People & Partners

Dr Hayley Clements undertakes impact-orientated transdisciplinary research that highlights how African biodiversity connects to human wellbeing and the role of African wildlife economies in achieving just and sustainable development.

She holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town and has undertaken postdoctoral fellowships at the Universities of Monash (Australia) and Stellenbosch University (SU). She was the inaugural recipient of the Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Research Grant, leading a project that convened 200 African biodiversity experts to co-produce a map of the continent’s remaining biodiversity intactness (bii4africa.com). This map highlights the need for wildlife economies across the continent’s working lands, harnessing wildlife-based land uses to retain biodiversity intactness while supporting resilient livelihoods.

Hayley is a senior researcher at the CST and holds a research Chair in African Wildlife Economies, working with the African Wildlife Economy Institute at SU, in partnership with Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation. Hayley is also a researcher at the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science, at the University of Helsinki, supported by a Kone Foundation grant to assess at the ecological and socio-economic impacts of sustainable wildlife use across Africa. She is a co-lead researcher on an AFD-funded project, Enabling agroecological systems that sustain people and planet, developing foundational knowledge products and decision support tools for the wildlife economy to facilitate cross-sectoral mainstreaming. In addition, she is an editor at the international journal, Sustainability Science, on the steering committee for the African Wildlife Economy Community of Practice, and a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, the Society for Conservation Biology, and the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society.