Transforming conservation: a practical guide to evidence and decision making ed. by William J. Sutherland

Abstract

Reviewed by: Transforming conservation: a practical guide to evidence and decision making ed. by William J. Sutherland Catherine Dalton Transforming conservation: a practical guide to evidence and decision making Edited by William J. Sutherland (Open Book Publishers 2022; 428 pages (xvi+412); DOI: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0321) Transforming conservation: a practical guide to evidence and decision making follows on from the work of the Conservation Evidence project, which has collated evidence on the policy and practices for maintaining and restoring biodiversity over the last twenty years. The project thesis is that there is ineffective use of evidence in conservation efforts, compounded by problematic political decisions, resource waste and ultimately the loss of public and political support for many initiatives. The systematic use of evidence-based decision making in the fields of medicine (and surgery in particular) and aircraft safety are cited as exemplars that have facilitated meaningful change. The authors contend that environmental managers do not generally use scientific evidence to support their decision making. Instead, they rely mainly on personal experience, anecdotal information and the advice of colleagues. The failure to use an evidence-based approach occurs even when the information is easily available, when there are conflicts of interest, when quick or audacious decisions are made, or there is evidence complacency. The authors believe that there are considerable problems with how conservation decisions are usually made and that the decision-making process needs to be taken more seriously, particularly in light of the current biodiversity crisis. The book advocates that successful decision making requires a combination of scientific evidence, clear values, experience and local knowledge. To help embed evidence into practice, a handbook (toolkit) of considerations and tactics has been created in this volume. The long term aim is that there will be transformational change in the use of evidence in conservation. This Open Access book is a composite of literature review, example scenarios, methodological processes and checklists to guide best practices. The book is composed of four parts (identifying the problem, obtaining/assessing/summarising evidence, making and applying decisions, and transforming society) comprising twelve chapters written by 76 experts with over 1,000 collaborators. Over 391 pages the authors exhaustively document twelve stages in the decision-making process, from problems of identification, multiple considerations, the steps involved in the development of the conservation evidence portals, through the facilitation of change. This is very much a practical handbook and comprehensive information is provided on each stage of the process. Individual chapters focus on assessing single pieces of evidence, assessing collated evidence, and converting evidence into conclusions, that can then be the basis for decision making, with material repeated in long tabular form. Solutions are synthesised in to 12 downloadable checklists, four of which are spread across the book from page 56 to page 337 and eight co-located in the concluding chapter (chapter 12). Chapters benefit from summary introductions but stop abruptly with no concluding points. Some chapters are replete with a range of illustrative conservation examples from the literature, others are much more methodological with few or no examples. The authors outline how information and source reliability, and relevance, are key to evaluating the available evidence and facilitate the identification of unreliable, irrelevant and untrustworthy material. The book is aimed at policy makers and practitioners, whose challenge is to deal with multiple specific and generic components (e.g. ecology, communities, markets, economics, legislation and technology) when making conservation decisions. The book attempts to make sense of these diverse components and provide a step-by-step guide on how to marshal the evidence and systemise the process so that more effective decisions can be made. While examining the book, I was reminded of our recent contribution to Ireland's National Biodiversity Action Plan 2023–2027, as part of the public consultation process. The draft plan is a mix of both laudable and pedestrian aspirations, couched in benign language, and many of its targets seem inadequate in the context of the biodiversity and climate crises that we face. Missing also from the current draft is a clear integrated approach to logging evidence, measurement and auditing of indicators, thus making the demonstration of real success problematic. In...