Bridging the research-practice gap: Conservation research priorities in a Central and Eastern European country

Abstract

Halting biodiversity loss is a critical aim for the forthcoming decades, but is hindered by the gap between research and practice. Bridging this gap is a significant challenge in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where, compared to Western European countries, biodiversity is higher but the research budget is lower. Approaches to address bridging this gap include participatory research prioritizing exercises. These demand-driven collaborative ranking processes have proven to be a useful tool in providing a research agenda derived from a review of critical challenges based on stakeholder engagement. However, for research agendas to be effectively realized, they are best developed and implemented at the operative level of research financing and implementation. This paper shows the process and the outcome of an exercise conducted in Hungary aiming to compile the most important conservation research questions at the country-level and outlines a set of further measures and tools required for dissemination and advocacy for the research agenda. During the process 792 research questions were collated from conservation practitioners and natural resource managers based on interviews and via an online questionnaire; the final 50 most important questions were identified by practitioners and policy makers during an expert workshop. Questions are embedded in global and EU biodiversity targets and imply a pragmatic approach with the aim of identifying research that supports policy-and decision-making regarding habitat management, landuse and regional development, while also focussing on conflicting issues. The outcome of the process includes the potential for lobbying, therefore post-publication activities and dissemination strategies are outlined as an integrated part of the exercise.

Incorporating climate change into invasive species management: insights from managers

“…Prioritizing applied research on invasive species and climate change (Fig. 5) is one way to overcome the information challenges identified by managers (Robison et al 2010;Mihók et al 2015) and to ultimately increase the number of managers gaining ground against invasions. Managers are particularly interested in research on native species or ecological communities that are more resilient to the impacts of invasions and climate change (e.g., increasing natural biotic resistance; Levine 2000) and research to identify range shifting invasive species and future hotspots of invasion.…”

A review and meta-analysis of collaborative research prioritization studies in ecology, biodiversity conservation and environmental science

“…These studies demonstrate a wide range in scope from studies prioritizing research on single species in a given region [38,43], to those identifying research priorities for the conservation of global biodiversity as a whole [6], and have focused on a wide diversity of topics (table 1). Some studies focused on issues that were a subset of issues covered in other CRP studies, for example Kaiser et al [43] prioritized knowledge needs Antarctic and Southern Ocean [12] afforested peatlands [13] animal behaviour [14] bark beetles [15] Canada [16] agricultural landscapes [17] conservation biology [4] cetaceans [18] Estonia [19] coral reefs [20,21] drought research [22] microbes [23] Europe [24] coupled human and natural systems [25] fundamental ecology [26] northern quoll [27] European Alps [28] forests [29] historical ecology [30] Pilbara leaf-nosed bats [31] Hungary [32] freshwater [33,34] hydrology [35] weeds [36] India [37] marine [38,39] Island biogeography [40] wild insect pollinators [41] Israel [42] seabeds [43] palaeoecology [44] New Zealand [39] soil science [45] North America…”

Climate Change Influence on Agriculture and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Central and Eastern European Countries

“…But, despite such measures, natural resource management still spills over regulatory, spatial, and bureaucratic boundaries (Salukvadze, 2010), especially when value outweighs the risks. The development and implementation of policies and decision-making regarding Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU), known to be a significant source of greenhouse emissions, constitute a major challenge in CEE where, compared to Western European countries, biodiversity is higher but research budgets lower (Mihók et al, 2015). Globally there is robust evidence that AFOLU accounts for close to 15% of anthropogenic GHG emissions, mainly from deforestation and agricultural emissions from livestock, soil and nutrient management (Smith et al, 2014); although there is considerable variation between countries (MacLeod et al, 2015).…”