Transforming conservation science and practice for a postnormal world

Reviewing the science on 50 years of conservation: Knowledge production biases and lessons for practice

Drawing on 662 studies from 102 countries, we present a systematic review of published empirical studies about site-level biodiversity conservation initiated between 1970 and 2019. Within this sample, we find that knowledge production about the Global South is largely produced by researchers in the Global North, implying a neocolonial power dynamic. We also find evidence of bias in reported ecological outcomes linked to lack of independence in scientific studies, serving to uphold narratives about who should lead conservation. We explore relationships in the sample studies between conservation initiative types, the extent of Indigenous Peoples' and local communities' influence in governance, and reported social and ecological outcomes. Findings reveal positive ecological and social outcomes are strongly associated with higher levels of influence of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their institutions, implying equity in conservation practice should be advanced not only for moral reasons, but because it can enhance conservation effectiveness.

The dynamic feasibility of resisting (R), accepting (A), or directing (D) ecological change

Ecological transformations are occurring as a result of climate change, challenging traditional approaches to land management decision-making. The resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework helps managers consider how to respond to this challenge. We examined how the feasibility of the choices to resist, accept, and direct shifts in complex and dynamic ways through time. We considered 4 distinct types of social feasibility: regulatory, financial, public, and organizational. Our commentary is grounded in literature review and the examples that exist but necessarily has speculative elements because empirical evidence on this newly emerging management strategy is scarce. We expect that resist strategies will become less feasible over time as managers encounter situations where resisting is ecologically, by regulation, financially, or publicly not feasible. Similarly, we expect that as regulatory frameworks increasingly permit their use, if costs decrease, and if the public accepts them, managers will increasingly view accept and direct strategies as more viable options than they do at present. Exploring multiple types of feasibility over time allows consideration of both social and ecological trajectories of change in tandem. Our theorizing suggested that deepening the time horizon of decision-making allows one to think carefully about when one should adopt different approaches and how to combine them over time.

Understanding behavioral intention of landowners to promote wildlife richness and biodiversity in the Southern Great Plains

Ranchers have been conducting traditional management practices such as mono-species grazing and limited burning that focus on stocking rate maximization. This has resulted in negative environmental consequences such as woody plant encroachment, land use change, and species diversity loss. Recently, there has been a growing appreciation for alternative range management that simultaneously promotes biodiversity and agricultural productivity through fire and grazing interactions. The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of landowner values, attitudes, and norms on their behavioral intention to adopt best management practices (BMPs) that enhance wildlife abundance in the southern Great Plains. The required data was generated through a mail survey following the Tailored Design method. We utilized the structural equation path model to construct two latent variables for norms and attitudes and analyzed the relationship of the latent variables with value orientations and behavioral intentions. The study results indicated that the attitudes had a significant positive relationship with biocentric (β = 0.15, p-value<0.05) and a negative relationship with anthropocentric (β = -0.259, p-value<0.05) value orientations, however, the relationship of value orientations was statistically insignificant with norms. Further, the results indicated that both norms (β = 0.404, p-value<0.05) and attitudes (β = 0.508, p-value<0.05) had a positive and statistically significant relation with ranchers' intentions to increase wildlife abundance on their land. Study results emphasize the need for innovative communication and non-traditional outreach methods to educate rangeland owners on the importance of patch-burn grazing and other best management practices.

Communicating climate change and biodiversity loss with local populations: exploring communicative utopias in eight transdisciplinary case studies

Climate change and biodiversity loss trigger policies targeting and impacting local communities worldwide. However, research and policy implementation often fail to sufficiently consider community responses and to involve them. We present the results of a collective self-assessment exercise for eight case studies of communications with regard to climate change or biodiversity loss between project teams and local communities. We develop eight indicators of good stakeholder communication, reflecting the scope of Verran's (2002) concept of postcolonial moments as a communicative utopia. We demonstrate that applying our indicators can enhance communication and enable community responses. However, we discover a divergence between timing, complexity and (introspective) effort. Three cases qualify for postcolonial moments, but scrutinising power relations and genuine knowledge co-production remain rare. While we verify the potency of various instruments for deconstructing science, their sophistication cannot substitute trust building and epistemic/transdisciplinary awareness. Lastly, we consider that reforming inadequate funding policies helps improving the work in and with local communities.

