Examining critical assumptions in global conservation practice

Abstract

The ability of conservation practitioners to design and implement successful conservation projects and scale up positive outcomes depends in large part on their ability to make accurate assumptions about the social and ecological contexts in which their projects operate. To understand the types of assumptions characterizing conservation practice and strategy, we examined 300 assumptions identified by conservation practitioners in project workshops at The Nature Conservancy, a large environmental nongovernmental organization, as being critical to the success of their conservation projects. We identified 7 conservation assumption themes (public attitudes and perceptions; capacity and resources; economic and behavioral factors; government, politics, and policy; impacts and scalability; knowledge and evidence; and organizational or internal factors), which primarily relate to the human dimensions of conservation (e.g., values, human behavior, relationships, policy, and politics). The conservation assumptions focused predominantly on project-level and place-based matters, rather than on the root causes of conservation problems. For people- and equity-centered conservation approaches, our findings suggest that conservation teams should systematically engage with areas of elevated uncertainty and should especially focus on axiomatic assumptions made about the broader contexts in which conservation projects operate. These insights can inform effective project design and adaptive learning and can directly improve project success.