Highlights in This Issue
- Measuring Conservation Impact (MCI) Study
- Conservation Measures Partnership
- World Parks Congress
- Publication Measures of Success available in Spanish
- Recent FOS Presentations About Learning Networks
- FOS’s Work with TNC’s Measures and Audit and Developing Strategies Team
Measuring Conservation Impact (MCI) Study
FOS is wrapping up phase 1 of the Measuring Conservation Impact study. Phase 1 documents the evolution of approaches to monitoring and evaluation in the fields of conservation, international development, public health, education and social services, and business. We reviewed over 300 publications from these disciplines and have posted these references to a database, available to the public on our website. Within the next month, we hope to also post the discipline-specific syntheses, as well as an overall summary that identifies the primary steps and guiding principles for doing effective project monitoring and evaluation.
Currently, FOS is pleased to be delving into phase 2 of the MCI study, which we hope will be the starting point of a valuable tool for conservation practitioners. In this phase, we are laying the groundwork for an interactive indicators database. This tool will guide conservation project managers through a series of questions to help them strategically select a relatively small number of relevant and appropriate indicators for their conservation interventions. In doing so, the database will fulfill a critical need of practitioners – it will help them make sense of the overwhelming number of indicators available and decide which are most relevant for their situation.
Be sure to check our website for further updates and new publications.
Conservation Measures Partnership
The Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) is a joint venture of conservation NGOs and other collaborators who have come together to work on issues related to impact assessment and accountability in an effort to find better ways to design, manage and measure the impact of their conservation actions. The mission of CMP is to improve the practice of biodiversity conservation by developing and promoting common standards and an auditing mechanism for the process of conservation and measuring conservation impact. Each organization within CMP has biodiversity conservation as its primary goal, has a focus on field-based conservation actions, and is working to develop better approaches to project design, management, and assessment. CMP core member organizations include African Wildlife Foundation, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society and World Wildlife Fund. Collaborating organizations include Enterprise Works Worldwide, World Commission on Protected Areas/IUCN and Foundations of Success. FOS serves as the CMP coordinator, carrying out the day-to-day management of CMP and facilitating the completion of various technical projects. FOS has been contracted to act as coordinator to facilitate organization, management and communication issues of CMP.
CMP members have elaborated and approved workplans and have begun work to develop the following products:
- A common lexicon or “Rosetta stone” that will help translate the use of concepts and terms across organizations.
- Standards for the practice of conservation that will describe the principles of effective conservation and serve to help practitioners and donors plan more effective conservation actions in the future.
- Standards for conservation project auditing that will serve to guide collaborative evaluations across multiple projects with the purpose of improving and learning from conservation efforts.
- Standards for activity-based cost accounting that will help project managers determine the cost-effectiveness of their conservation actions and make informed decisions about appropriate interventions.
Various other technical initiatives are bening planned in CMP as well.
World Parks Congress
FOS is excited to have the opportunity to actively participate in the World Parks Congress, to be held in Durban, South African in September of this year. The theme of the Congress is: “Benefits without Boundaries,” a name that underscores the importance of considering the broader picture and how our conservation work contributes to protected area management, as well as to the development of our changing and increasingly global society. For more details on the World Parks Congress see http://www.iucn.org/themes/wcpa/wpc2003/index.htm
FOS has been closely collaborating with organizers from the Evaluating Management Effectiveness and Building Capacity streams of the Congress. We will present some of our recent work (including results from our Measuring Conservation Impact study ? see description above), as well as co-facilitate two sessions: 1) Using Evaluation for Better Management and 2) Developing Capacity for Site Level Planning, Management and Monitoring, Including Stakeholder Participation. We are especially pleased that both sessions will include presentations by representatives from our Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMA) portfolio. The LMMA representatives will share their experiences using adaptive management across various projects to help improve success of their marine conservation efforts.
Measures of Success in Spanish
The Spanish translation of “Measures of Success: Designing, Managing, and Monitoring Conservation and Development Projects” by Richard Margoluis and Nick Salafsky is now available for easy download on the FOS website. You can access the electronic version of “Medidas de Exito: Diseño, manejo y monitoreo de proyectos de conservación y desarrollo” and find other references and further reading under the Resources section of our website.
Two Recent FOS Presentations about Learning Networks
Caroline Stem recently participated as a panelist and gave a talk on FOS’s experience with learning networks at a workshop on “Sharing Coastal Zone Management Innovations” sponsored by the Heinz Center and NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. The workshop was designed to help coastal zone managers share innovative coastal problem solving ideas and practices and to explore the possibilities of using learning communities.
Nick Salafsky gave a similar talk at the Society for Conservation Biology’s meeting in Duluth, Minnesota about FOS’s experience with learning portfolios and research into various kinds of learning networks. Visit the FOS website in the next few months to find out more about this work.
FOS’s Work with TNC’s Measures and Audit and Developing Strategies Teams
Over the past year, FOS staff have served on two internal teams at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) that have been working on the next generation of conservation management and measurement tools. The Measures and Audit team has focused on helping TNC improve its systems for:
- Assessing Status – Answers the question “How is the biodiversity we care about doing?”
- Measuring Effectiveness – Answers the question “Are the actions we are taking having their intended impact?”
- Audits – Answers the questions “Is the application of our measures system producing credible results?” and “Are we using our results to adapt and learn?”
The Developing Strategies team has focused on helping practitioners to define and select the specific strategies they will employ. In particular, FOS staff worked with members of both the Measures and Strategies teams to design and test the “Enhanced 5-S Project Management Process.” This is a significant upgrade to TNC’s current 5-S Framework and is designed to help practitioners develop strategies, take action, and measure their success so as to promote adaptive management and learning.
An overview of the Enhanced 5-S Project Management Process and many of the other materials produced through this work either are or soon will be available at http://www.conserveonline.org/
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