12 May ?️ #ThursdayTalks | “Exploring the distribution of social impacts of Protected Areas in Europe”

We are very happy to announce that we have launched a new thrilling experience! It is called #ThursdayTalks, and it consists in a series of seminars with colleagues from other institutions who are working on research fields related to EqualSea Lab’s work. 

Our aim is to get closer to these researchers and their groups, to exchange our views with them, and to stimulate our collaboration network.

We have started #ThursdayTalks on this May 12: our guests have been Dr Nikoleta Jones, Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Sustainable Development, University of Warwick (UK), accompanied by Vassilis Gkoumas, PhD student at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge and a Researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance, and Alfie Begley, Research Assistant working on the FIDELIO project with the University of Warwick. 

They have spoken about “Exploring the distribution of social impacts of Protected Areas in Europe“. After the presentation, our team enjoyed a very enriching conversation with them.

As Nikoleta, Vassillis and Alfie explained, protected areas are the most widely applied policy tool for biodiversity conservation in Europe. However, effective management of protected areas is often obstructed by conflicts mainly associated with their social impacts. During the talk, they presented recent findings from the project FIDELIO regarding the different social impacts (benefits and costs) that protected areas can have on local communities living inside or near their boundaries. And we also discussed how and why these impacts are perceived differently by local stakeholders and also how they change depending on the geographical location they are measured.

Watch the meeting here: