Evidence-Based Decisions for Community-Based Conservation

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23 May Evidence-Based Decisions for Community-Based Conservation

Posted at 15:28h in CCL, Governance, Rights & Conflict, Livelihoods, Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Community Conservation of Wildlife & Fisheries, Special Sessions, Presentations, Wildlife & Fisheries, Governance, Rights & Conflict, Engagement, Education and Empowerment by

Despite the rapid growth of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) interventions and studies examining these interventions, a limited evidence base describes what works, what doesn’t, and why. Mirroring the evidence base across the broader conservation sector (Bowler et al. 2010; McKinnon et al. 2016), most CBNRM studies are narrowly focused on single cases or single outcomes. As a result, decision makers continue to find themselves “shooting in the dark,” not knowing if their choices will benefit people, nature, both, or neither (Agarwal and Redford 2006).

The Alliance for Conservation and Evidence and Sustainability (ACES) is a newly formed coalition of NGOs and universities that seeks to both generate and synthesize evidence to support CBNRM implementation, and foster evidence-based decision making in conservation practice. The Alliance partners have developed a shared conceptual framework and key learning questions designed to advance the evidence base on the emergence, outcomes and spread of CBNRM, enabling learning to be shared across organizations and the broader conservation community.

The use of knowledge and evidence in CBNRM decision-making is fundamental to the Alliance. As decision-making processes are often political and context specific, there is no single practice or method that is known to effectively foster evidence-based decisions. This knowledge café sought to unpack this challenge and explore broadly questions around evidence-based decision making in community-based conservation, through harnessing insights from the diverse participants at the Communities, Conservation & Livelihoods conference, and bring in diverse perspectives to explore questions such as:

  • What are the different decision-making forums where knowledge inform decisions in community-based conservation?
  • What are the barriers to evidence-based decision making for conservation and what are ways they can be overcome?
  • What are ways to bring together different types of knowledge for decision making?
  • What are some of the biggest unanswered questions or knowledge gaps in community-based conservation?

 

– Shauna Mahajan (WWF), Louise Glew (WWF), Michael Painter (Wildlife Conservation Society) (May 2018)

Key Themes: 

Governance, Rights & Conflict, Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Livelihoods, Wildlife & Fisheries