You’ve heard rumors of mission drift, the kerfuffle over calling it “ecosystem services,” “nature’s benefits” or just plain “money grows on trees.” Any way you look at it, the Nature Conservancy is moving to embrace people as part of conservation. What does that mean for our science?
No stonewalling social science. At a recent marine fisheries meeting organized by the Secretariat of Pacific Communities, one oceanographer proclaimed, “I do bathometry — how could I possibly incorporate people into my work?!” Um….use your imagination! The Conservancy talks about sea-level rise in terms of how it’s caused by people (think climate change policy) and affects people (think ecosystem-based adaptation). Social issues are integral causes and effects, even where nobody lives.
Tread with care. Most of the Conservancy’s time and money still goes toward buying and placing human-use restrictions on land. Our experienced dealmakers will tell you that you can’t just engage stakeholders such as politicians, communities and other non-profits and then change your mind without enduring major consequences. The same goes for science. When you enter a community to begin assessments, you set up expectations and begin a dialog that must be continued. This means that you have to think carefully and discuss your question and how the information will be used — before starting your research.
Integrate socioeconomic and biophysical science questions from the get-go. Why just have our biologists do their work and our social scientists do their work and then get together at the end and share results? It’s inefficient. If the assessments are designed as one, you can address the relationship local communities have with the systems and species we are focusing on right from the start and make sure our conservation approach is locally appropriate. Biological and social scientists can fundraise together, approach governments and communities together, and coordinate logistics and costly data such as high-resolution satellite imagery.
Division hinders our ability to walk our talk. One of the Conservancy value statements reads: “Enduring conservation success depends on the active involvement of people and partners whose lives and livelihoods are linked to the natural systems we seek to conserve.” Integrating socioeconomic and biophysical science gets to the whole point of monitoring and evaluation, which is to figure out what is actually going on. People affect nature. Nature affects people. The synergy extends to science. Let’s recognize that synergy and act accordingly.
By Jensen Montambault, Conservation Measures Specialist at The Nature Conservancy and Supin Wongbusarakum, Senior Social Scientist at The Nature Conservancy
Image credit: sillydog/Flickr through a Creative Commons license