Deadline: 10-Oct-22

The competition for the 2023 Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) Future Conservationist Awards is now open to offer a grant of up to $15,000 to teams of early-career conservationists working on high-priority projects in eligible countries worldwide.

CLP offers support to early-career conservationists living and working in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern and South-eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Eligibility Criteria

Applications will be accepted from teams initiating projects that meet the eligibility criteria outlined below. To be eligible for a CLP Future Conservationist Award, the team and project must meet the following eligibility criteria.

• Team:
  • CLP Awards are for team-based conservation projects – each team must have at least three people.
  • 50% or more of the team members must be nationals of the country where the project is taking place.
  • Nationals of a country subject to sanctions or trade restrictions imposed by the USA, UK or EU are NOT eligible to participate on a project team.
  • The team leader must be a national of the country where the project is taking place. Co-leadership with a non-national will be considered, subject to clear justification.
  • All team members must be early-career conservationists with no more than five years of work experience in the conservation sector. ‘Work experience’ does not include research for a university degree. Individuals who have more than five years of work experience in the conservation sector are not eligible for CLP support and should not apply.
  • No team member can be a part- or full-time paid employee or contractor with a CLP partner organization, including Birdlife International, Fauna & Flora International and the Wildlife Conservation Society, at any time from project development through to implementation.
  • Any team member volunteering at a CLP partner organization at the time of application and/or project implementation MUST be declared in the application. They also need to explain how the CLP proposal differs from the partner organization’s work.
  • Applicants can participate in only one CLP project at a time and in no more than three Future Conservationist Award projects in total, serving as team leader for no more than one Future Conservationist project.
• Project:
  • CLP offers support to early-career conservationists living and working in low and middle income economies in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern and South-eastern Europe and the Middle East. The project must take place in one of the eligible countries
  • The project duration must be no less than three months and no more than one year in length.
  • The total funding request from CLP must not exceed US$15,000 and CLP funding must cover at least 50% of the total project budget.
  • The project must focus on globally important species for biodiversity conservation that are at risk. They consider a species to be ‘at risk’ if it is designated as globally threatened (CR, EN, VU) or data deficient (DD) by the IUCN Red List OR if there is information suggesting that urgent conservation action is needed.
  • For those projects focusing on multiple species and/or taxonomic groups, at least one species in each taxonomic group being studied must be at risk.
  • The project must be for new work rather than the continuation of an ongoing, established project.
  • Applicants must demonstrate that the proposed project goes beyond academic research being carried out for any team member’s degree.
  • Projects that involve laboratory analyses must justify why this work is critical and urgent for conservation.
  • The proposal must be written by the applicants themselves.

For more information, visit https://www.conservationleadershipprogramme.org/grants/grant-overview/future-conservationist-award/