Enabling conservation theories of change
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Date
2024
Authors
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Publisher
London: Nature Publishing Group UK
Abstract
Global theories of change (ToCs), such as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF), provide broad, overarching guidance for achieving conservation goals. However, broad guidance cannot inform how conservation actions will lead to desired outcomes. We provide a framework for translating a globalscale ToC into focussed, ecosystem-specific ToCs that consider feasibility of actions, as determined by national socioeconomic and political context (i.e., enabling conditions). We demonstrate the framework using coastal wetland ecosystems as a case study. We identified six distinct multinational profiles of enabling conditions (‘enabling profiles’) for coastal wetland conservation. For countries belonging to enabling profiles with high internal capacity to enable conservation, we described plausible ToCs that involved strengthening policy and regulation. Alternatively, for enabling profiles with low internal enabling capacity, plausible ToCs typically required formalising community-led conservation. Our ‘enabling profile’ framework could be applied to other ecosystems to help operationalise the post-2020 GBF.
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Keywords
Global theories of change, Global biodiversity framework, Vegetated coastal wetland ecosystems, Seagrass and saltmarsh, Coastal ecosystems
Citation
Buelow, C.A., Connolly, R.M., Dunic, J.C., Griffiths, L., Holgate, B., Lee, S.Y., Mackey, B.G., Maxwell, P.S., Pearson, R.M., Rajkaran, A. and Sievers, M., 2024. Enabling conservation theories of change. Nature Sustainability, 7(1), pp.73-81.