- In early June, 500 conservationists largely from Asian countries assembled in Nepal for the 6th Conservation Asia Congress, organized by the regional chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology and other key partners.
- A melting pot for ideas, actions and future collaborations, participants also passed what they called the Kathmandu Resolution 2026.
- The resolution “called for building capacity of the Asian conservation sector through peaceful regional co-operation and trans-Asian collaboration, free movement of knowledge and expertise, mobilizing resources to foster leadership,” and more, a new commentary shares.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
There is perhaps no other continent on earth that possesses as diverse an ecosystem, biodiversity and cultural diversity as Asia. Yet, biodiversity conservation in Asia is in constant crisis, due to uneven development after gaining independence from Euro-American colonization, capital intensive infrastructure growth with worsening inequality, heavy dependence on natural resources at different scales, from household to nation, high population density and distribution that overlaps with spaces with endangered wildlife, illegal trade in endangered species, and finally, war, genocide, militarization and political conflict.
Conservationists in Asia, therefore, have a difficult mandate for the continent’s future: To tackle the biodiversity, climate, and cultural crisis at a much faster rate. Yet, the conservation space is strictly dominated by researchers and practitioners, donors and funders, policymakers and other intellectuals based in Western knowledge production systems.
To cater to this, almost 500 conservationists, majorly from Asian countries assembled in Kathmandu, Nepal, during the first week of June for the 6th Conservation Asia Congress. The conference was organized by the Asia region of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), in partnership with the Nepal chapter of SCB and a Nepal-based community-centric organization, Burhan Community Regeneration and Conservation Foundation (BCRCF).
Under the theme “Harmonizing Biodiversity and Human Well-being in Asia,” the Congress united global experts, early-career researchers, and community leaders to address the critical intersection of nature conservation, community stewardship, and evidence-based policy.
Participation, deliberation
The participants belonged to 42 different countries, which made this regional conference truly global. Most of the participants were either based in Asian institutions or institutions working primarily on Asian ecosystems and biodiversity. Out of these participants, 390 represented Global South countries, 357 were early-career conservationists with a median age less than 45 years. A total of 151 were students and 38 identified themselves as belonging to Indigenous or local communities, while 43% identified themselves as women or minority genders.
The Congress facilitated an extraordinary 300+ hours of knowledge sharing by conservation practitioners. The robust scientific program was a testament to the region’s dynamic conservation research and practice landscape. Apart from endless networking opportunities — and blooming collaborations, partnerships and friendships — it featured 11 plenary talks by leading conservationists, 300 oral presentations across 24 sessions and 19 symposiums, and 59 poster presentations. Additionally, there were five half-day and seven full-day workshops offering deep, specialized training and capacity-building led by thematic experts.
Scientific presentations ranged from conservation of Asiatic cheetah, Arabian leopard and other threatened species of the West Asian drylands to snow leopard and other associated fauna from Central, East and South Asian highlands, plus endangered elephants and primates from tropical ecosystems of South and Southeast Asia, alongside many other such species in need of immediate attention. Apart from these charismatic species, many participants brought forward the conservation status, need and action of avian, amphibian, reptilian species across diverse ecosystems and habitats.
Presentations also looked thoroughly into the human dimensions of conservation, through human-wildlife interactions, the conservation attitude-behavior nexus, political ecology, community stewardship, policy analysis, and conservation education. However, participants mentioned that more talks on marine ecosystems of Asia, conservation of smaller species, conservation social science and humanities should have been included.
Post-meeting feeling
Post-conference feedback from participants showed that quality of the scientific program, networking opportunities, relationship building, and getting to know about conservation work from under-represented countries such as Iran, Mongolia, China were the most celebrated aspects. Workshops were positively received as they were largely attended by early-career conservationists, and they mentioned that such workshops from leading conservationists are not greatly available in their home countries. However, many participants felt that the scientific program was too cramped with parallel, high-quality sessions and talks, which left them to make difficult choices on which one to attend.
The conference management by the local conference partner BCRCF — including choice of venue, catering, volunteer management and overall hospitality — was positively received, and participants from countries like Bangladesh, Iran, India, Mongolia and Thailand expressed their willingness to get together and form a country chapter under the SCB-Asia region. Meanwhile, the existing and functioning country chapters of Nepal, Indonesia, and China pledged to strengthen their work, especially bringing more students and early career scholars into their network.
Ensuring equity
High conference registration fees — along with logistical costs during the conference — can become a major barrier towards participation of not only students and early career scholars who are generally cash-strapped, but also well-established professors and practitioners from countries where there is hardly any support for this. Many students’ feedback mentioned that the registration cost ($229, for those from low and middle-income countries, and with SCB membership) was too high and should have been more affordable.
However, conference organizers were able to disburse grants in the form of either travel reimbursement or registration waivers or discounts to nearly 160 participants, i.e. more than 30% of the total attendance. This is quite unprecedented for a conference of such magnitude, and in comparison, other global conservation conferences offer far fewer travel grants. Almost all participants who received the grants — most of whom were students, early career scholars, members of Indigenous communities, or researchers from under-represented countries such as Iran, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan — mentioned that the grants were the biggest enablers for their participation.
