The world is filling up with conservation plans. Many hundreds have been completed worldwide. But how many make a difference, in terms of preventing the loss of biodiversity? And what can we learn about these planning exercises to plan with greater conservation impact in the future? Emma McIntosh, undertaking a PhD at Oxford University, is setting out to answer these questions, with colleagues Madeleine McKinnon, Bob Pressey, and Rich Grenyer. This month, Emma published a paper in Environmental Evidence, laying out a comprehensive and repeatable search strategy for literature on systematic conservation planning. The result will be a body of literature that Emma will process, looking for evidence that conservation plans influence five kinds of capital: natural, financial, social, human, and institutional. Emma will then publish the results and make available a searchable, online database of studies that have led to some kind of conservation impact.
Published by Bob Pressey
Professor Bob Pressey is a Distinguished Professor in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. He leads the Centre’s research program on Conservation Planning. Bob’s research team focuses on spatial solutions to diverse resource management problems, involving the design of conservation areas and applications of a variety of conservation actions. View all posts by Bob Pressey