Great Rivers Partnership - Great Rivers Center for Conservation and Learning

The Great Rivers Center for Conservation and Learning

At every great river in the world, learning is taking place. People restoring waters apply new techniques, policymakers create innovative approaches, and business and community leaders connect their work with rivers in new ways.

Finding ways to encourage greater and faster communication and collaboration among those working to conserve and manage great rivers is the thrust of the Great Rivers Center for Conservation and Learning, the science center of the Conservancy’s Great Rivers Partnership.

“If knowledge gained along the Amazon could more effectively be shared with people working on the Niger in Africa or the Rhine in Europe, imagine the impact it could have,” said Ken Lubinski, a renowned river ecologist who is Director of the center.

Harnessing the knowledge and experience that exists at the partnership’s three main sites—the Mississippi, Paraguay-Parana and Yangtze rivers—is one of the center’s first objectives. For example, the China blueprint process will measure financial benefits received from intact ecological systems.

Modeling developed for China can then be used elsewhere. Ultimately, the center must engage ecologists, economists and sociologists in collaborative learning. Strategic guidance in how to facilitate this exchange of information comes from the center’s advisory council, composed of leading international scientists and thinkers.

Advisors help the center identify strategic needs and goals for great river conservation, synthesize project experiences and information on key issues, integrate great river programs for broader impact, and measure overall progress. By expediting the sharing of knowledge, the center hopes to accumulate and magnify the benefits of learning to river management.

Ken Lubinski

The Advisory Board

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