Conservation must be successfully scaled to protect nature. A new article takes lessons from around the world to show how that can be done.
To stem biodiversity loss and meet ambitious global targets, conservation programs designed to preserve everything from forests to fish must work ‘at scale’.
Scaling up can mean three things. “Scaling out” means expanding a program to new people and places, while “scaling up” means involving higher-level institutions, such as governments introducing policies or incentives that make it easier for individuals and private companies to participate.
Scaling ‘deep’ means changing hearts and minds – which is socially acceptable. A particularly good example of deep scaling is the ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’ campaign of the 1980s, which successfully made littering a social no-no.
But not every effort to expand pilot programs in one or more of these directions works. Now, researchers from the Catalysing Conservation team led by Dr Morena Mills from Imperial College London have reviewed conservation initiatives around the world with global experts and come up with five lessons to avoid the pitfalls of ineffective expansion.
The research was published today in Nature ecology and evolutionand we spoke to two of the paper’s authors, Dr Thomas Pienkowski and Dr Matthew Clark, both from Imperial’s Center for Environmental Policy.
Before we dive in, Dr. Clark: “There is no silver bullet – it’s not a matter of ‘do these five things and you will succeed’ – but we hope these lessons will enable reflection on what not has worked, and where we should go from here.”
Lesson 1: There must be a balance between what is effective and what is scalable
Suppose you have a pilot program that works with coastal communities to protect fish and other marine resources, with the goal of improving the local ecology and economy. Subsequently, many surrounding communities adopted the program. Great! This is becoming increasingly common, but has it actually been effective? Has it achieved its stated goals of protecting marine life and improving local living standards? If the answer is no, then it is scaling, but it is not effective.
Conversely, something can be effective but not scalable. Dr. Clark works with communities to support mangrove conservation, which can include planting programs. However, many of the seedlings die young. It is possible to use specialized tools and knowledge to increase survival rates, making planting more effective, but it is an intensive process and therefore not very scalable within rural communities.
The team says these trade-offs between what is scalable and what is effective must be balanced.
Case in point: Community-based forest management in Nepal has been introduced to more than 20,000 forests since the 1980s and appears to have reduced both poverty and deforestation, showing that some initiatives can be both highly scalable and effective.
Lesson 2: Effectiveness may depend on the scale
A pilot project that is successful in one area may not work if moved to a new area. This is common, the researchers say, and could be for a number of reasons: pilots may be in optimal locations and have a lot of oversight and investment that isn’t possible with expanded programs, for example.
But it can also work the other way around. Dr. For example, Clark says, “Where the goal is to protect land for wildlife, larger animals moving over larger areas will only benefit if enough land is preserved and there are enough patrols to enforce protection.”
Case in point: Cocoa agroforestry in Belize became much more effective at scale when a clear market for sustainable cocoa emerged and more international companies wanted to promote their use of these products.
Lesson 3: The effects of conservation can change the conditions for further conservation
Sometimes expanding conservation can be counterproductive, even when it is effective. For example, a ten-year project in Mozambique introduced ‘no-take’ zones for fish and mangrove wood, increasing food security. However, as these areas regained their value as a source of food and income, support for conservation declined, leading to zone abandonment in some areas.
These types of feedback loops between environmental change and human behavior can be negative, as in Mozambique, or positive, where the impact of conservation programs in one area can lead to neighboring areas spontaneously adopting them, or where grassroots actions become national policy.
Case in point: on Pemba Island, Zanzibar, protected forest areas initially led to increased harvesting on the edges of these zones; but this in turn led to neighboring communities applying for their own forest protection, spontaneously expanding talks.
Lesson 4: The pressure to scale can lead to bad practices that undermine long-term results
Ambition is necessary to achieve ambitious goals, but ambition without care can be harmful. Dr. Pienkowski explains one way this can happen: “NGOs [non-governmental organisations] play a very important role in scaling up and providing technical and financial support to local communities. But there can also be blurred boundaries between help and coercion.
“For example, this can take the form of NGOs misleading communities about the benefits they could receive from participating in conservation programs, or only engaging with people in the community who are most likely to benefit, leaving vulnerable members lag behind and inequality increases. “
For example, the REDD+ program was designed to help developing countries manage their forests and improve carbon stocks, but its implementation in parts of Tanzania was marred by promised payments that did not materialize, leading people to abandon conservation efforts and become suspicious of other programs.
Scaling up programs often requires larger NGOs, but this can be at the expense of local knowledge and grassroots organizations. For example, slash and burn agriculture is considered a bad practice in Europe, so European NGOs may lobby against it, but in communities in Africa it can be put to good use and be an integral part of local ecosystem management.
Case in point: Ecotourism in Costa Rica started locally with support from NGOs, but has now become self-sustaining, meaning it is no longer dependent on direct aid or other structures that can undermine its long-term success.
Lesson 5: More evidence is needed
Dr. Pienkowski explains: “This is really a call from us researchers who are struggling to develop the evidence base we need to support more effective scaling strategies. It is very difficult to know which initiatives have or have not reached scale – this information is ‘not collected in a systematic or rigorous manner.’
This is especially true after programs have ‘terminated’: few NGOs routinely assess whether a program is still working years after their intervention has ended, or whether it has been abandoned.
Dr. Pienkowski concludes: “For those calling for scaling up conservation, this is a valuable moment to pause and reflect: Given these examples and lessons, what should we change? If we do this, we are more likely to be able to deliver impact at scale and ultimately bend the curve of biodiversity loss.”
