Imagine a place where the world’s best researchers come together to solve our most pressing crises. Where hard-won evidence is put to work in projects spanning continents and crossing oceans. Where a deep understanding of social science informs landscape restoration, so that we can honour our past while building a future where people and nature thrive together.

Such a place exists: the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI). And it’s just welcomed a new leader, Professor Melissa Leach CBE.

Throughout a glittering career, Melissa has worked at the confluence of research and practice, bringing leadership to vital issues. Her personal view of the climate and biodiversity crises reveals the surprising realities of people’s relationships with their environments.

“Restoration is a vital paradigm,” Melissa says. “It shapes the way we promote the thriving of people as a part of nature. It embodies ideas about hope and the future. We can repair past damages but also build and shape landscapes that work for people, and for all the diverse forms of life.”

“We need to understand ecologies as highly dynamic, historically embedded and shaped by people.”

CCI is a unique endeavour. It brings together Cambridge experts with 10 leading conservation organisations to design, fund and deliver a huge range of projects around the world. 

It’s a partnership with an eye on the biggest challenges: conserving biodiversity, restoring landscapes and seascapes, influencing key policy decisions and offering leadership on environmental issues. Ever since CCI’s uplifting inauguration, when Sir David Attenborough abseiled its 50-foot high green wall, these goals have been paramount.

The goals became action in CCI’s flagship project: the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme (ELSP). The ELSP is a large-scale restoration of Europe's land and seas. It has already conserved 160,000 hectares and protected over 100 threatened species. From Romanian mountaintops to Portuguese valleys, the ELSP employs nature-based, community-led methods to revivify the natural world. 

Melissa is keen to build on the programme’s early successes. “The ELSP provides a model for work on restoration, which could be adapted across the world.”

The CCI also runs a Collaborative Fund, bringing together various parts of the University with the other CCI partners. The fund has already enabled work to map the world’s migratory freshwater fish, and provided vital data on the environmental consequences of conservation. 

Providing another perspective, the CCI’s Arts, Science and Conservation programme is an outlet for artists to collaborate with researchers and respond to the latest environmental debates. The programme has enabled artist residences both in Cambridge – at the David Attenborough Building and the Museum of Zoology – and in the landscapes where CCI partners are working.

“The arts programme is such a fantastic way to make sure that conservation is fully engaged with cultural contexts. Conservation is about passion. It is about fostering hope. 

“Love is what drives people to conserve and restore. We should be inspired by the affectionate relationships we establish with the landscapes we live in, and their many non-human inhabitants.”

Melissa’s journey to leading the CCI has been one of broadening compassion and boundless energy. It all started in Cambridge, where Melissa was an undergraduate in the 1980s.

“As an undergraduate at Newnham, the Geography Department was a very lively place. I’ve always loved geography for the way it brings together ecological, social and cultural questions. Cambridge was a prime place for that.

“I worked with some incredible people, who’ve remained mentors of mine ever since. People like my Director of Studies Dr Lucy Adrian, Professor Susan Owens and Professor Bill Adams. Later on, I got to know Professor Bhasksar Vira – now Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability. He was an important part of the founding of the CCI.”

For her PhD at SOAS, Melissa studied social anthropology and travelled to the rainforests of Sierra Leone. Following this, Melissa led groups at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the world-leading international development institution where she became overall Director in 2014. Throughout a varied 30-year career at IDS, she deepened her research on the environment while continuing her work in West Africa.

“My approach has been one of community engagement. I make sure that interventions and policies work for local people – that they are built on indigenous knowledge and practises.”

“I’ve always wanted to make a difference to the biggest challenges of our time. I think bringing research into the real world is the way to do that.”

Melissa is keen to scale up her ambition and create an even bigger impact.

So far, Plant Sciences, Zoology and Geography have been the areas of the University most involved in CCI. But Melissa sees huge potential in working with experts in Economy, Law and Archaeology too. She also wants to expand the approaches pioneered in the ELSP from a European to a global focus.

More broadly, Melissa sees genuine reasons for optimism in our fraying world.

“There are sources of hope. A plenitude of environmental efforts, driven by the everyday actions of citizens, aim to conserve and restore our world. I’ve seen them time and again, in place after place – there is real momentum in so many areas.

“We now have a global biodiversity framework, which will be a year old at COP16 this autumn. It sets the stage for ambitious work – where we can answer questions of justice, participation and indigenous rights.”

World-leading partnerships like the CCI are wellsprings of ecological hope. Fostered by collaboration and compassion, the communities brought together here are restoring our common home. To do so, they use a mixture of cutting-edge scientific discoveries and the timeless stories of our forebears. Such work will go a long way to securing a sustainable future for life on earth.

Professor Melissa Leach (Newnham 1985) is a Bye-Fellow of Pembroke, Professor of Social Anthropology and Executive Director of the CCI.

Meet the partners

The University and 10 conservation organisations created the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. The partner organisations are: BirdLife International, British Trust for Ornithology, Cambridge Conservation Forum, IUCN, Fauna & Flora, RSPB, TRAFFIC, Tropical Biology Association, UNEP-WCMC and Wildlife Conservation Society.

Published: 21 October 2024

Interview and words: Liam Morgan
Design: Alison Fair
Photography: Nick Saffell
Editor: Louise Walsh

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