Framing co-productive conservation in partnership with Arctic Indigenous peoples

Indigenous communities at the front lines of climate change and biodiversity loss are increasingly shaping the conservation of lands, waters, and species. The Arctic is a hotbed for emerging local, national, and international conservation efforts, and researchers, managers, and communities alike will benefit from a framework that improves approaches to Indigenous partnerships. Co-productive conservation is a framework that encompasses both the co-production of knowledge and the co-production of public services to pursue ethically conscious, culturally relevant, and fully knowledge-based approaches to biodiversity concerns. Co-productive conservation recognizes that conservation can be practiced in a way that embodies Indigenous perspectives, knowledge, rights, priorities, and livelihoods. Six iterative and reflexive co-production processes (i.e., co-planning, co-prioritizing, co-learning, co-managing, co-delivering, and co-assessing) focus on the human dimensions that allow research, management, and conservation to affect change. By opening discussions on how to structure conservation efforts in partnership with Indigenous communities, the conservation community can move away from narratives that perceive Indigenous participation as an obligation or part of an ethical narrative and instead embrace a process that broadens the evidence base and situates conservation within Indigenous contexts.

Responding to Ecological Transformation: Mental Models, External Constraints, and Manager Decision-Making

Ecological transformation creates many challenges for public natural resource management and requires managers to grapple with new relationships to change and new ways to manage it. In the context of unfamiliar trajectories of ecological change, a manager can resist, accept, or direct change, choices that make up the resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework. In this article, we provide a conceptual framework for how to think about this new decision space that managers must navigate. We identify internal factors (mental models) and external factors (social feasibility, institutional context, and scientific uncertainty) that shape management decisions. We then apply this conceptual framework to the RAD strategies (resist, accept, direct) to illuminate how internal and external factors shape those decisions. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of how this conceptual framework shapes our understanding of management decisions, especially how these decisions are not just ecological but also social, and the implications for research and management.

Management Foundations for Navigating Ecological Transformation by Resisting, Accepting, or Directing Social–Ecological Change

Despite striking global change, management to ensure healthy landscapes and sustained natural resources has tended to set objectives on the basis of the historical range of variability in stationary ecosystems. Many social–ecological systems are moving into novel conditions that can result in ecological transformation. We present four foundations to enable a transition to future-oriented conservation and management that increases capacity to manage change. The foundations are to identify plausible social–ecological trajectories, to apply upstream and deliberate engagement and decision-making with stakeholders, to formulate management pathways to desired futures, and to consider a portfolio approach to manage risk and account for multiple preferences across space and time. We use the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska as a case study to illustrate how the four foundations address common land management challenges for navigating transformation and deciding when, where, and how to resist, accept, or direct social–ecological change.

RAD Adaptive Management for Transforming Ecosystems

Intensifying global change is propelling many ecosystems toward irreversible transformations. Natural resource managers face the complex task of conserving these important resources under unprecedented conditions and expanding uncertainty. As once familiar ecological conditions disappear, traditional management approaches that assume the future will reflect the past are becoming increasingly untenable. In the present article, we place adaptive management within the resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework to assist informed risk taking for transforming ecosystems. This approach empowers managers to use familiar techniques associated with adaptive management in the unfamiliar territory of ecosystem transformation. By providing a common lexicon, it gives decision makers agency to revisit objectives, consider new system trajectories, and discuss RAD strategies in relation to current system state and direction of change. Operationalizing RAD adaptive management requires periodic review and update of management actions and objectives; monitoring, experimentation, and pilot studies; and bet hedging to better identify and tolerate associated risks.

An agenda for research and action toward diverse and just futures for life on Earth

Decades of research and policy interventions on biodiversity have insufficiently addressed the dual issues of biodiversity degradation and social justice. New approaches are therefore needed. We devised a research and action agenda that calls for a collective task of revisiting biodiversity toward the goal of sustaining diverse and just futures for life on Earth. Revisiting biodiversity involves critically reflecting on past and present research, policy, and practice concerning biodiversity to inspire creative thinking about the future. The agenda was developed through a 2-year dialogue process that involved close to 300 experts from diverse disciplines and locations. This process was informed by social science insights that show biodiversity research and action is underpinned by choices about how problems are conceptualized. Recognizing knowledge, action, and ethics as inseparable, we synthesized a set of principles that help navigate the task of revisiting biodiversity. The agenda articulates 4 thematic areas for future research. First, researchers need to revisit biodiversity narratives by challenging conceptualizations that exclude diversity and entrench the separation of humans, cultures, economies, and societies from nature. Second, researchers should focus on the relationships between the Anthropocene, biodiversity, and culture by considering humanity and biodiversity as tied together in specific contexts. Third, researchers should focus on nature and economies by better accounting for the interacting structures of economic and financial systems as core drivers of biodiversity loss. Finally, researchers should enable transformative biodiversity research and action by reconfiguring relationships between human and nonhuman communities in and through science, policy, and practice. Revisiting biodiversity necessitates a renewed focus on dialogue among biodiversity communities and beyond that critically reflects on the past to channel research and action toward fostering just and diverse futures for human and nonhuman life on Earth.

