Measures of Success

Designing, Managing, and Monitoring Conservation and Development Projects

Nick Salafsky, Richard A. Margoluis, Anna Balla

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781559636124
• eBook ISBN:
  9781597263276
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Measures of Success is a practical, hands-on guide to designing, managing, and measuring the impacts of community-oriented conservation and development projects. It presents a simple, clear, logical, and yet comprehensive approach to developing and implementing effective programs, and can help conservation and development practitioners use principles of adaptive management to test assumptions about their projects and learn from the results.

The book presents a systematic approach to improving the focus, effectiveness, and efficiency of projects, with specific guidelines and advice on:

•     designing a realistic conceptual framework based on local site conditions
•     developing clearly defined goals, objectives, and activities
•     creating a monitoring plan that can be used to assess whether goals and objectives are being met
•     integrating social and biological science techniques to collect the most relevant and useful data in the most cost-effective way
•     using the information obtained through the monitoring plan to modify the project and learn from the result

The text is developed in eight chapters that follow the structure of a planning process from conception to completion, with the chapters linked by four scenarios that serve as teaching case studies throughout the book. Examples from these scenarios illustrate the processes and tools discussed, and each scenario case study is presented in its entirety in an appendix to the volume. The approach has been developed and field tested by practitioners working in many different projects in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and their experience and input ensure that the guide is both practical and useful.

Measures of Success is the only work of its kind currently available, and represents an invaluable resource for field-based practitioners, project managers, and local community leaders, as well as for international NGO staff, college and university teachers and students, researchers, and government officials.

 

Chapter 1

Introduction

Four Project Scenarios

Measures of Success is structured around four scenarios that show the many challenges of managing conservation and development projects around the world. These projects are implemented by various types of groups, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, local communities, and advocacy groups. We will draw on these scenarios throughout the guide to illustrate our approach to project design, management, and monitoring. The complete scenarios are also presented in Appendix A. Although the scenarios are hypothetical, they are based on real sites and projects. We hope that you will find elements of your project among them so that they may give you some ideas for your site. The projects presented in these scenarios are being carried out by our project team.

Tropical Forest Scenario

Suppose you are the manager of an NGO that is responsible for managing the Indah Biosphere Reserve. The core area of the reserve contains approximately 100,000 hectares of tropical moist forest which includes a mixture of primary and secondary forests. The 80,000 hectare buffer zone around the core area contains 30 small villages whose residents include native and migrant peoples. Residents of the villages are primarily subsistence farmers who grow grains, other food crops, and a few cash crops in small shifting agricultural plots in the forest. Residents also collect timber and nontimber forest products (NTFPs) which they use in their homes and sell in local markets. From what you can tell, it appears that the major threats to the forest include expansion of farms into forest areas, local overharvesting of forest products, commercial logging, expansion of cattle ranches, and the development of a large dam for hydro-electric power generation. At this point, the NGO that you are working for is planning a project that will involve working with community members to develop a few of the forest products for national and international sale and other interventions.

Savannah Scenario

Suppose you are a wildlife biologist working for the local office of the Government Park Service to coordinate a project to design and implement a conservation plan for Karimara National Park. The park is 750,000 hectares of savannah and grasslands in a semi-arid, subtropical setting with an additional 500,000 hectares of land in wildlife management areas (WMAs) around the park. Outside of the WMAs are a number of settlements inhabited by semi-nomadic livestock herders who graze their cattle in the WMAs and occasionally in the park. Residents of the settlements depend on their livestock and limited hunting and gathering of wild animals and plants for subsistence. Major threats to the park include overgrazing, overhunting, and poaching of large mammal species, and the effects of a rapidly increasing and unregulated foreign tourism industry. The Government Park Service is considering taking a number of steps to protect the park against these threats.

Coastal Scenario

Suppose you are the formally educated son or daughter of the traditional leader of a coastal village who has been chosen by your people to help them find the best way to maintain their resources for future generations. Your village is located at the mouth of a river flowing from upland forests through mangrove forests into Bocoro Bay. The residents of your village get most of their food from fishing and gathering shellfish in the river and coral reefs surrounding the bay. Residents cook their food and build their houses using wood from the mangrove forests growing along the coast. Over the past few years, you and your neighbors have noticed that residents of neighboring villages are increasingly coming into your village’s traditional fishing grounds. In addition, large fishing boats from other countries have begun operating in the same area. The elders of the community have noticed over time that local fishermen have to go farther away from the community to catch enough fish to eat and sell and that they are catching smaller fish. In addition, silt and pollution coming down the river have ruined many of the reefs. Furthermore, it is becoming harder to find shrimp in coastal areas near small rivers where the mangroves have been cut down. The elders are now proposing to enhance your people’s traditional resource management systems to conserve the plant and animal resources in the bay for future generations.

