]Environmental Incentives is pleased to announce a new paper, “Defining and using evidence in conservation practice,” produced by a Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) working group. The working group brought together leading experts from both practice and academia, including representatives from Foundations of Success and Environmental Incentives, to more explicitly incorporate evidence-based decision-making into conservation.
Despite growing interest in evidence-based conservation, practitioners do not have clear guidance on what evidence is or how to realistically apply it to their work. This paper reviews evidence-based practice in medicine, education, and other fields to develop a working definition and typology of evidence in conservation. It also develops guidance for realistically using evidence in day-to-day conservation practices. A theory of change-based road map illustrates how the conservation community could better generate, disseminate, and use evidence across the field of conservation.
Results from this work are being officially incorporated into Version 4.0 of the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, launching in May 2019. Environmental Incentives looks forward to working with our CMP partners to use this new theory of change to strengthen the use of evidence in conservation.