Five Steps to Inject Transformative Change into the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

Accelerating declines in biodiversity and unmet targets in the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2010-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity are stimulating widespread calls for transformative change. Such change includes societal transitions toward sustainability, as well as in specific content of the CBD's draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. We summarize research on transformative change and its links to biodiversity conservation, and discuss how it may influence the work of the CBD. We identify five steps to inject transformative change into the design and implementation of a new post-2020 framework: Pay attention to lessons learned from transitions research, plan for climate change, reframe area-based conservation, scale up biodiversity mainstreaming, and increase resources. These actions will transform the very nature of work under the CBD; a convention based on voluntary implementation by countries and facilitated by international administrators and experts must now accommodate a broader range of participants including businesses, Indigenous peoples, and multiple nonstate actors.

The Perfect Postnormal Storm: COVID-19 Chronicles (2020 Edition)

This essay addresses the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study in postnormal times phenomena: a perfect postnormal storm. The essay introduces basic concepts of postnormal analysis and provides examples of the acceleration of speed, scope, scale, and simultaneity of change in a number of human and natural systems and gives examples of the accelerating complexity, chaos, and contradictions that characterize phenomenon and systems as they become more postnormal. The related concepts of the layers of ignorance and uncertainty are explored related to the movement of phenomenon toward postnormal states. The importance of the idea of manufactured normalcy fields and resistance to or accommodation of postnormal burst, such as lag and tilt, can help to better understand the postnormal landscape. For example, the pros and cons of returning to "normal" raise fundamental questions about the logic and wisdom of the dominant growth and economic paradigm.

Researcher perspectives on challenges and opportunities in conservation physiology revealed from an online survey

Conservation physiology represents a recently emerging arm of conservation science that applies physiological tools and techniques to understand and solve conservation issues. While a multi-disciplinary toolbox can only help to address the global biodiversity crisis, any field can face challenges while becoming established, particularly highly applied disciplines that require multi-stakeholder involvement. Gaining first-hand knowledge of the challenges that conservation physiologists are facing can help characterize the current state of the field and build a better foundation for determining how it can grow. Through an online survey of 468 scientists working at the intersection of physiology and conservation, we aimed to identify characteristics of those engaging in conservation physiology research (e.g. demographics, primary taxa of study), gauge conservation physiology's role in contributing to on-the-ground conservation action, identify the perceived barriers to achieving success and determine how difficult any identified barriers are to overcome. Despite all participants having experience combining physiology and conservation, only one-third considered themselves to be 'conservation physiologists'. Moreover, there was a general perception that conservation physiology does not yet regularly lead to tangible conservation success. Respondents identified the recent conceptualization of the field and the broader issue of adequately translating science into management action as the primary reasons for these deficits. Other significant barriers that respondents have faced when integrating physiology and conservation science included a lack of funding, logistical constraints (e.g. sample sizes, obtaining permits) and a lack of physiological baseline data (i.e. reference ranges of a physiological metric's 'normal' or pre-environmental change levels). We identified 12 actions based on suggestions of survey participants that we anticipate will help deconstruct the barriers and continue to develop a narrative of physiology that is relevant to conservation science, policy and practice.

R-R-T (resistance-resilience-transformation) typology reveals differential conservation approaches across ecosystems and time

Conservation practices during the first decade of the millennium predominantly focused on resisting changes and maintaining historical or current conditions, but ever-increasing impacts from climate change have highlighted the need for transformative action. However, little empirical evidence exists on what kinds of conservation actions aimed specifically at climate change adaptation are being implemented in practice, let alone how transformative these actions are. In response, we propose and trial a novel typology-the R-R-T scale, which improves on existing concepts of Resistance, Resilience, and Transformation-that enables the practical application of contested terms and the empirical assessment of whether and to what extent a shift toward transformative action is occurring. When applying the R-R-T scale to a case study of 104 adaptation projects funded since 2011, we find a trend towards transformation that varies across ecosystems. Our results reveal that perceptions about the acceptance of novel interventions in principle are beginning to be expressed in practice.

