Head of Research and Knowledge
Karen Lawrence has over 20 years experience specialising in designing and implementing participatory natural resource management plans linking biodiversity conservation, stakeholder engagement processes, community livelihoods and sustainable finance mechanisms.
Examples of work include mapping of Cornish coastal community landscape values, participatory natural resource use plans linked to livelihood strategies for supporting protected areas in Cambodia, Thailand and Philippines for USAID and EU projects, as well as community forestry in Nigeria for a DFID project.
She was 6 years with WWF-UK where as a design and impact advisor, she supported the conservation science and impact monitoring of the Living Amazon Initiative, supported the deforestation trend analysis with scenario assessments, and applied the IUCN ecosystem assessment methodology, she also designed and implemented with WWF Brazil an impact evaluation assessment to show the avoided deforestation of supporting rubber tappers in 3 million hectares of brazilian rainforest. All of this work was underpinned by building the capacity of local teams, facilitating community resource mapping and planning whilst linking it to remote sensing data and geographical information systems.
She is also experienced in designing strategies, projects, and developing monitoring and evaluation processes for meaningful engagement with multi-sector, and multi-cultural stakeholders. She designed and facilitated the stakeholder evaluation of the WWF PISCES project and evaluated the Civic Mediation process used in the Celtic Seas Partnership to explore relationships between the Scottish fishing industry, E-NGOs and Government. She has also worked with ZSL as an impact manager and more recently conducted an evaluation of WWF-Indonesias conservation strategy.
She has an engineering degree, a masters in land and water management and a doctorate in political ecology from Kings College London as well as masters courses in renewables energy.
You can contact Karen on: kl@projectxglobal.com