Ensuring equity in conference participation was no accident, as careful planning and a tremendous amount of volunteer work went on backstage. Calling conferences a crucible for spawning lifelong collaborations that could build Asian conservation futures, Koustubh Sharma, the president of the SCB-Asia region, firmly stated, “When we started planning this congress, our primary goal was to set what we now call the ‘SCB Asia Standards’ of conference organization; hosting a world-class scientific event while ensuring absolutely nobody is left behind.”
Mohammad Farhadinia — who has been associated with the board for a long time and assumed the conference coordinator there — had a tough time raising enough funds to make the conference profitable as well as ensuring a good number of travel grants, saying, “We knew that many conservationists across Asia face financial and visa barriers, so we focused on finding ways to remove these barriers. We created sponsorship packages to support travel, not to increase revenue, and worked closely with our partners in Nepal, who went the extra mile to help participants overcome visa challenges.”
An innovative ‘Inclusivity Package’ partnership was created, where the sponsor did not pay a lump sum to the conference, but redirected that money to cover registration and travel costs for a number of early career conservationists, students and Indigenous communities. This attracted quite a few sponsors such as Snow Leopard Conservancy, Arcus Foundation, among others to support nearly 50 participants from across Central, South and Southeast Asia.
Local partner BCRCF likewise ensured Nepal’s ministries shepherded participant visas through, especially from countries in West Asia. A case in point is participants from Iran whose mobility was impaired due to the ongoing U.S.-Iran clash and total blockade of the latter’s airspace.
Up until two days before the conference, BCRCF liaised with the Nepal Ministry and Nepal consulate office in Qatar to arrange visas and safe transit through Istanbul. This perseverance bore fruit, and all the participants received their visas and participated at the conference successfully, prompting Farhadinia to say, “To me, the success of a conference isn’t about having the largest audience or the most countries represented; it’s about ensuring that everyone who wants to be there has a genuine chance to participate.”
Future of conservation in Asia: The Kathmandu Resolution 2026
As mentioned above, Asia — with its great potential to become a conservation leader — is reeling from multiple crises hindering both its development and conservation. So, how should an Asian conservation future look — like one led by Asians, or of and by the global community?
Such conferences are key melting pots for ideas and actions, and the pledges for future collaborations among institutions, scholars, students and practitioners were a positive testament to this. Noting that nature conservation cannot be separated from human wellbeing, the Conservation Asia Congress–Nepal called for a new era of solidarity and collaboration, and with resounding agreement from the participants, passed its Kathmandu Resolution 2026.
This resolution might not have government parties behind its formation, but it captured the mood of conservationists who gathered at the conference. It is almost a people’s resolution towards a safer, secured, unified, and inclusive future. Addressing the resolution as a collective, transboundary call to action, rather than a mere slogan, Dr. Sharma said, “This resolution reflects a profound consensus that what you conserve is important, but how you conserve it is even more important. It sends a clear message to the world that nature conservation simply cannot be achieved without securing the stewardship and wellbeing of the local communities and Indigenous peoples who have shared these spaces with wild inhabitants for thousands of years.”
The resolution called for building capacity of the Asian conservation sector through peaceful regional co-operation and trans-Asian collaboration, free movement of knowledge and expertise, mobilizing resources to foster leadership, strengthening country chapters toward becoming communities of practice and regional think-tanks, and challenging perverse and extractive economic systems that see nature as capital to be harnessed. It emphasized a commitment for creating space for students, women and gender minorities, and Indigenous communities for leading this change.
The resolution further called for implementation of community-centric conservation in true letter and spirit, rather than tokenism. It called for a shift from top-down protectionism to the stewardship, rights, and self-determined decision-making of local and Indigenous communities, securing livelihoods through biodiversity benefits and advocacy for landscape-scale policies that foster harmonious human-wildlife coexistence.
Lastly, the resolution called for promotion of open, ethical and collaborative scientific research to drive evidence-driven development policies, including building linear infrastructure and development of data-driven monitoring of socio-ecological indicators for providing solutions to the biodiversity and climate crises.
Whether this Resolution will remain as paper, like many other global climate commitments, or gain traction toward achieving these actionable items is difficult to comment on at this point. However, unwavering enthusiasm from conference organizers and participants might hold a positive future for Asia.
Between optimism and despair, there is hope.
Sayan Banerjee is research associate at Coexistence Studies Group, TDU, Bengaluru, India, and a board member of the Asia Regional chapter of Society for Conservation Biology.
Banner image: Tigers like this one in Sumatra require cooperation across the entire Asia region to ensure their conservation. Image courtesy of Pete Morris.
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Cite this article
Sayan Banerjee (2026). Katmandu Resolution calls for Asia-wide leadership on conservation (commentary). Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-329664
