Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? Voices from Conservation Frontlines

This session will provide an interactive, learning opportunity centered on the importance of integrating conflict and peace issues into landscape management and natural resources governance in order to ensure healthy ecosystems and promote human well-being. The session panelists will discuss how conflict sensitivity (CS) aides in addressing some of the issues outlined in the conference themes including forest conservation, water resource management and biodiversity conservation. The panel of NGO and community-based conservation and peacebuilding practitioners, industry representatives, and governmental personnel will share experiences, lessons and recommendations from their field-based conservation activities in Kenya, Colombia, and Papua New Guinea. Multiple perspectives about social conflicts will create dialogue between the key sectors that are critical to effective conservation and development. Opportunities for increasing skills in environmental peacebuilding will be discussed.