A Relational Approach to Landscape Stewardship: Towards a New Perspective for Multi-Actor Collaboration

Landscape stewardship is increasingly understood within the framing of complex social-ecological systems. To consider the implications of this, we focus on one of the key characteristics of complex social-ecological systems: they are relationally constituted, meaning that system characteristics emerge out of dynamic relations between system components. We focus on multi-actor collaboration as a key form of relationality in landscapes, seeking a more textured understanding of the social relations between landscape actors. We draw on a set of ‘gardening tools’ to analyse the boundary-crossing work of multi-actor collaboration. These tools comprise three key concepts: relational expertise, common knowledge, and relational agency. We apply the tools to two cases of landscape stewardship in South Africa: the Langkloof Region and the Tsitsa River catchment. These landscapes are characterised by economically, socio-culturally, and politically diverse groups of actors. Our analysis reveals that history and context strongly influence relational processes, that boundary-crossing work is indeed difficult, and that doing boundary-crossing work in smaller pockets within a landscape is helpful. The tools also helped to identify three key social-relational practices which lend a new perspective on boundary-crossing work: 1. belonging while differing, 2. growing together by interacting regularly and building common knowledge, and 3. learning and adapting together with humility and empathy.

Inside-out sustainability: The neglect of inner worlds

In the context of continuing ecosystem degradation and deepening socio-economic inequality, sustainability scientists must question the adequacy of current scholarship and practice. We argue that pre-occupation with external phenomena and collective social structures has led to the neglect of people's 'inner worlds'-their emotions, thoughts, identities and beliefs. These lie at the heart of actions for sustainability, and have powerful transformative capacity for system change. The condition of people's inner worlds ought to also be considered a dimension of sustainability itself. Compassion, empathy and generosity, for example, are personal characteristics that mark individual expressions of sustainability. Sustainability science must take inner life more seriously by considering how language shapes and is shaped by paradigms about the world, prioritising enquiry into how spirituality, contemplation and sustainability transformation relate, and encouraging scholars and practitioners to intentionally cultivate their inner worlds to strengthen inner resources necessary for addressing sustainability challenges.

Revealing research preferences in conservation science

Conservation researchers are increasingly drawing on a wide range of philosophies, methods and values to examine conservation problems. Here we adopt methods from social psychology to develop a questionnaire with the dual purpose of illuminating diversity within conservation research communities and providing a tool for use in cross-disciplinary dialogue workshops. The questionnaire probes the preferences that different researchers have with regards to conservation science. It elicits insight into their motivations for carrying out research, the scales at which they tackle problems, the subjects they focus on, their beliefs about the connections between nature and society, their sense of reality as absolute or socially constituted, and their propensity for collaboration. Testing the questionnaire with a group of 204 conservation scientists at a student conference on conservation science, we illustrate the latent and multidimensional diversity in the research preferences held by conservation scientists. We suggest that creating opportunities to further explore these differences and similarities using facilitated dialogue could enrich the mutual understanding of the diverse research community in the conservation field.

Towards future-oriented conservation: Managing protected areas in an era of climate change

Management of protected areas must adapt to climate impacts, and prepare for ongoing ecological transformation. Future-Proofing Conservation is a dialogue-based, multi-stakeholder learning process that supports conservation managers to consider the implications of climate change for governance and management. It takes participants through a series of conceptual transitions to identify new management options that are robust to a range of possible biophysical futures, and steps that they can take now to prepare for ecological transformation. We outline the Future-Proofing Conservation process, and demonstrate its application in a pilot programme in Colombia. This process can be applied and adapted to a wide range of climate adaptation contexts, to support practitioners in developing positive ways forward for management and decision-making. By acknowledging scientific uncertainty, considering social values, and rethinking the rules that shape conservation governance, participants can identify new strategies towards "future-oriented conservation" over the long term.

Ecosystem services and ecological degradation of communal wetlands in a South African biodiversity hotspot

Wetlands provide important ecosystem services to rural communities. However, wetlands are often on communal land, so they may become degraded when individual users act to maximize their personal benefit from ecosystem services without bearing the full environmental costs of their actions. Although it is possible to manage communal resources sustainably, this depends on the dynamics of the socio-ecological system. In this study, we used a structured questionnaire to examine whether demographic characteristics of a rural community and the propensity for partaking in damage-causing activities affected the benefits obtained from the wetlands. Responses from 50 households in the rural Hlabathi administrative area within the Maputo-Albany-Pondoland Biodiversity Hotspot, South Africa, indicated that the entire community obtains some benefits from wetlands; most notably regulating ecosystem services. However, males were more likely to benefit from wetlands, which highlights a potential power imbalance. Respondents were more likely to blame others for wetland degradation, although there was no link between the damage-causing activities and benefits from wetlands. The high dependence on ecosystem services by community members, when combined with gender-based power imbalances and the propensity to blame others, could jeopardize the sustainable use of communal wetlands. Therefore, we describe how strong leadership could nurture a sustainable social-ecological system by integrating ecological information and social empowerment into a multi-level governance system.

