The practice of conservation occurs within complex socioecological systems fraught with challenges that require transparent, defensible, and often socially engaged project planning and management. ...Planning and decision support frameworks are designed to help conservation practitioners increase planning rigor, project accountability, stakeholder participation, transparency in decisions, and learning. We describe and contrast five common frameworks within the context of six fundamental questions (why, who, what, where, when, how) at each of three planning stages of adaptive management (project scoping, operational planning, learning). We demonstrate that decision support frameworks provide varied and extensive tools for conservation planning and management. However, using any framework in isolation risks diminishing potential benefits since no one framework covers the full spectrum of potential conservation planning and decision challenges. We describe two case studies that have effectively deployed tools from across conservation frameworks to improve conservation actions and outcomes. Attention to the critical questions for conservation project planning should allow practitioners to operate within any framework and adapt tools to suit their specific management context. We call on conservation researchers and practitioners to regularly use decision support tools as standard practice for framing both practice and research.
There is growing recognition among conservation practitioners and scholars that good project management is integrally linked to well-designed monitoring and evaluation systems. Most conservation ...organizations have attempted to develop and implement monitoring and evaluation systems, often with mixed results. One problem seems to be that organizations are trying to build their systems from scratch, overlooking lessons learned from the many efforts to develop useful and practical monitoring and evaluation approaches. Thus, we undertook a review of monitoring and evaluation approaches in conservation and other fields including international development, public health, family planning, education, social services, and business. Here, we present our results for the field of conservation. We categorized the considerable variety of monitoring and evaluation approaches into four broad purposes: basic research; accounting and certification; status assessment; and effectiveness measurement. We focus here on status assessment and effectiveness measurement. Specific lessons that emerged follow: different monitoring and evaluation needs require different approaches; conceptual similarities are widespread among prevailing approaches; inconsistent language impedes communication; confusion among monitoring and evaluation components hinders practitioner ability to choose the appropriate component; and monitoring only quantitative biological variables is insufficient. We suggest that the conservation community continue support of collaborative initiatives to improve monitoring and evaluation, establish clear definitions of commonly used terms, clarify monitoring and evaluation system components, apply available approaches appropriately, and include qualitative and social variables in monitoring efforts.
Pathways to Success Salafsky, Nick; Margoluis, Richard A
2021, 2021-12-02
eBook
As environmental problems grow larger and more pressing, conservationists have had to adapt. With a shrinking window of time to act, they are turning to broad approaches to combat continental- and ...global-scale crises of biodiversity loss, invasive species, and climate change. Pathways to Success-the long-awaited successor to the classic volume Measures of Success-is a modern guide to building large-scale transformative programs capable of tackling the complex conservation crises we face today. In this strikingly illustrated volume, coauthors Nick Salafsky and Richard Margoluis walk readers through fundamental concepts of effective program-level design, helping them to think strategically about project coordination, funding, and stakeholder input. Chapters in the first part of the book look at all aspects of designing and implementing large-scale conservation programs while the second part focuses on how to use data and information to manage, adapt, and learn from program strategies. In addition, the authors offer practical advice for avoiding pitfalls, such as formulaic recipes and simplistic silver-bullet solutions that can trip up otherwise well-intentioned efforts. Abundant graphics help to explain and clarify concepts presented in the text, and a glossary in the back matter defines technical terms for the reader. Pathways to Success is the definitive guide for conservation program managers and funders who want to increase the scale and effectiveness of their work combating biodiversity loss, climate change, and other pressing environmental issues.
An essential foundation of any science is a standard lexicon. Any given conservation project can be described in terms of the biodiversity targets, direct threats, contributing factors at the project ...site, and the conservation actions that the project team is employing to change the situation. These common elements can be linked in a causal chain, which represents a theory of change about how the conservation actions are intended to bring about desired project outcomes. If project teams want to describe and share their work and learn from one another, they need a standard and precise lexicon to specifically describe each node along this chain. To date, there have been several independent efforts to develop standard classifications for the direct threats that affect biodiversity and the conservation actions required to counteract these threats. Recognizing that it is far more effective to have only one accepted global scheme, we merged these separate efforts into unified classifications of threats and actions, which we present here. Each classification is a hierarchical listing of terms and associated definitions. The classifications are comprehensive and exclusive at the upper levels of the hierarchy, expandable at the lower levels, and simple, consistent, and scalable at all levels. We tested these classifications by applying them post hoc to 1191 threatened bird species and 737 conservation projects. Almost all threats and actions could be assigned to the new classification systems, save for some cases lacking detailed information. Furthermore, the new classification systems provided an improved way of analyzing and comparing information across projects when compared with earlier systems. We believe that widespread adoption of these classifications will help practitioners more systematically identify threats and appropriate actions, managers to more efficiently set priorities and allocate resources, and most important, facilitate cross-project learning and the development of a systematic science of conservation.
