A practical conservation tool to combine diverse types of evidence for transparent evidence‐based decision‐making

Christie, Alec P.; Downey, Harriet; Frick, Winifred F.; Grainger, Matthew; O’Brien, David; Tinsley‐Marshall, Paul; White, Thomas; Winter, Michael; Sutherland, William J.

doi:10.1111/csp2.579

Cited by 29 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…For complex interventions, it is important to appropriately assess the different components of an intervention using multiple sets of assumptions-for example, not just assessing the ecological effects of a strategy, but also its feasibility, acceptability, and costs (both social and economic; Christie, Downey, et al 2022). This often requires cross-sectoral and/or cross-disciplinary thinking to ensure diagrams representing Theories of Change, such as Results Chains, are complete (Tallis et al, 2019).…”

Section: Confidence In Assumption Consulting Ziggurat Plot Implicatio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This means that resultant decisions can be updated if new evidence becomes available, or if others disagree with how that evidence has been assessed. Doing so could help push organizations towards greater information sharing, due diligence, and professional practice in conservation, particularly through generating "decision libraries" (Christie, Downey, et al, 2022) that can help to show how and why decisions were made, as well as to monitor how well organizations are using evidence to make decisions using particular metrics (e.g., criteria for "Evidence Champions"; Conservation Evidence, 2023; or an evidence-use index being developed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service for funding decisions; Sutherland et al 2022).…”

Section: Value Of Assumption-based Thinking and Applying The Beam To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The BEAM could also be directly integrated into the Evidence-to-Decision tool (Christie, Downey, et al, 2022). The different steps within the tool can be reframed as sub-assumptions (when assessing effectiveness, costs, acceptability, feasibility, and modifications of potential alternative actions) and the confidence in each of these can be weighed up using the available evidence.…”

Section: Evidence-to-decision Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing diverse evidence to improve conservation decision‐making

Christie,

Morgan,

Salafsky

et al. 2023

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Meeting the urgent need to protect and restore ecosystems requires effective decision‐making through wisely considering a range of evidence. However, weighing and assessing evidence to make complex decisions is challenging, particularly when evidence is of diverse types, subjects, and sources, and varies greatly in its quality and relevance. To tackle these challenges, we present the Balance Evidence Assessment Method (BEAM), an intuitive way to weigh and assess the evidence relating to the core assumptions underpinning the planning and implementation of conservation projects, strategies, and actions. Our method directly tackles the question of how to bring together diverse evidence whilst assessing its relevance, reliability, and strength of support for a given assumption, which can be mapped, for example to a Theory of Change. We consider how simple principles and safeguards in applying this method could help to respectfully, and equitably, include more local forms of knowledge when assessing assumptions, such as by ensuring diverse groups of individuals contribute and assess evidence. The method can be flexibly applied within existing decision‐making tools, platforms, and frameworks whenever assumptions (i.e., claims and hypotheses) are made. This method could greatly facilitate and improve the weighing of diverse evidence to make decisions in a range of situations, from local projects to global policy platforms.

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Section: Confidence In Assumption Consulting Ziggurat Plot Implicatio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Value Of Assumption-based Thinking and Applying The Beam To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evidence-to-decision Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing diverse evidence to improve conservation decision‐making

Christie,

Morgan,

Salafsky

et al. 2023

Conservat Sci and Prac

Self Cite

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“…Second, scientific evidence on conservation action from the Global South is severely lacking, placing great emphasis on improving future research collaborations in these underrepresented regions and their native languages (Amano et al, 2021;Christie et al, 2020Christie et al, , 2021. Third, the conservation community is increasingly recognizing the importance of Indigenous and Local Knowledge and other worldviews in informing conservation action alongside scientific evidence, placing renewed emphasis on appropriate research relationships that enable this (Christie et al, 2022;Hauser et al, 2021 ;Kutz & Tomaselli, 2019;Trisos et al, 2021). Research is therefore needed to quantify parachute science in the testing of conservation actions (which may reflect wider patterns within conservation as a whole) to ensure more ethical and ultimately better conservation science.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parachute conservation: Investigating trends in international research

Miller

White

Christie

2023

Conservation Letters.

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Parachute science (inequity in research relationships between Global North and South scientists) has known detrimental impacts on Global South researchers in conservation. Using two international datasets of English and non-Englishlanguage studies testing conservation interventions, we compared the continents in which studies were conducted to those in which authors were affiliated. We found that a substantial proportion of English-language studies conducted in Global South continents were led by researchers affiliated to Global North institutions. Studies in the Global South had relatively few locally affiliated lead authors and a higher percentage of studies with no locally affiliated authors.There were similar but typically less pronounced patterns for non-Englishlanguage studies. We discuss the potential drivers of these problematic findings and future directions that could help avoid and eliminate unethical parachute conservation science.

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“…The level of agreement between practitioner knowledge and data from traditional scientific methods can be favourable (Cook et al, 2014), though has rarely been assessed, and is not always comparable. There is growing recognition of the value of practitioner knowledge, as well as local knowledges (Hernández-Morcillo et al, 2014;Joa et al, 2018), and of the need to incorporate these into evidence-based decision-making (Christie et al, 2022;Persson et al, 2018). Doing so may result in more successful conservation outcomes, especially because practitioner knowledge can account for practical considerations, including feasibility, acceptability, costs, values and local context, which are generally not well documented within the conservation evidence literature (Christie et al, 2020(Christie et al, , 2022.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%