Speakers Announced: People for Planet Summit

Hear live from the visionary leaders who are uniting people to save biodiversity around the world.

Join us on 8 October at London’s Royal Institution for the second Whitley Fund for Nature’s People for Planet Summit, a one-day event exploring solutions to save nature with grassroots conservation leaders and cross-sector environmentalists. 

Humans depend on healthy ecosystems but the wildlife populations which sustain these have declined by an average of 73% over 50 years. Ahead of COP30 in the Amazon, rev up your sense of agency by learning about solutions to protect and restore the natural world and how species are adapting to a changing planet in surprising ways.

TICKETS ON SALE

Book your People for Planet Summit ticket via Eventbrite, on sale now.

The Full Pass Ticket gives you access to all sessions, from 1 – 8:30 PM with drinks and light fare included, and the Evening Pass Ticket is for the evening of storytelling only (doors open from 6:30 PM, event from 7 – 8: 30 PM). 

MEET the Award-winning speakers

Introducing our first wave of summit speakers, five Whitley Award-winning conservationists working together with communities in some of the world’s most biodiverse countries:

FARwiza farhan

Farwiza Farhan from Indonesia is the founder of Yayasan HAkA, a grassroots NGO based in Aceh, Sumatra, focused on advocacy and policy to protect, conserve and restore the Leuser Ecosystem, the last place on earth where orangutans, elephants, rhinos and tigers co-exist.

Bill Gates says her work makes him “optimistic for our future” – her activism includes  legal action against palm oil companies illegally burning the forest which has resulted in fines of as much as $26 million. Another legal challenge led to the cancellation of a planned $3 billion dam. Farwiza has helped to train local rangers to monitor illegal logging and poaching, including the first female forest ranger team in Aceh.

She won a Whitley Award in 2016 and was featured in Leonardo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood documentary the same year.

DR Fernando TRujillo

Dr Fernando Trujillo from Colombia is based in the Amazon and is a world leading expert in river dolphins whose freshwater ecosystem is critical to sustaining the world’s most important tropical rainforest.

Advised by Jacques Cousteau as a student that river dolphins needed help, Fernando went on to lead an 11-country agreement to protect them. He’s the founder of Omacha Foundation, an NGO addressing the challenges to dolphins from mercury pollution resulting from illegal gold mining as well as from deforestation, fires and water stress. Fernando exposed the dangerously high levels of mercury impacting the health of dolphins and local people. (His own mercury level rose to x10 that of the dolphins).

He chairs the subcommittee of small cetaceans of the International Whaling Commission and is a member of the IUCN Specialist Group on Cetaceans, Sirenians and Otters. Fernando won a Whitley Gold Award in 2007.

DR RACHEL GRAHAM

Dr Rachel Graham is founder and executive director of MarAlliance and a member of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group.

She and her team work with coastal communities across multiple tropical countries, including Panama, where she is now based, and advocate for rewilding our oceans with threatened species, especially sharks. Rachel is working with stakeholders to build the world’s first shark superhighway – linking the newly protected coast of Mexico’s Quintana Roo to Belize’s 15 marine protected areas.

Over three decades, Rachel has led on achieving protection for the globally vulnerable whale shark population in Belize in addition to securing a fishing net ban in the country which has led to a comeback in shark populations in protected areas. Rachel won a Whitley Gold Award in 2011.

DR MUNIR VIRANI

Dr Munir Virani is chief executive of the Abu Dhabi-based Mohamed bin Zayed Raptor Conservation Fund dedicated to the protection of threatened birds of prey around the world. His TED talk “Why I Love Vultures,” has had more than one million views.

Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Munir has nearly three decades of experience with raptors in research, conservation, strategic planning, project execution, storytelling, and fundraising. The former Executive VP at The Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho, Munir’s work spans critically endangered vultures in Africa and South Asia to other threatened raptors in Mongolia, Philippines, the Caribbean Islands and neotropics.

Munir has authored nearly 200 scientific and popular articles and mentored many graduate students. He is a multi-award-winning wildlife filmmaker and photographer and has played cricket for Kenya’s national team. Munir is a 2018 Whitley Award winner.

ANJALI WATSON

Anjali Watson is co-founder of the Wilderness & Wildlife Conservation Trust, an NGO focused on connecting the fragmented habitat of Sri Lanka’s apex predator: the Sri Lankan leopard.

She is the pioneer of the Corridors for Conservation initiative in the Central Highlands, a World Heritage site dominated by tea estates. By reaching agreement with the owners of the tea estates to reforest “corridors” of land to allow leopards and other wildlife to roam, Anjali is conserving these vital watershed forests which protect the landscape – and the many human communities within – from landslides, floods and drought.

A member of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission, Anjali’s work to maintain an island-wide distribution map of the Sri Lankan leopard helped to inform the IUCN Red List which identifies the species as “vulnerable.” Anjali is a 2018 Whitley Award winner.

SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED

Browse the People for Planet Summit programme, featuring cross-sector experts on the role of Big Finance and philanthropy in closing the $700 billion nature finance gap.

From tracking species from space and, mapping the biosphere with AI, to innovation in finance to protect nature, you won’t want to miss the summit’s flagship talks.