The Impact of Systematic Conservation Planning

Species and ecosystems worldwide continue to decline and disappear in spite of decades of investment in conservation efforts. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) is a field of study designed to improve conservation programs by identifying land configurations that, if protected, would most efficiently sustain biodiversity. Despite contributing to species persistence in landscapes, SCP has been criticized for replacing site‐based conservation plans that often consider social context. In contrast, land system science (LSS), an emerging field that explores the process of land‐use and land‐cover change, integrates social systems and processes into conservation analyses. We suggest that by incorporating insights from LSS on social processes (eg livelihood adaptation or agricultural intensification), SCP can enhance the legitimacy of conservation plans, thereby reducing the gap between conservation planning and implementation. This represents a necessary first step for SCP to reinvent itself as a decision‐support tool that helps to reconcile the long‐standing divide between landscape‐level species conservation and social needs.

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“…SCP evaluation frameworks can support assessments of social impacts of land configurations (eg McIntosh et al . ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Although its true impacts on conservation goals have yet to be measured (McIntosh et al . ), SCP has been applied in a variety of environments, from terrestrial (Cowling et al . ) to marine (Smith et al .…”

Section: The Fields Of Scp and Lssmentioning

confidence: 99%

Considering people in systematic conservation planning: insights from land system science

Iwamura‏

Waroux

Mascia

2018

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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“…Tracking the development, implementation, and impact of planning exercises is critical to understanding and improving conservation practice (McIntosh et al, 2017;Sinclair et al, 2018). However, tracking progress and impact is often difficult and costly (Juffe-Bignoli et al, 2016;Mascia et al, 2014).…”

Section: Development Implementation and Impact Of Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Importantly, including information about monitoring will be essential to systematically document ecological and socioeconomic impacts of planning exercises. This will require collaborations with those working in the field of conservation evidence (conservationevidence.com) and building on current efforts in recording impacts (McIntosh et al, 2016;McIntosh et al, 2017;Sinclair et al, 2018).…”

Section: Next Steps: Consolidation Of a Global Scp Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

Research advances and gaps in marine planning: towards a global database in systematic conservation planning

Álvarez‐Romero

Mills

Adams

et al. 2018

Biological Conservation

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Systematic conservation planning (SCP) has increasingly been used to prioritize conservation actions, including the design of new protected areas to achieve conservation objectives. Over the last 10 years, the number of marine SCP studies has increased exponentially, yet there is no structured or reliable way to find information on methods, trends, and progress. The rapid growth in methods and marine applications warrants an updated analysis of the literature, as well as reflection on the need for continuous and systematic documentation of SCP exercises in general. To address these gaps, we developed a database to document SCP exercises and populated it with 155 marine SCP exercises found in the primary literature. Based on our review, we provide an update on global advances and trends in marine SCP literature. We found accelerating growth in the number of studies over the past decade, with increasing consideration of socioeconomic variables, land-sea planning, and ecological connectivity. While several studies aimed to inform conservation decisions, we found little evidence of input from practitioners. There are important gaps in geographic coverage and little correspondence with areas most threatened. Five countries lead most studies, but their networks suggest potential for capacity building through collaborations. The varying quality and detail in documentation of studies confirmed the limited opportunities to develop and assess the application of best practice in conservation planning. A global database to track the development, implementation, and impact of SCP applications can thus provide numerous benefits. Our database constitutes an important step towards the development of a centralized repository of information on planning exercises and can serve several roles to advance SCP theory and practice: it facilitates assessing geographic coverage and gaps; scientists and practitioners can access information to identify trends in the use of data, methods, and tools; reviewers and editors of journals can assess whether studies have covered important literature and developments; donors and non-government organizations can identify regions needing further work; and practitioners and policy-makers can learn from previous plans.

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“…Spatial conservation planning is focused on representation of multiple biodiversity features over the landscape taking into account threat, vulnerability, adequacy, and cost (Margules and Pressey 2000, Pressey et al 2007, Pressey and Bottrill 2008, Carwardine et al 2009, McIntosh et al 2017). …”

Section: Planning For the Conservation And Management Of Ecosystem Sementioning

confidence: 99%

Planning for the conservation and management of ecosystem services in Central Chile

Martínez‐Harms¹

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The ecosystem services concept emphasizes the benefits societies obtain from ecosystems.These benefits include the production of food and clean water, the regulation of floods, provision for recreation and scenic beauty, a connection to place, and inspiration. Ecosystem services have become popular within both scientific and policy circles as a means to document the value humans place on ecosystems, evaluating these benefits from nature and using the resulting knowledge to inform landuse management decisions. The integration of ecosystem services into decision-making, nevertheless, remains challenging. The research that comprises this thesis provides a comprehensive framework for strengthening the dialogue between ecosystem services assessment and decision-making. My case studies focus on critical challenges in the translation and transformation of ecosystem services as a concept, to a component that improves environmental decision-making.Numerous assessments have quantified, mapped, and valued ecosystem services. However, much of the literature fails to clarify how the information gathered in such assessments can be used to inform decisions that will affect ecosystem services. I propose a framework for making decisions for ecosystem services adapted from decision science and synthesize the degree to which the peerreviewed ecosystem services literature has captured these steps. I find that the ecosystem services literature has not covered all the steps of a formal decision-making process. For the ecosystem service paradigm to gain traction in science and policy arenas, future ecosystem service assessments should have clearly articulated objectives and meet user-related measures for ecosystem services, seek to evaluate the consequences of scenario alternatives, and facilitate closer engagement between scientists and stakeholders.There is a paucity of studies of ecosystem services assessments under global change, particularly in the developing countries of Latin America. I demonstrate a rapid assessment of the impacts of global change on key ecosystem services in the data-sparse region of Central Chile. This approach translates expert-derived qualitative scenario storylines into quantitative spatial predictions of the combined effects of climate change, urbanization and fire events on the future provision of carbon storage, wine production, and scenic beauty for the year 2050. I find that the cumulative impacts of climate change and urbanization are likely to place considerable pressure on ecosystem services in Central Chile by mid-century revealing the need for stronger planning regulations to manage land-use change.In environmental decision-making, there is increasing attention towards equity of access to ecosystem services, and in conservation implementation. In central Chile, distribution of ecosystem 2 services must be considered within the context of substantial economic and social inequity. I develop a user-related measure to assess the accessibility of the population to the protected area network. ...

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The Impact of Systematic Conservation Planning

Cited by 90 publications

References 81 publications

Considering people in systematic conservation planning: insights from land system science

Considering people in systematic conservation planning: insights from land system science

Research advances and gaps in marine planning: towards a global database in systematic conservation planning

Planning for the conservation and management of ecosystem services in Central Chile

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