Projecting the performance of conservation interventions

Successful decision-making for environmental management requires evidence of the performance and efficacy of proposed conservation interventions. Projecting the future impacts of prospective conservation policies and programs is challenging due to a range of complex ecological, economic, social and ethical factors, and in particular the need to extrapolate models to novel contexts. Yet many extrapolation techniques currently employed are limited by unfounded assumptions of causality and a reliance on potentially biased inferences drawn from limited data. We show how these restrictions can be overcome by established and emerging techniques from causal inference, scenario analysis, systematic review, expert elicitation, and global sensitivity analysis. These technical advances provide avenues to untangle cause from correlation, evaluate and transfer models between contexts, characterize uncertainty, and address imperfect data. With more rigorous projections of prospective performance of interventions, scientists can deliver policy and program advice that is more scientifically credible.

[1]  R. Cowling,et al.  Using the Species-Area Relationship to Set Baseline Targets for Conservation , 2004 .

[2]  J. Robalino,et al.  Protecting forests, biodiversity, and the climate: predicting policy impact to improve policy choice , 2012 .

[3]  I. Hanski,et al.  Species-area relationships and extinctions caused by habitat loss and fragmentation. , 2013, Ecology letters.

[4]  J. Pearl,et al.  EIGHT MYTHS ABOUT CAUSALITY AND STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELS , 2013 .

[5]  Mark E. Borsuk,et al.  Discovering plausible energy and economic futures under global change using multidimensional scenario discovery , 2013, Environ. Model. Softw..

[6]  Prue F. E. Addison,et al.  Practical solutions for making models indispensable in conservation decision‐making , 2013 .

[7]  Katharine R. E. Sims,et al.  Conditions associated with protected area success in conservation and poverty reduction , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[8]  Mykola Gusti,et al.  Impacts of incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation on global species extinctions , 2012 .

[9]  O. Arrhenius,et al.  Species and Area , 1921 .

[10]  John Norton,et al.  An introduction to sensitivity assessment of simulation models , 2015, Environ. Model. Softw..

[11]  Benjamin P. Bryant,et al.  Thinking Inside the Box , 2010 .

[12]  Hugh P Possingham,et al.  Priority threat management of invasive animals to protect biodiversity under climate change , 2015, Global change biology.

[13]  Rex B. Kline,et al.  Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling , 1998 .

[14]  Piero Visconti,et al.  Making parks make a difference: poor alignment of policy, planning and management with protected-area impact, and ways forward , 2015, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[15]  M. White,et al.  How Useful Are Species Distribution Models for Managing Biodiversity under Future Climates , 2010 .

[16]  Jordi Honey-Rosés,et al.  Mainstreaming Impact Evaluation in Nature Conservation , 2016 .

[17]  Bill Shipley,et al.  Cause and Correlation in Biology: A User''s Guide to Path Analysis , 2016 .

[18]  Joseph R. Kasprzyk,et al.  Many objective robust decision making for complex environmental systems undergoing change , 2012, Environ. Model. Softw..

[19]  Matthew M McConnachie,et al.  Improving credibility and transparency of conservation impact evaluations through the partial identification approach , 2016, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[20]  Iadine Chadès,et al.  Buffel grass and climate change: a framework for projecting invasive species distributions when data are scarce , 2015, Biological Invasions.

[21]  Brendan A Wintle,et al.  Strategic foresight: how planning for the unpredictable can improve environmental decision-making. , 2014, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[22]  Christoph Nolte,et al.  Estimating the impacts of conservation on ecosystem services and poverty by integrating modeling and evaluation , 2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[23]  Louis Lebel,et al.  Crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[24]  L. Joppa,et al.  High and Far: Biases in the Location of Protected Areas , 2009, PloS one.

[25]  M. Rosenzweig,et al.  Species Diversity in Space and Time , 1995 .

[26]  Neville D. Crossman,et al.  Supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services from Australia's agricultural land under global change , 2014 .

[27]  H. Hillebrand,et al.  The imprint of the geographical, evolutionary and ecological context on species-area relationships. , 2006, Ecology letters.

[28]  A. Rissman,et al.  Accounting for Results: How Conservation Organizations Report Performance Information , 2015, Environmental Management.

[29]  Jürgen Kurths,et al.  Identifying causal gateways and mediators in complex spatio-temporal systems , 2015, Nature Communications.

[30]  Jan H. Kwakkel,et al.  Dynamic scenario discovery under deep uncertainty: The future of copper , 2013 .

[31]  Andrew Balmford,et al.  Moving Rio Forward and Avoiding 10 More Years with Little Evidence for Effective Conservation Policy , 2014, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[32]  Patrick Meyfroidt,et al.  Approaches and terminology for causal analysis in land systems science , 2016 .

[33]  T. Brooks,et al.  Habitat Loss and Extinction in the Hotspots of Biodiversity , 2002 .

