Conservation & Sustainability Solutions

Principals at Keelback have been involved in the following success stories throughout the Asia Pacific region:

China

-Set up a China Board of Trustees, which catalysed the energies of China’s new entrepreneurs toward protecting and restoring China’s environment.

-Helped create the China Global Conservation Fund—China’s top business leaders pooling their funds to grant $30m and counting to conservation around the world.

-Pioneered the use of conservation leases and land trusts in China.

-Helped create a network of affiliated conservation NGOs.

Mongolia

-Completed an ecological blueprint for all of Mongolia for the government, an effort instrumental in designation of 30 million hectares of new protected areas.

-Worked with herders to protect their historical grazing lands from encroachment and degradation.

Australia

-Supported the use of traditional land management with indigenous partners, bringing hundreds of thousands of hectares into traditional ownership and conservation management.

-Embarked on large-scale coastal marine restoration by bringing oyster reefs back from functional extinction across Australia’s southern coast.
 
Indonesia

-Built a bait-to-plate system to assist the government in sustainable management of the multi-billion-dollar snapper/grouper fishery.

-Conserved over 1 million acres of tropical forest slated for conversion to oil palm.

-Pioneered low-impact logging to reduce carbon emissions.

-Helped to vest the rights of indigenous forest residents to support their efforts to conserve forests that sustained their ancestors. 

-Worked with parters protect the Bird’s Head Seascape in Raja Ampat, the most diverse and healthy coral system left on the planet.


In the Pacific Ocean

-Helped to create the Solomon Islands’ first national park in the Arnavon Islands.

-Pioneered new approaches to incorporate gender into conservation planning and action—first in Melanesia and then across Asia Pacific.

-Marine spatial planning from Raja Ampat, through Papua New Guinea and across Palau, Pohnpei and the rest of Micronesia has resulted in protected area declarations and has enhanced food security for entire nations.

-“Ridges to Reefs” planning and engagement around mining policy in Melanesia has shaped the future for many communities whose traditional lands, waters and ways of life were threatened.

-Engagement with governments, the tuna fishing industry and local people to bring transparency to one of the world’s most valuable and threatened fisheries.