Voicing stakeholder visions for biodiversity indicators: A framework using content analysis

Abstract

Aotearoa New Zealand's Eco-index research programme is developing a 100-year national biodiversity vision. The purpose of the vision is to establish a concrete restoration goal that land managers can pursue through relatively small year-by-year actions and investments that lead to large cumulative biodiversity impacts over generations. This paper presents findings from a content analysis method developed to identify biodiversity restoration visions of major land management stakeholders including government, industry, NGOs, and indigenous communities. The method combines these biodiversity visions to establish a meta-vision that represents the collective national position across groups. The purpose of this research is to determine the individual and collective position of stakeholders, in order to develop the 100-year National Biodiversity Vision that reflects their stance to improves uptake and action. The meta-vision emerged as ‘strategies and initiatives to protect and maintain indigenous regional and New Zealand (biodiversity) values and outcomes.’ Both the meta-vision and group stakeholder visions highlighted processes for protecting and maintaining biodiversity but were generally technocratic and vague. Perhaps most importantly, they lacked a vision for regional or national biodiversity restoration end states and targets from which indicators could be developed and land managers could orientate action around. Consequently, we present some suitable 100-year National Biodiversity Vision suggestions which incorporate clear end-states while retaining the key values identified in biodiversity visions of land management stakeholders.