Prioritizing debt conversion opportunities for marine conservation.

Incentivized debt conversion is a financing mechanism that can assist countries with a heavy debt burden to bolster their long-term domestic investment in nature conservation. The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation-based nongovernmental organization, is adapting debt conversions to support marine conservation efforts by small island developing states and coastal countries. Prioritizing debt conversion opportunities according to their potential return on investment can increase the impact and effectiveness of this finance mechanism. We developed guidance on how to do so with a decision-support approach that relies on a novel threat-based adaptation of cost-effectiveness analysis. We constructed scenarios by varying parameters of the approach, including enabling conditions, expected benefits, and threat classifications. Incorporating both abatable and unabatable threats affected priorities across planning scenarios. Similarly, differences in scenario construction resulted in unique solution sets for top priorities. We show how environmental organizations, private entities, and investment banks can adopt structured prioritization frameworks for making decisions about conservation finance investments, such as debt conversions. Our guidance can accommodate a suite of social, ecological, and economic considerations, making the approach broadly applicable to other conservation finance mechanisms or investment strategies that seek to establish a transparent process for return-on-investment decision-making.

Priorización de las Oportunidades de Conversión de Deudas para la Conservación Marina Resumen La incentivación de la conversión de deudas es un mecanismo financiero que puede apoyar a los países con una gran carga deudora a impulsar su inversión doméstica a largo plazo en la conservación de la naturaleza. The Nature Conservancy, una organización internacional no gubernamental basada en la conservación está adaptando las conversiones de deudas para que apoyen a los esfuerzos de conservación marina realizados por países en desarrollo ubicados en pequeñas islas y por los países costeros. La priorización de las oportunidades de conversión de deudas según su rendimiento potencial de la inversión puede incrementar el impacto y la efectividad de este mecanismo financiero. Desarrollamos una guía de cómo lograr esto con una estrategia de respaldo a las decisiones que depende de una adaptación novedosa basada en amenazas de un análisis de rentabilidad. Construimos escenarios por medio de la variación de los parámetros de alcance (incluyendo a las condiciones de habilitación), los beneficios esperados y las clasificaciones de las amenazas. La incorporación de las amenazas abatibles e imbatibles afectó a las prioridades en todos los escenarios de planeación. De manera similar, las diferencias en la construcción de los escenarios resultaron en un conjunto de soluciones únicas para las principales prioridades. Así demostramos cómo las organizaciones ambientales, entidades privadas y los bancos de inversión pueden adoptar marcos de trabajo de priorización estructurada para la toma de decisiones sobre la inversión en el financiamiento de la conservación, como lo son las conversiones de deudas. Nuestra guía puede satisfacer un conjunto de consideraciones sociales, ecológicas y económicas, lo que vuelve a la estrategia en general pertinente para otros mecanismos de financiamiento de la conservación o estrategias de inversión que busquen establecer un proceso transparente para la toma de decisiones de rendimiento de la inversión.

Crowdfunding biodiversity conservation.

Raising funds is critical for conserving biodiversity and hence so is scrutinizing emerging financial mechanisms that may help achieve this goal. Anecdotal evidence indicates crowdfunding is being used to support activities needed for biodiversity conservation, yet its magnitude and allocation remain largely unknown. To help address this knowledge gap, we conducted a global analysis based on conservation-focused projects extracted from crowdfunding platforms. For each project, we determined the funds raised, date, country of implementation, proponent characteristics, activity type, biodiversity realm, and target taxa. We identified 72 relevant platforms and 577 conservation-focused projects that raised $4,790,634 since 2009. Although proponents were based in 38 countries, projects were delivered across 80 countries, indicating a potential mechanism of resource mobilization. Proponents were affiliated with nongovernmental organizations (35%) or universities (30%) or were freelancers (26%). Most projects were for research (40%), persuasion (31%), and on-the-ground actions (21%). Projects were more focused on species (57.7%) and terrestrial ecosystems (20.3%), and less focused on marine (8.8%) and freshwater ecosystems (3.6%). Projects focused on 208 species, including a disproportionate number of threatened birds and mammals. Crowdfunding for biodiversity conservation is a global phenomenon and there is potential for expansion, despite possible pitfalls (e.g., uncertainty about effectiveness). Opportunities to advance conservation through crowdfunding arise from its capacity to mobilize funds spatially and increase steadily over time, inclusion of overlooked species, adoption by multiple actors, and funding of activities beyond research. Our findings pave the way for further research on key questions, such as campaign success rates, effectiveness of conservation actions, and drivers of crowdfunding adoption. Even though crowdfunding capital raised has been modest relative to other conservation-finance mechanisms, its contribution goes beyond funding research and providing capital. Embraced with due care, crowdfunding could become an important financial mechanism for biodiversity conservation.

A multidisciplinary conceptualization of conservation opportunity.