Tracing the scientific trajectory of riparian vegetation studies: Main topics, approaches and needs in a globally changing world

Riparian vegetation is a crucial component of fluvial systems and serves multiple socio-ecological functions. The objective of this review is to follow the scientific trajectory of studies of riparian vegetation throughout history and across regions and fields of knowledge. Such a synthesis is challenging because riparian vegetation is an open co-constructed socio-ecological system at the crossroads of the biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere and anthroposphere; thus, it exhibits a wide range of ecological patterns and functioning depending on climatic, morphological and land-use contexts. To address this, we used qualitative and quantitative approaches in our review of the scientific literature. From the scientific perspective, how riparian vegetation is studied has changed over time (e.g. development of modeling and geomatic approaches) and varies among fluvial systems and geographic areas (e.g. its relation to groundwater is usually studied more in Oceania and Asia than on other continents). This review revealed the lack of a single and well-identified scientific community that focuses on riparian vegetation. This is probably due to the nature of the subject, which includes diverse fields of knowledge and several applied issues: biodiversity, forestry, water quality, hydromorphology, restoration, ecology, etc. Some topics are actively regenerated (e.g. biogeomorphological approaches) and others are emerging, which reflects general trends in ecology (e.g. functional approaches). The literature review indicates that a substantial amount of knowledge already exists; therefore, a major priority of our study is to produce a clear and integrative understanding of riparian zone functioning to address the inherent complexity of these zones and remain valid across a wide diversity of geographical contexts. It is also essential to develop detailed analysis of the sociocultural dimension of riparian vegetation to understand the ecology of riparian zones and to improve riparian vegetation management according to local recommendations in order to maintain and improve its functions and services in the face of global changes.

The major barriers to evidence-informed conservation policy and possible solutions

Conservation policy decisions can suffer from a lack of evidence, hindering effective decision-making. In nature conservation, studies investigating why policy is often not evidence-informed have tended to focus on Western democracies, with relatively small samples. To understand global variation and challenges better, we established a global survey aimed at identifying top barriers and solutions to the use of conservation science in policy. This obtained the views of 758 people in policy, practice, and research positions from 68 countries across six languages. Here we show that, contrary to popular belief, there is agreement between groups about how to incorporate conservation science into policy, and there is thus room for optimism. Barriers related to the low priority of conservation were considered to be important, while mainstreaming conservation was proposed as a key solution. Therefore, priorities should focus on convincing the public of the importance of conservation as an issue, which will then influence policy-makers to adopt pro-environmental long-term policies.

Stakeholder Participation in Freshwater Monitoring and Evaluation Programs: Applying Thresholds of Potential Concern within Environmental Flows

The complex nature of freshwater systems provides challenges for incorporating evidence-based techniques into management. This paper investigates the potential of participatory evidence-based techniques to involve local stakeholders and make decisions based on different "knowledge" sources within adaptive management programs. It focuses on the application of thresholds of potential concern (TPC) within strategic adaptive management (SAM) for facilitating inclusive decision-making. The study is based on the case of the Edward-Wakool (E-W) "Fish and Flows" SAM project in the Murray-Darling River Basin, Australia. We demonstrate the application of TPCs for improving collaborative decision-making within the E-W, associated with environmental watering requirements, and other natural resource management programs such as fish stocking. The development of TPCs in the E-W fish and flows SAM project helped improve stakeholder involvement and understanding of the system, and also the effectiveness of the implemented management interventions. TPCs ultimately helped inform environmental flow management activities. The TPC process complemented monitoring that was already occurring in the system and provided a mechanism for linking formal and informal knowledge to form explicit and measurable endpoints from objectives. The TPC process faced challenges due to the perceived reduction in scientific rigor within initial TPC development and use. However, TPCs must remain tangible to managers and other stakeholders, in order to aid in the implementation of adaptive management. Once accepted by stakeholders, over time TPCs should be reviewed and refined in order to increase their scientific rigor, as new information is generated.