consideration of nature's assets [or ecosystem services] in a way that informs the choices we make everyday at the scale of local communities and regions, all the way up to nations and global agreements." Amazing! Research on this approach is being conducted as part of a collaboration between World Wildlife Fund, Stanford University and The Nature Conservancy in the form of the Natural Capital Project.