BSc, MSc (Manchester)

Rob has spent the last ten years advising environment and development organisations in sub-Sharan Africa and Central America, with a focus on incentive-driven conservation enterprises, protected area planning, long-term financing mechanisms, participatory monitoring systems and impact evaluation. An emerging area of interest has been in the application of conflict-sensitivity and climate-proofing approaches into the design, implementation and management of conservation initiatives.

His interest for incentive-driven conservation and enterprises stemmed from a year spent on secondment to an organic smallholder farmers cooperative (APPTA) in Costa Rica, that through improved agro-ecological farming systems and international marketing sought to raise its members living standards, whilst conserving the ecological and cultural diversity of the region. His support focused on developing systems for post-harvest quality control of cocoa and an internal control system for organic/ fair trade certification of products for export to Europe and America.

From 2002-2009, Rob worked as Programme Manager at the Conservation Development Centre, based in Nairobi. His interest in incentive-driven conservation continued through conducting feasibility stud-ies for community-based conservation enterprises, such as conservation-branded cotton and certified wild coffee. Through this work he was involved in the development of management plans for national parks, such as the Awash National Park, Ethiopia, and the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, as well as in the design of broader landscape conservation and planning initiatives. He also contributed to the development and piloting of practitioners' manuals on: (1) Conservation-Sensitive Conservation: integrating conflict-sensitive approaches into the work of conservation organisations and (2) Review of Outcomes to Impacts: a low-cost qualitative impact evaluation methodology..

Clients he has worked for include: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), World Conservation Union (IUCN), Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC), Earthwatch, USAID, CARE International, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Saferworld.