PARTNERSHIPS

Key Conservation has partnered with Conservation Optimism, so that together we can maximize our conservation impact through community empowerment, storytelling, and resources to go deeper on the topics we're passionate about — through Conservation Optimism you can find examples of successful conservation from around the world, connect with others from a wide array of backgrounds who are working to address threats to biodiversity and find inspiration even in the face of serious threats.

Wild nature is declining rapidly, and the earth’s life support systems are under increasing stress. As nature erodes and the response of human systems is inadequate or destructive, it can seem like the only rational response is despair. Yet if you zoom in from the big picture, a mosaic appears; in amongst the stories of loss there are inspiring stories of regeneration and positive change, with nature making a difference in people’s lives, and people valuing and nurturing their natural environment.

These stories are the key to securing our planet’s future; we need to learn from them, replicate them and thereby build a world in which nature and people can coexist. Our mission is to help tell and amplify these stories of conservation optimism — and to provide tools and resources to empower people from every walk of life to take action for conservation.

By partnering with Conservation Optimism, Key will bring empowering moments of hope to the world. Our partnership will make it easy to cross-post inspiring success stories and important updates from the Key Conservation partner organizations to a wider audience in a more permanent format. Each Conservation Optimism post that features a Key partner organization will link back to the Key Conservation app so supporters can easily continue to learn more about the organization, see what challenges they are currently facing and find the tools to help in real-time. Instead of just reading about these stories supporters will be able to take their hope to do more and turn it into action.

Together, we can create an endless cycle of inspiration, action, and reporting back to embolden and grow our community of conservationists.

Join Key & Conservation Optimism at the Conservation Optimism Summit on September 2-4, 2019

Key Conservation has partnered with Conservation X Labs to connect conservationists and global supporters on the Key Conservation mobile app to the Digital Makerspace. Here both conservation organizations and their supporters can bring ideas for solving both big and small problems facing conservationists and gain the support needed to create their solutions.

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The mission of Conservation X Labs is to harness exponential technologies, open innovation, and entrepreneurship to dramatically improve the efficacy, cost, speed, scale and sustainability of conservation efforts to human-induced extinction.

THEORY OF CHANGE

Conservation X Labs believes that harnessing exponential technologies, open innovation, and a for-profit entrepreneurship financial model will allow us to dramatically improve the efficacy, cost, speed, sustainability, and scale of conservation efforts. Although technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship will not alone solve the conservation problems, they can dramatically improve the rate of its success.

THEIR ASSUMPTIONS 

The model is based on the premise that while most of our conservation successes have been incremental, the problems are increasing exponentially (particularly tied to population growth and billions emerging into the middle class). Conservation X Labs believe that exponential technologies and emerging science have insufficiently been harnessed and scaled to support conservation. Further, the conservation efforts lack sufficient resources to address the existing conservation challenges and that current investments have been ineffective to stop the sixth extinction event underway. They also believe that conservation has spent considerable time fighting against human behavior rather than incentivizing it to support the conservation movement. Finally, they believe that conservation as a field should engage a much greater diversity of disciplines in its work.

THEIR MODEL

• Sourcing innovations through open innovation (prizes, challenges, hackathons, design sprints, open hardware development) and directed innovations (university partnerships, and internal R&D).

• Rapid iteration and testing, in partnership with the conservation community.​

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• Creating & partnering with acceleration platforms (both virtual and physical) to help bring new innovations to scale.

• Creating the larger conservation 3.0 tribe to build the conservation technology & innovation community.

Learn about the Digital Makerspace at Conservation X Labs

The Digital Makerspace (DMS) is a platform where science, entrepreneurship, and technology communities come together to start projects and co-create tech-enabled solutions to conservation problems.

Our current conservation problems are growing exponentially. As the planet's population inches toward 9 billion by the year 2050, a rising middle class and increased demand for consumer goods, meat, and electricity will put even more strain on the planet's resources. Wildlife populations are steadily declining, and the extinction rate is accelerating. Scientists are calling this era the 6th major extinction event in Earth's history.

Humans are at the root of many of these problems, but humans can also provide solutions. The Digital Makerspace hosts a community dedicated to collaborating on innovative new tech projects that will bring an end to human-induced extinction.

The DMS is a workshop, a collaboration space, and a project pipeline where ideas can be born, tested and developed. Community members work together to define the problems, propose solutions, and complete the tasks necessary to bring a project from a simple idea to a full-fledged product. The DMS community isn't just online: a network of partners provide opportunities for hands-on testing in the field, in laboratories, and in makerspaces across the world. Open innovation, collaboration across disciplines, and community engagement are key to generating world-changing ideas and that many minds working together can refine them and achieve big things. The goal is to support projects that are born on the Digital Makerspace and help transform them into financially sustainable, viable products that will address the drivers of extinction.