Ignace Schops

Who is Ignace Schops?

Ignace Schops is a Belgian environmentalist, a biodiversity, landscaping & herpetology expert. He is currently Director or the Belgian NGO Regionaal Landschap Kempen en Maasland, council member of the largest network on the natural heritage in Europe, EUROPARC federation; full member of the EU chapter of Club of Rome and vice president of the largest nature conservation organization in Flanders, Natuupunt.

Ignace Schops was awarded with the Goldman Environmental Prize, better known as the Green Nobel Prize in 2008, for his contributions to the establishment of the Hoge Kempen National Park, the first National Park of Belgium.

Later that year he was selected as Ashoka fellow, world leading social entrepreneur and in 2010 he became one of the 8 global ambassadors for the IUCN countdown 2010 intitiative. Besides these international awards he got several national awards: Gulden Spoor - Golden Holidaymaker - Sustainable tourism ambassador, etc. Ignace Schops is full member of the EU Chapter of the Club of Rome and in June 2013 he became part of the Climate Leadership Corps of Al Gore.

Due to his international work on biodiversity and social entrepreneurship he became Honorary Doctor for the University of Hasselt in 2011. The succes of his work is based the connection Model, which tries to connect nature with society. This model has 4 principles: