Kellogg International Scholar Evie Garces-Foley attended the FLARE Forests and Livelihoods 10th annual meeting in Rome, Italy in October. Garces-Foley presented on her independent summer research project, funded by the Kellogg/Kroc Undergraduate Research Grant, which examined how trust is formed and perceived between International Conservation NGOs and Indigenous Peoples in the Alto Mayo region of San Martín, Peru. Additionally, Garces-Foley was one of five plenary speakers who spoke on the conference’s closing panel which discussed the future of forests and livelihoods as the FLARE conference looks ahead to the next 10 years.
The FLARE conference, hosted by the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and Pulte Institute for Global Development, highlighted the latest research on the intersections of forests and livelihoods centered around the conference theme of “Imagination and Innovation for Forests and Livelihoods.” Scholars, activists, policymakers and students presented on topics such as restoration and community governance, social justice and forest governance, government policy impact, and traditional ecological knowledge and science.
Garces-Foley presented on the Community Forests session, sharing her preliminary findings from her summer research. This independent research project came about from her work with her ISP advisor Dr. Dan Miller on the factors that lead to long-term conservation funding success. Garces-Foley found that local communities’ trust in international conservation organizations is crucial to long-term success, yet she wondered how conservation organizations were building trust and how this was perceived by both the local and external stakeholders. For her project, she explored how conservationists at Conservation International Peru and Indigenous Peoples from the Awajún Native Communities have built and perceived a trustworthy relationship throughout their 10+ years of collaboration to conserve and restore the Awajún forests.
By presenting her research alongside accomplished scholars in the fields of conservation and forest governance, Garces-Foley was able to receive insightful feedback to support her future data analysis for her peace studies capstone. She also gained an important understanding of how her research supports and fills gaps in ongoing research on community forest governance and local-international stakeholder relations.
Garces-Foley was also chosen to be a plenary speaker at the closing panel of the FLARE conference which discussed the future of forests and livelihoods from a wide range of perspectives. She provided the youth, student researcher, and climate activist perspective for this discussion which was joined by scholarly, practitioner, legal, Indigenous, and policy perspectives from co-panelists Jonathan Rigg, Sarobidy Rakatonarivo, Hugo Jabini, and James Connell. These diverse perspectives provided for an enriching conversation on how research, community action, activism, and policy can shape a better future for forests and the people who depend on and care for them.
Garces-Foley is grateful for the guidance of her independent research advisor Dr. Krister Andersson and her former ISP faculty advisor Dr. Dan Miller for their support of her research and preparation of her presentation. Additionally, she would like to thank Diego Dourojeanni, Milagros Oblitas and the CI Peru Rioja team for their in-country support, and the Kroc and Kellogg Institutes for funding and supporting her summer research and conference attendance.