Chris Weaver is a common property natural resources management specialist, with over 40 years of experience working with communities and assisting them to find innovative ways of addressing common property management issues by linking conservation to development. He is currently the Senior Advisor, Inclusive Conservation for Enduring Earth and advises on the incorporation of communities into the design and implementation of Enduring Earth’s Projects for Permanence; the scaling of inclusive conservation approaches at the landscape level for the WWF Conservation Areas Initiative; and support to the introduction of community conservation in the Angola portion of KAZA.
Chris joined WWF in Namibia in 1993, managing the highly regarded USAID-funded Living In A Finite Environment (LIFE) Project and served as the Managing Director for the WWF in Namibia Program until 2020. During this period, Chris worked closely with the government, NGOs, communities, and private sector stakeholders to establish the internationally renowned communal conservancy movement. When he left Namibia in 2020, 86 conservancies covering more than 166,000 km² had been registered and were annually generating more than $11 million/year in returns and benefits for conservancy members through tourism enterprises, sustainable hunting, and sale of natural plant products.
He has a Master’s in Rangeland Ecology and a Bachelor’s in Range Management. Prior to WWF, Chris worked with the Navaho, Hopi, and Tohono O’odham Nations, federal agencies, and private landowners of the Southwestern United States on the conduct of natural resource inventories, management plans, and environmental impact assessments. Additionally, he assisted rural African communities in Lesotho to gain from improved rangeland, livestock, and agricultural practices.
