5th International Canopy Conference in Bangalore
The 5th International Canopy Conference has started in Bangalore.
The goals of the conference are to highlight the relevance of canopy research with respect to important global challenges, especially climate change, sustainability and conservation. Hence, the integration of canopy science with natural science, social science and information technology is critical. The conference provides an opportunity to build networks across continents, which will facilitate capacity building and foster collaboration using information from multiple sites, within countries and across continents.
On Friday, October 30th we will hold a symposium on Conservation, community development, rainforest experience: The environmental, social and economic values of forest canopy based ecotourism. The symposium is jointly organized by Siddhartha Krishnan of ATREE and me.
In the symposium we will move from general ecotourism observations to more concrete canopy tourism examples and likewise move from international examples into the Indian context. Therefore I have assembled the speaker list as follows:
Markus Seibel: Forest Canopy Tourism – analyzing a Flagship Attraction in the Ecotourism Arena from a Political Ecology Perspective
Suchismita Das: Consensus Building In Ecotourism: Concepts and Contradictions
I will give a brief introduction on canopy tourism and will talk a bit about my research in Malaysia and Rwanda, where I use canopy tourism as an example to find out who benefits from ecotourism and who doesn’t. Suchismita Das will then give us an overall critique of key concepts which are deployed to legitimize ecotourism.
Meg Lowman: Canopy Walkways for Conservation Education — A Tropical Biologist’s Panacea or Fuzzy Metrics to Justify Ecotourism
Stephen Michael Turton: Evolution of canopy ecotourism in Australia: experiences from the land down under
With Meg Lowman and Steve Turton we will then have two presentations focusing on the “new world”. Both have a natural science background and are very well known in the canopy science community.
Mohd Shahwahid Haji Othman: Assessing the Contributions of Canopy Tourism to National Parks
Saroop Roy: Canopy Tourism: Concept and practices in the Indian context
With Mohd Shahwahid and Saroop Roy we will then move into the Malaysian and Indian context. Whereas Shahwahid is an economist, Roy comes from a research, campaign and advocacy organisation.
Ian Green: Employing canopy tourism to benefit the environment — building a network of conservation based canopy walkways/flightlines: Past, Present and Future.
Phil Wittman: Canopy Access Construction Methods
To round off the symposium those two presentations will focus on the business and technical side of canopy tourism. Both, Ian Green and Phil Wittman have been building canopy access facilities around the world to benefit conservation.
Following the symposium there will be an open house session on ecotourism with Indian practitioners and entrepreneurs where further discussion will be possible. The conference organizers conferring under the theme Forest canopies: conservation, climate change and sustainable use, would like to assess the possibilities and potential of bringing the canopy eco-tourism experience to India. Whereas we will cull out lessons from ongoing canopy ventures, review existing models on conservation and community benefit, and also assess the canopy tourism potential in India in our symposium, practitioners and entrepreneurs are invited to participate in the open house session afterwards to discuss the practical side of these issues. I hope that we will be able to contribute to the open house session with the results/ lessons learned from our symposium.