Ahmad Almakky is a Master’s student at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, specializing in community-based conservation. Ahmad has worked with a number of local communities across Pakistan on renewable energies, alternative livelihoods, communications, and wildlife conservation projects. This includes fisher communities on the coast of Karachi, in-land fisher and farmers, and urban youths. Most recently, Ahmad worked in the mountains of Baltistan on snow leopard conservation in areas where remote local communities continue to face intergenerational conflict with the species.
Ahmad is interested in bringing political sociology, cultural anthropology and post-colonial theory into the practice of conservation. He is primarily interested in asking broad questions involving global environmental goals and how they relate to the diversity of cultural experiences across the planet; especially in light of the differences in how people perceive their own wellbeing and how they conceptualize nature.