Every day, the challenges to achieving conservation grow. Threats to species, habitats, and ecosystems multiply and intensify. The conservation community has invested decades of resources and hard ...work to reduce or eliminate these threats. However, it struggles to demonstrate that its efforts are having an impact. In recent years, conservation project managers, teams, and organizations have found themselves under increasing pressure to demonstrate measurable impacts that can be attributed to their actions. To do so, they need to answer three important questions: (1) Are we achieving our desired impact?; (2) Have we selected the best interventions to achieve our desired impact?; and (3) Are we executing our interventions in the best possible manner?
We describe results chains, an important tool for helping teams clearly specify their theory of change behind the actions they are implementing. Results chains help teams make their assumptions behind an action explicit and positions the team to develop relevant objectives and indicators to monitor and evaluate whether their actions are having the intended impact. We describe this tool and how it is designed to tackle the three main questions above. We also discuss the purposes for which results chains have been used and the implications of their use. By using results chains, the conservation community can learn, adapt, and improve at a faster pace and, consequently, better address the ongoing threats to species, habitats, and ecosystems.
If a project team is integrating human socio-economic development into its conservation work, there are three options for structuring the project: (1) have an integrated mix of conservation and ...development ends, (2) use development means in service of strict conservation ends, and (3) explicitly link the project's conservation ends to broader development ends. Although Option #1 is the most common solution, in this essay I argue that careful articulation of the theories of change behind conservation strategies reveals that it is often the worst choice. Project teams ultimately have to select either conservation or development goals, or risk achieving neither, especially in cases in which there is minimal linkage between the goals. Instead, a far better choice is Option #2 under which conservation agencies and organizations use the resources allocated to them by society in service of strict conservation ends. Under this option, project teams cannot ignore development concerns. Instead, they need to consider human needs in the context of both the threats at the site and their strategies - to use development means to achieve their desired conservation ends. Finally, in situations in which conservation teams need to increase available resources, it may be useful to show how conservation ends can also be a means to help achieve broader development ends over the long-term. Under Option #3, creating a clear “results chain” showing the team's theory of change enables teams to explicitly explore and make use of the links between human and natural welfare needs, and provide appropriate authorities with the information needed to weigh tradeoffs and make required decisions.
Although there has been increasing interest in trying to link the livelihoods of people living near natural resources to the conservation of those resources, there has been little attempt to ...systematically assess or measure this linkage. We develop a conceptual framework for defining the linkage between livelihood activities and conservation. We then develop a scale to assess the strength of linkage across five dimensions: species, habitat, spatial, temporal and conservation association. We test the framework and scale by evaluating 39 project sites in the Biodiversity Conservation Network. Finally, we discuss the relevance of linkage to designing appropriate conservation strategies.
Expansion of agricultural commodity production is driving rapid deforestation in tropical countries. Several strategies including jurisdictional planning and producer or sectoral‐level ...sourcing/certification have been used to counter this threat, each with its own limitations. There is growing interest in using jurisdictional sourcing (JS) as a hybrid that combines the best elements of each of these strategies. Specifically, JS involves bringing together key stakeholders in a given national or sub‐national political jurisdiction to agree on a land‐use plan that maintains forest ecosystems while promoting enhanced commodity production on degraded lands. Under JS, a key incentive for this agreement is the prospect of preferential sourcing from supply chain actors who want conversion‐free commodities. As with any conservation strategy, the key questions are what defines JS and under what conditions is it likely to work? To help address these questions, we convened a group of practitioners/experts to develop a theory of change that explicitly defines what JS entails from both the perspective of a given jurisdiction as well as a global markets point of view. We also developed generic objectives and indicators that can be used to measure performance. We then vetted our initial drafts with a wider circle of JS practitioners/experts as well as through a review of relevant literature and against seven case studies. It is our hope that this framework can be used to inform the collection of more standardized data across JS strategies being implemented in different locations and conditions. This data could, in turn, inform more systematic assessments of JS strategies and ultimately, revisions to this theory of change as our collective knowledge improves.
There is currently a great deal of work being undertaken to collect, analyze, and synthesize available evidence about the effectiveness of conservation strategies. But substantial challenges still ...remain in enabling practitioners to assess and apply this evidence to their conservation work in an efficient manner. To solve these challenges, there is growing recognition of the need to use situation assessments and theory of change pathways to detail a set of analytical questions and specific assumptions that can be assessed against the evidence base to “make the case” for a proposed strategy and to identify gaps in knowledge. In this study, we first provide updated definitions of some key terms. We then present and provide examples of an approach to enable practitioners to evaluate the evidence base for the critical assumptions that underlie their specific conservation strategies and to wisely use evidence coming from different knowledge systems. This practical approach, which was developed through a series of pilot tests with Parks Canada projects, involves four iterative steps: (1) identify critical questions and assumptions requiring evidence; (2) assemble and assess the specific and generic evidence for each assumption; (3) determine confidence in evidence and its implications; and (4) validate the assessment and iteratively adapt as needed. Ideally, this approach can be integrated into existing decision‐making frameworks and can also facilitate better cooperation between researchers who synthesize evidence and practitioners who use evidence to make conservation both more effective and efficient.
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