INTERNATIONAL STEWARDSHIP
QLF's International Stewardship Program works with conservation and rural development practitioners worldwide to develop new strategies for conservation of natural and cultural heritage. Our target regions include Central and Southeast Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, along with activities on a global scale. Hundreds of professionals and local leaders from around the world have participated in our fellowships, workshops, peer exchanges and community problem-solving exercises, joining a growing cadre of practitioners concerned with stewardship.
We define stewardship as "efforts to create, nurture and enable responsibility in landowners and resource users to manage and protect land and natural resources."
Liptov region near the High Tatra mountains of Slovakia, site of a QLF Landscape Stewardship Exchange and home to several alumni. Protected landscapes can serve as models for sustainable developmment. Photo © Brent Mitchell
QLF International Stewardship: Given the breadth of geography and the changing nature of QLF's work in stewardship, these programs are described in more detail on QLF-intl.org. Note: Clicking on many of the links below will open a new browser window. You can return here at any time by selecting the tab or window labeled “International Programs.” More info »
Bringing Stewardship Home: All international programs are founded on true exchange—one in which learning can take place on both sides. For example, here in northeastern North America we can offer some wonderful examples of community-based conservation, coalition-building, and public participation processes, while our colleagues from other regions have shared with us their experience in areas such as collaborative management, trans-boundary cooperation, marine protected areas, and the protection of working landscapes. More info »
Central and Southeast Europe
The political changes of the past two decades in Central and Eastern Europe-and more recently in the Balkans-have brought economic growth but also environmental costs. We work with groups working to save natural areas increasingly accessible to development, and to spread prosperity to rural communities.
In 2004, building on a decade of work in Central Europe (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic), we began to extend our program to the Balkan countries of Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia. With this expansion, we are exploring new ways to foster trans-Atlantic as well as inter-regional exchange, helping participants work effectively across sectors and geographic borders. More Info »
Fostering landscape stewardship (as here in Slovakia) has been the focus of QLF's work in Central Europe over the past 15 years, and now in the Balkans. Photograph by Jessica Brown
Latin America and the Caribbean
Just as QLF's origins are in reaching out from the northeast US to eastern Canada, this program is QLF's effort to reach out across our hemisphere. From ancient migratory species to modern trade agreements, our cultures, societies and economies are increasingly linked.
The broad region also represents the longest commitment of QLF's international programs. QLF has program "alumni" in 26 countries, many of them heading key natural resource agencies or leading important NGOs. More Info »
Port Honduras Marine Reserve, Belize, was established in part to restore depleted fisheries and to thwart poaching. A QLF alumnus, Wil Maheia, worked tirelessly to establish the Reserve. Photograph by Larry Morris
Middle East
Since 1992, QLF has worked to promote mutual understanding between and conservation professionals and their organizations in the Middle East. Significant changes in the sociopolitical climate of the Middle East region call for constructive engagement, consensus building and cross-border particularly where the environment is the common language. These are the building block of a civil society. That process and transformation begins with an open dialogue.
Middle East Programs now have a cadré of more than a hundred Fellows who are Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Iraqi, and Syrian. The overarching goal of this Program is to foster citizen diplomacy and environmental collaboration as a bridge to greater understanding, dialogue, and cooperation. More Info »
Photograph by Larry Morris