Practical guidance on communication as a conservation tool (14/05/04)

Good morning everyone:

Here's some light reading to while away those dull moments.

Here are two places to check for some basic practical guidance on communication as a conservation tool and the development of communication projects. Both sources give you some concise, easy-to-read guidance to help you develop and deliver high quality, effective communication products to your target audience. And both also provide plenty of additional resource materials to develop your skills further.

1. IUCN's Commission on Education and Communication (CEC) is a global network of experts in environmental communication and education, who work in government, international organizations, NGOs, mass media, business and academic institutions. Have a look here www.iucn.org/themes/cec/cec/home_page.htm under <<Principles of Good
Practice>> for their Top 10 Do's and Don't's; Communication checklists, Handbooks and guidelines and much more. Also have a look here <<Planning guide for projects>> for Starting projects and programmes; Identifying role of communication/Education; Selecting target groups; Selecting partners; Developing a strategy; Selecting tools; Monitoring and Evaluation - and much more. Definitely worth a visit.

2. The Biodiversity Education Network (BEN) (www.bioednet.org) is a coalition of organizations dedicated to enhancing local, regional, and national efforts to educate people of all ages about biodiversity. It was created to promote networking among those organizations and individuals who are working in biodiversity education and they run an on-line Biodiversity Education Network database. They also act as a clearing house for materials and resources for biodiversity education.

Have a look here www.bioednet.org/education.html for a series of small PDFs that focus on how to use communication as a tool for biodiversity conservation. You'll find useful materials on a range of issues - creating a communications strategy, what is biodiversity, what does the public need to know etc.

It's worth looking here too www.bioednet.org/bioprogram.html for a step-by-step process for developing quality biodiversity projects. The process was developed by Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Water and Office of Environmental Education; through a series of PDFs you can go through a checklist of decisions and activities to plan, develop, deliver and evaluate a biodiversity project.

Best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat

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Sandra Hails, CEPA Programme Officer
Ramsar Convention Secretariat
Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 999 0176; Fax: +41 22 999 0169
E-mail: hails@ramsar.org
Web Site: http://ramsar.org
CEPA mini-Web site: http://ramsar.org/outreach_index.htm

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