Our Team
Dr Joanna Durbin has over thirty years’ experience supporting biodiversity conservation and sustainable natural resource management through community-based conservation, mostly in Madagascar. Most recently, she was the Chief of Party then technical advisor role of USAID Mikajy, a project conserving biodiversity, establishing sustainable natural resource management, promoting conservation friendly businesses, improving livelihoods, and strengthening tenure security in two landscapes in Madagascar: MaMaBay (around Masoala, Makira and Bay of Antongil protected areas in the north east) and Menabe (in the west).
Prior to joining Mikajy, she led the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) based in Washington DC and developed standards, safeguards, information systems, and policy and governance assessments to facilitate support and finance for land management and REDD+ activities that credibly generate benefits for the global climate, local communities and biodiversity. Previously she was the Madagascar Program Director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust for ten years, leading species-focused community conservation projects in seven sites Madagascar.
Her career has built on her doctoral research on the role of local communities in protected area management in Madagascar. She has thirty years’ experience facilitating community-led development, multi-stakeholder processes and good governance for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development mostly in Madagascar, and also in Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Liberia, Uganda, Fiji, Indonesia, Nepal, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico.