TY - JOUR
T1 - The major barriers to evidence-informed conservation policy and possible solutions
AU - Rose, David C.
AU - Sutherland, William J.
AU - Amano, Tatsuya
AU - González-Varo, Juan P.
AU - Robertson, Rebecca J.
AU - Simmons, Benno I.
AU - Wauchope, Hannah S.
AU - Kovacs, Eszter
AU - Durán, América Paz
AU - Vadrot, Alice B.M.
AU - Wu, Weiling
AU - Dias, Maria P.
AU - Di Fonzo, Martina M.I.
AU - Ivory, Sarah
AU - Norris, Lucia
AU - Nunes, Matheus Henrique
AU - Nyumba, Tobias Ochieng
AU - Steiner, Noa
AU - Vickery, Juliet
AU - Mukherjee, Nibedita
N1 - Funding Information:
Arcadia Fund; Seventh Framework Pro gramme, Grant/Award Number: No. 308454; Natural Environment Research Council, Grant/Award Number: NE/L002507/1; Scriven Fellowship; Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment; Austrian Science Fund; Fondation Wiener Anspach; Kenneth Miller Trust; Cambridge Trust Cambridge-Australia Poynton Scholarship; Cambridge Department of Zoology JS Gardiner Fellowship; International Climate Initiative (IKI), German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety
Funding Information:
DCR–EU's Seventh Framework Programme, specifically the EU Biodiversity Observation Network (No. 308454). NM—Fondation Wiener Anspach, Belgium and the Scriven fellowship. BIS—Natural Environment Research Council as part of the Cambridge Earth System Science NERC DTP [NE/L002507/1]. ABMV—Austrian Science Fund (FWF). MD thanks International Climate Initiative (IKI), German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. HSW was supported by a Cambridge Trust Cambridge-Australia Scholarship and a Cambridge Department of Zoology JS Gardiner Fellowship. TA—Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and Kenneth Miller Trust. WJS—Arcadia. We thanks all those that helped with the survey including E. Miles and D. Wilson and many more. We also thank those that helped with translation of abstracts including Q. Li, G. Ganguly, S. Ganguly, S. N., Ganguly, and others. We thank all survey respondents. Data will be made available by the corresponding author to all who reasonably request. All necessary information is already included to allow replication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
PY - 2018/9/1
Y1 - 2018/9/1
N2 - Conservation policy decisions can suffer from a lack of evidence, hindering effective decision-making. In nature conservation, studies investigating why policy is often not evidence-informed have tended to focus on Western democracies, with relatively small samples. To understand global variation and challenges better, we established a global survey aimed at identifying top barriers and solutions to the use of conservation science in policy. This obtained the views of 758 people in policy, practice, and research positions from 68 countries across six languages. Here we show that, contrary to popular belief, there is agreement between groups about how to incorporate conservation science into policy, and there is thus room for optimism. Barriers related to the low priority of conservation were considered to be important, while mainstreaming conservation was proposed as a key solution. Therefore, priorities should focus on convincing the public of the importance of conservation as an issue, which will then influence policy-makers to adopt pro-environmental long-term policies.
AB - Conservation policy decisions can suffer from a lack of evidence, hindering effective decision-making. In nature conservation, studies investigating why policy is often not evidence-informed have tended to focus on Western democracies, with relatively small samples. To understand global variation and challenges better, we established a global survey aimed at identifying top barriers and solutions to the use of conservation science in policy. This obtained the views of 758 people in policy, practice, and research positions from 68 countries across six languages. Here we show that, contrary to popular belief, there is agreement between groups about how to incorporate conservation science into policy, and there is thus room for optimism. Barriers related to the low priority of conservation were considered to be important, while mainstreaming conservation was proposed as a key solution. Therefore, priorities should focus on convincing the public of the importance of conservation as an issue, which will then influence policy-makers to adopt pro-environmental long-term policies.
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U2 - 10.1111/conl.12564
DO - 10.1111/conl.12564
M3 - Letter
C2 - 31031821
AN - SCOPUS:85046550835
SN - 1755-263X
VL - 11
JO - Conservation Letters
JF - Conservation Letters
IS - 5
M1 - e12564
ER -