Abstract
There are generally no acceptable views on the conservation of biodiversity because there are no known best approaches to that. This has presented a challenge on what and how to conserve in developing countries like Nigeria. This paper used a multi-criteria decision-making model based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to elicit experts’ opinions on biodiversity conservation approaches and their corresponding conservation targets. The rationality of the experts was checked by measuring their consistency in the decision-making process. A greedy search algorithm based on linear programming application was also used for resource allocation. This technique is holistic and allows the decision maker to consider all pertinent factors. The approach allows policy makers to integrate worldviews; culture; diverse flexibility of concerned communities and other stakeholders in identifying conservation practices to achieve sustainability. In terms of current performance for the biodiversity conservation approaches; the conservation experts rated their performance on Ecosystem-service-based approach high with the priority index of 0.460. Their performances on Area- and Species-based approaches are ranked second and third with priority indexes of 0.288 and 0.252 respectively. Conversely; in the case of expectations; Ecosystem service is the most important with a priority index of 0.438 followed by Area-based with a priority index of 0.353 and Species–based with a priority index of 0.209. The Ecosystem-service based approach has the highest contribution coefficient. Resources are allocated accordingly; in form of capacity building; based on the priorities that were obtained. The research is a rights-based tool for capacity building; and a paradigm shift from the purely scientific approach to decision-making. It is designed to bridge a scientific gap between policy formulation and resource allocation in biodiversity conservation.
Highlights
Ecosystem dehydration may lead to the endangerment of some species [1,2,3,4,5]
The method followed here presents a logical technique to ecosystem planning and management by putting together all factors that are considered significant and influential in the prioritization of biodiversity conservation approaches
It does not seem unusual, for instance, for policy makers to go by their instincts; at the very least, the process used here guarantees that most of the issues concerning the question of biodiversity conservation will be effectively considered
Summary
Several studies have identified both social and ecological criteria to evaluate biodiversity [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Emphasis has been made in identifying the important criteria for approaches used in the conservation of biodiversity [13,14]. Many studies have explained the way a number of approaches can be used to examine the social preferences of stakeholders for various situations involving biodiversity and the natural ecosystems [15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. Priorities are sometimes established for conservation at the species level [22,23] but not for the evaluation of the conservation approaches.
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