Wetlands Scenario

Suppose you are the manager of a local chapter of a conservation advocacy group whose members live near the Everson Watershed. The wetlands in the watershed serve as important habitats for migratory birds and for a number of fish and game species. These species support extensive recreational uses of the area including birdwatching, canoeing, fishing, and hunting. The wetlands are also part of the water supply system for major urban areas in the watershed. The wetlands are threatened by growing development and urbanization including road construction and dredging. They are also affected by water pollution (especially from agricultural chemicals) and invasions of exotic plant and animal species. You are planning to work with local landowners and governments to purchase or obtain conservation easements on lands containing critical wetland and upstream habitat. In addition, your organization is hoping to work to educate the public about the importance of the upstream habitats in maintaining the wetlands. Finally, you are hoping to devise a management plan to help control some of the impacts of exotic species.

Purpose of This Guide

Conservation and development

projects have as their primary goal the conservation of natural ecosystems and species. They are based on the philosophy that, in order to maintain economic and community development, a healthy and viable natural resource base must be sustained. They operate by involving and addressing the needs of human stakeholders—the people who have an interest in the natural resources of the project site.

A common challenge found in our scenarios and all other conservation and development projects is to be able to measure the success of project interventions. In order to ensure that desired conservation impacts occur, you need to know which actions work and which don’t—and you need to know why. You also need to make sure that your project activities have a positive impact on the stakeholders the project is designed to benefit. Finally, if you are supported by outside organizations or are working with or for local communities, you need to be able to demonstrate to them that you are accomplishing the goals and objectives that were set out at the start of the project.

In this guide, the term project is not limited to referring to part of a formal, externally funded program. Instead, it is used to refer to any set of actions undertaken by any group of managers, researchers, or local stakeholders interested in achieving certain defined goals and objectives. For example, a project could include steps that community members take to revive traditional resource-harvesting customs.

In response to the challenge of measuring project impact, an increasing number of practitioners are attempting to fully integrate monitoring into the design and management of their projects. These practitioners are faced, however, with a number of constraints in accomplishing this integration. For example, project staff are often so involved with day-to-day operations that they may feel that they don’t have the time or money to invest in monitoring. Likewise, field staff may believe that monitoring can only be done by experts or scientists and that they are not qualified to do the job. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, people may simply feel that they don’t know how to design comprehensive and useful management and monitoring plans.

Practitioners are managers, researchers, and local stakeholders who are responsible for designing, managing, and monitoring conservation and development projects.

In this guide, we use monitoring to refer to the periodic collection and evaluation of data relative to stated project goals, objectives, and activities. Many people often also refer to this process as monitoring and evaluation (M&E).

Our motivation in writing this guide is a strong belief that, although these constraints are real, they can and must be overcome if conservation and development projects are ultimately to succeed. Although sound project design, management, and monitoring require an investment of time and money, we think that this investment will save resources in the long run by ensuring that the project is effective. Without adequate planning and monitoring, you have no sure way of knowing whether the project is making a positive difference or, worse yet, causing unintended negative impacts. In addition, we believe that the people who are most qualified to design, manage, and monitor projects are the field-based practitioners and local stakeholders who are most familiar with local conditions—not outside “experts” or “professionals.” Finally, although every site has unique conditions making it impossible to develop a project design, management, and monitoring “cookbook,” we feel that it is possible to come up with general guidelines that can help people determine what they need to do and how best to do it.

Biodiversity is the variety and va...

Table of contents

• About Island Press
• About the Biodiversity Support Program
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 - Introduction
• Chapter 2 - Clarify Group’s Mission
• Chapter 3 - Design a Conceptual Model Based on Local Site Conditions
• Chapter 4 - Develop a Management Plan: Goals, Objectives, Activities
• Chapter 5 - Develop a Monitoring Plan
• Chapter 6 - Implement Management and Monitoring Plans
• Chapter 7 - Analyze Data and Communicate Results
• Chapter 8 - Use Results to Adapt and Learn
• Appendix A - Project Plans for Scenarios
• Appendix B - Glossary of Select Terms
• Index
• About the Authors
• Island Press Board of Directors