Conservation Policy Classics, Reissued

Abstract

Longtime readers of this journal will no doubt be familiar with Susan Clark’s research, published under the name Timothy W. Clark until 2006. Yale University Press has now reissued 3 of Susan’s classic works, and they are worth the attention of a new generation of conservationists. Homer-Dixon (2001) conferred the title of “the ingenuity gap” on our society’s collective failure to improve our problem-solving capabilities sufficiently to keep pace with the accelerating complexity of global social– ecological challenges. In few fields of human endeavor is this gap more apparent than in conservation biology. Clark’s books represent very deliberate attempts to close the ingenuity gap by focusing attention on neglected dimensions of conservation problems, especially questioning the ways we conventionally think about them. However, these books have a very different objective than conventional policy analyses or human-dimensions texts: they demonstrate how to apply a proven and genuinely interdisciplinary framework for solving problems, rather than simply offering up further techniques for studying them. The difference is subtle, yet critical. These 3 titles collectively distill decades of hard-won experience and thoughtful analyses with the explicit goal of helping conservation practitioners and scientists improve their professional effectiveness. Who among us doesn’t want to do that? The Policy Process is exactly what its name implies: a handbook that describes an approach for orienting oneself to complex problems with social and ecological dimensions and determining one’s preferred course of action. For the past 3 years, I have used this book as the primary text in a graduate course I teach on environmental and sustainability decision making. It fills the bill for such a task nicely. It is readable, comprehensive, extensively referenced, and reasonably priced. Largely for those reasons, students in this course—who have come from 14 countries to date—respond warmly to the book. It is not only for academics though. This handbook would be equally at home on the desks of working professionals for use as a ready reference and provision of a handy dose of perspective when the going gets tough. As Forester (1989) observed about the practice of planning, “[G]ood theory is what we need when we get stuck.” Time spent with this book would be a good way for perplexed conservation biologists facing challenging situations to get themselves unstuck. The book begins by discussing professional challenges (many of which will sound all too familiar to those with any field experience) and proceeds iteratively through steps of mapping the context of the issue at hand, clarifying and securing the common interest, and focusing on clearly and comprehensively defining problems to find solutions. The following two chapters discuss more theoretical and methodological topics: policy-oriented professionalism and policy analysis and multiple methods. The last chapter in particular, on natural resources, human rights, and policy learning, is probably more urgent and resonant today than it was when the book was first published a decade ago. The Policy Process has stood the test of time remarkably well, although it would have been nice to see some updated figures and schema. No one has yet developed a concise way to present the framework however, graphically or otherwise, so I acknowledge that is a tall order for such a complex framework with extensive, specific terminology (Brunner 1997). However, coupled with creative multimedia a future edition of this book would have the potential to make just those sorts of advances. Foundations of Natural Resource Policy and Management is an edited volume of 10 case-study analyses developed by Clark’s colleagues and students at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Apparently designed to be paired with The Policy Process, this book is best considered as a set of teaching cases because its treatment of the theoretical framework is light. These cases however are richly detailed, international in scope, and presented in a consistent format. These attributes make it easier for readers to extract applicable lessons from individual cases and to compare these lessons and draw their own conclusions. Further development of teaching cases would be useful in future editions, perhaps incorporating cases written