Garth Cripps, PhD
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Senior Conservation Scientist
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Mpandrindra ny tetik'asa
.Garth has spent the last five years in tropical countries developing and leading community-based natural resource management and biodiversity conservation projects. He has a strong interest in the human story behind conservation and in 2009 studied the migration of traditional fishers within Madagascar. He also carried out a detailed feasibility study for the creation of a new marine protected area in remote western Madagascar. He previously worked in Gabon for the Zoological Society of London. In 2009, Garth was selected to become a Kinship Conservation Fellow.
Garth has a PhD in environmental chemistry that examined the mitigation of CO2 emissions. He is particularly interested in helping rural communities to capture the value of ecosystem services that arise from the natural assets belonging to them. Garth is also working with Conservation International, assisting with the development of biocarbon projects (both reforestation and REDD) within Madagascar.
Within Blue Ventures Garth is currently to expand the organisation’s portfolio of “biodiversity business” projects, building on BV’s tradition of using social enterprise to conserve marine biodiversity and alleviate rural poverty in some of the world’s most marginalised communities. These projects include:
• the Marine Stewardship Council sustainable fisheries certification of the traditional octopus fishery of South West Madagascar
• the development of a pilot Payment for Ecosystem Services scheme to finance coral reef conservation
• Blue Carbon project development – linking community-based conservation of mangrove habitats to the international carbon markets
Click here to contact Garth.
