Welcome to I-CAN!

The Institutional Canopy of Conservation (I-CAN) is a research project that is part of the International Partnerships for Sustainable Societies (IPaSS) program, a joint initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the International Development Research Center (IDRC). It is a 7 year, $2.5M (CAD) project to be implemented between August 2014 and July 2021.

The project will study the impact of a range of conservancy experiments on local livelihoods, attitudes, and natural resource practices, with the aim to identify effective community-based conservation programs that can help conserve East Africa’s rich biodiversity and strengthen local livelihoods though improving access rights to natural resources, income diversification, and green economic development.

Led by the African Conservation Centre (ACC) and McGill University, the partnership involves a rich network of collaborators and partners from universities, research institutions and non-governmental organizations in Canada, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the U.S., The Netherlands and Germany. The Principal Investigators of the project are David Western (ACC) and John G. Galaty (McGill University).