[34]  K. Mengersen,et al.  Spatially explicit structural equation modeling , 2014 .

[35]  G. Canavire-Bacarreza,et al.  Implications of heterogeneous impacts of protected areas on deforestation and poverty , 2015, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[36]  M. Höfler,et al.  Causal Effects In Psychotherapy: Counterfactuals Counteract Overgeneralization , 2010, Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research.

[37]  E. Bruna,et al.  The Geographical and Institutional Distribution of Ecological Research in the Tropics , 2008 .

[38]  Adrian Martin,et al.  Measuring effectiveness, efficiency and equity in an experimental Payments for Ecosystem Services trial , 2014, Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions.

[39]  Erle C. Ellis,et al.  Mapping where ecologists work: biases in the global distribution of terrestrial ecological observations , 2012, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

[40]  S. Dobrowski,et al.  Modeling plant ranges over 75 years of climate change in California, USA: temporal transferability and species traits , 2011 .

[41]  K. Mengersen,et al.  Eliciting Expert Knowledge in Conservation Science , 2012, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[42]  R. Whittaker.  Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution and Conservation , 1999 .

[43]  David W. Cash,et al.  Knowledge systems for sustainable development , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[44]  David B. Roy,et al.  The pitfalls of ecological forecasting , 2015 .

[45]  Andrew Gelman,et al.  Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models , 2006 .

[46]  Neal R Haddaway,et al.  Making literature reviews more reliable through application of lessons from systematic reviews , 2015, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[47]  S. Hurlbert.  Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments , 1984 .

[48]  L. Mermet,et al.  The rise of research on futures in ecology: rebalancing scenarios and predictions. , 2009, Ecology letters.

[49]  Paul J. Ferraro,et al.  Evaluation of biodiversity policy instruments: what works and what doesn't? , 2012 .

[50]  Nick,et al.  Insight, part of a Special Feature on Exploring Opportunities for Advancing Collaborative Adaptive Management (CAM): Integrating Experience and Practice Results Chains: a Tool for Conservation Action Design, Management, and Evaluation , 2013 .

[51]  C. Manski,et al.  Partial Identification of Counter Factual Choice Probabilities , 2007 .

[52]  Ruth Garside,et al.  Sustainability: Map the evidence , 2015, Nature.

[53]  Elias Bareinboim,et al.  A General Algorithm for Deciding Transportability of Experimental Results , 2013, ArXiv.

[54]  Paul J. Ferraro,et al.  Advances in Measuring the Environmental and Social Impacts of Environmental Programs , 2014 .

[55]  Subhrendu K. Pattanayak,et al.  Estimating the Impacts of Local Policy Innovation: The Synthetic Control Method Applied to Tropical Deforestation , 2015, PloS one.

[56]  S. Wright.  The Method of Path Coefficients , 1934 .

[57]  Elias Bareinboim,et al.  Transportability from Multiple Environments with Limited Experiments: Completeness Results , 2014, NIPS.

[58]  Paola Annoni,et al.  Sixth International Conference on Sensitivity Analysis of Model Output How to avoid a perfunctory sensitivity analysis , 2010 .

[59]  E J Milner-Gulland,et al.  Importance of Baseline Specification in Evaluating Conservation Interventions and Achieving No Net Loss of Biodiversity , 2014, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[60]  Md Sayed Iftekhar,et al.  “Biases” in Adaptive Natural Resource Management , 2015 .

[61]  Subhrendu K. Pattanayak,et al.  Money for Nothing? A Call for Empirical Evaluation of Biodiversity Conservation Investments , 2006, PLoS biology.

[62]  Taylor H. Ricketts,et al.  Policy impacts of ecosystem services knowledge , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[63]  S. Hubbell,et al.  Species–area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss , 2011, Nature.

[64]  Piero Visconti,et al.  Socio-economic and ecological impacts of global protected area expansion plans , 2015, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[65]  Kelly W. Jones,et al.  Estimating the Counterfactual Impact of Conservation Programs on Land Cover Outcomes: The Role of Matching and Panel Regression Techniques , 2015, PloS one.

[66]  W. Sutherland,et al.  The need for evidence-based conservation. , 2004, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[67]  P. Ferraro,et al.  Measuring the difference made by conservation initiatives: protected areas and their environmental and social impacts , 2015, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[68]  Marta Pascual,et al.  Integrating knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services: Mind-mapping and Bayesian Network modelling , 2016 .

[69]  Frederick Eberhardt,et al.  Do-calculus when the True Graph Is Unknown , 2015, UAI.

[70]  R. Nuzzo.  How scientists fool themselves – and how they can stop , 2015, Nature.

[71]  Robert J. Lempert,et al.  Scenarios that illuminate vulnerabilities and robust responses , 2013, Climatic Change.