Six members of ESUG, including Chair Julie Ewald, were among the participants at a second physical meeting of the Pro-Coast project in Bergen during 11-13 June 2024. Work is now starting in the nine Case Studies. This is under intensive guidance by social scientists, which reminds us how much this project differs from GEMCONBIO (2006-8), in which study of conservation projects showed that success depended mainly on adaptive management and knowledge leadership, and TESS (2008-11) in which the need for detailed local mapping and ease of collection by trained community volunteers was demonstrated. In Pro-Coast we seek to discover what individual motivations favour conservation behaviour, and to use this knowledge to engender massive roll-out of tools for sustainable use of wild resources. 

The public debate between those opposing and advocating for trophy hunting as a legal sustainable use activity is often shaped by the perception that policymakers have of the electorates views towards this. In 2021, Humane Society International published a survey erroneously extrapolating from a small sample of respondents in Germany and through biased wording that a majority of Europeans opposed trophy hunting. In 2023,  coalition of sustainable use organisations commissioned another study which concluded through robust and representative data that 53% of Europeans accepted the import of trophies from non EU countries while only 22,7% favoured a ban. You may read more on the importance of the wording used to mobilise politicians and civil society in this article: https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/article/analyzing-the-rhetoric-behind-trophy-hunting-narratives/178175/

Pro-Coast (a PROactive approach for COmmunities to enAble Societal Transformation) is running for three years from November 2023 in the EU Horizon Programme. Pro-Coast brings together 20 partners from 14 countries focusing on 9 case studies representing different types of coastal habitats in Europe. Focusing on change agents and combining global with local knowledge to benefit societies, the project will combine social and environmental science to promote restoration of biodiversity by coastal communities.

Pro-Coast is intended to scale up to wider areas along coasts and inland, using the networking developed by the European Sustainable Use Group together with SUME and IAF. A number of project partners, including ESUG as project lead, are associated with SUME. We will work with them to develop global approaches to conserve nature through sustainable use, hand in hand with experts, scientists and local communities. 

SUME and ESUG members attended a 3-day conference in Abu Dhabi on "The Significance of Indigenous People and Local Communities in linking Intangible Cultural Heritage and Wildlife Conservation". This event marked the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between IUCN and the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey (IAF) on raptor conservation and stakeholder networking. Adrian Lombard, Elizabeth Leix, Alessandra Oliveto, Janusz Sielicki, Julian Mühle, Robert Kenward and Véronique Blontrock were all speakers and joined many young falconers for a training workshop on running our networks. Janusz launched IAF's new conservation network and presentations from the conference are available for access here.

Members of SULi and SUME (here Gabriela Lichtenstein & Julian Mühle) worked with Team-IUCN at Plenary 9 of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Bonn during 3-9 July 2022. A main task of Plenary 9 was to approve the IPBES Assessment of Sustainable Use of Biodiversity, which was started in 2017 and exceeds 1100 pages. An advance version of the 30-page Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) is available online already with a press release from IPBES. The STM is now also covered in a two-page review for SULi and SUME members; comments on the two-pager are welcome, to help prepare for adding much material to our Naturalliance network when IPBES publishes the full six-chapter assessment..