An opportunity represents an advantageous combination of circumstances that allows goals to be achieved. We reviewed the nature of opportunity and how it manifests in different subsystems (e.g., biophysical, social, political, economic) as conceptualized in other bodies of literature, including behavior, adoption, entrepreneur, public policy, and resilience literature. We then developed a multidisciplinary conceptualization of conservation opportunity. We identified 3 types of conservation opportunity: potential, actors remove barriers to problem solving by identifying the capabilities within the system that can be manipulated to create support for conservation action; traction, actors identify windows of opportunity that arise from exogenous shocks, events, or changes that remove barriers to solving problems; and existing, everything is in place for conservation action (i.e., no barriers exist) and an actor takes advantage of the existing circumstances to solve problems. Different leverage points characterize each type of opportunity. Thus, unique stages of opportunity identification or creation and exploitation exist: characterizing the system and defining problems; identifying potential solutions; assessing the feasibility of solutions; identifying or creating opportunities; and taking advantage of opportunities. These stages can be undertaken independently or as part of a situational analysis and typically comprise the first stage, but they can also be conducted iteratively throughout a conservation planning process. Four types of entrepreneur can be identified (business, policy, social, and conservation), each possessing attributes that enable them to identify or create opportunities and take advantage of them. We examined how different types of conservation opportunity manifest in a social-ecological system (the Great Barrier Reef) and how they can be taken advantage of. Our multidisciplinary conceptualization of conservation opportunity strengthens and legitimizes the concept.

Evaluating perceived benefits of ecoregional assessments.

The outcomes of systematic conservation planning (process of assessing, implementing, and managing conservation areas) are rarely reported or measured formally. A lack of consistent or rigorous evaluation in conservation planning has fueled debate about the extent to which conservation assessment (identification, design, and prioritization of potential conservation areas) ultimately influences actions on the ground. We interviewed staff members of a nongovernmental organization, who were involved in 5 ecoregional assessments across North and South America and the Asia-Pacific region. We conducted 17 semistructured interviews with open and closed questions about the perceived purpose, outputs, and outcomes of the ecoregional assessments in which respondents were involved. Using qualitative data collected from those interviews, we investigated the types and frequency of benefits perceived to have emerged from the ecoregional assessments and explored factors that might facilitate or constrain the flow of benefits. Some benefits reflected the intended purpose of ecoregional assessments. Other benefits included improvements in social interactions, attitudes, and institutional knowledge. Our results suggest the latter types of benefits enable ultimate benefits of assessments, such as guiding investments by institutional partners. Our results also showed a clear divergence between the respondents' expectations and perceived outcomes of implementation of conservation actions arising from ecoregional assessments. Our findings suggest the need for both a broader perspective on the contribution of assessments to planning goals and further evaluation of conservation assessments.

Prioritizing land and sea conservation investments to protect coral reefs.

BACKGROUND: Coral reefs have exceptional biodiversity, support the livelihoods of millions of people, and are threatened by multiple human activities on land (e.g. farming) and in the sea (e.g. overfishing). Most conservation efforts occur at local scales and, when effective, can increase the resilience of coral reefs to global threats such as climate change (e.g. warming water and ocean acidification). Limited resources for conservation require that we efficiently prioritize where and how to best sustain coral reef ecosystems. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we develop the first prioritization approach that can guide regional-scale conservation investments in land- and sea-based conservation actions that cost-effectively mitigate threats to coral reefs, and apply it to the Coral Triangle, an area of significant global attention and funding. Using information on threats to marine ecosystems, effectiveness of management actions at abating threats, and the management and opportunity costs of actions, we calculate the rate of return on investment in two conservation actions in sixteen ecoregions. We discover that marine conservation almost always trumps terrestrial conservation within any ecoregion, but terrestrial conservation in one ecoregion can be a better investment than marine conservation in another. We show how these results could be used to allocate a limited budget for conservation and compare them to priorities based on individual criteria. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Previous prioritization approaches do not consider both land and sea-based threats or the socioeconomic costs of conserving coral reefs. A simple and transparent approach like ours is essential to support effective coral reef conservation decisions in a large and diverse region like the Coral Triangle, but can be applied at any scale and to other marine ecosystems.

Monitoring does not always count.

The gross under-resourcing of conservation endeavours has placed an increasing emphasis on spending accountability. Increased accountability has led to monitoring forming a central element of conservation programs. Although there is little doubt that information obtained from monitoring can improve management of biodiversity, the cost (in time and/or money) of gaining this knowledge is rarely considered when making decisions about allocation of resources to monitoring. We present a simple framework allowing managers and policy advisors to make decisions about when to invest in monitoring to improve management.

Is conservation triage just smart decision making?

Conservation efforts and emergency medicine face comparable problems: how to use scarce resources wisely to conserve valuable assets. In both fields, the process of prioritising actions is known as triage. Although often used implicitly by conservation managers, scientists and policymakers, triage has been misinterpreted as the process of simply deciding which assets (e.g. species, habitats) will not receive investment. As a consequence, triage is sometimes associated with a defeatist conservation ethic. However, triage is no more than the efficient allocation of conservation resources and we risk wasting scarce resources if we do not follow its basic principles.

The need for speed: informed land acquisitions for conservation in a dynamic property market.

Land acquisition is a common approach to biodiversity conservation but is typically subject to property availability on the public market. Consequently, conservation plans are often unable to be implemented as intended. When properties come on the market, conservation agencies must make a choice: purchase immediately, often without a detailed knowledge of its biodiversity value; survey the parcel and accept the risk that it may be removed from the market during this process; or not purchase and hope a better parcel comes on the market at a later date. We describe both an optimal method, using stochastic dynamic programming, and a simple rule of thumb for making such decisions. The solutions to this problem illustrate how optimal conservation is necessarily dynamic and requires explicit consideration of both the time period allowed for implementation and the availability of properties.