A practical conservation tool to combine diverse types of evidence for transparent evidence-based decision-making
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Making the reasoning and evidence behind conservation management decisions clear and transparent is a key challenge for the conservation community. Similarly, combining evidence from diverse sources (e.g., scientific and local knowledge) into decision-making is also difficult. Our group of conservation researchers and practitioners has co-produced an intuitive tool and template (Evidence-to-Decision [E2D] tool: www.evidence2decisiontool.com) to guide practitioners through a structured process to transparently document and report the evidence and reasoning behind decisions. The tool has three major steps: (1). Define the Decision Context; (2). Gather Evidence; and (3). Make an Evidence-Based Decision. In each step, practitioners enter information (e.g., from the scientific literature, practitioner knowledge and experience, and costs) to inform their decision-making and document their reasoning. The tool packages this information into a customized downloadable report (or is documented if using the offline template), which we hope can stimulate the exchange of information on decisions within and between organizations. By enabling practitioners to revisit how and why past decisions were made, and integrate diverse forms of evidence, we believe our open-access tool's template can help increase the transparency and quality of decision-making in conservation.
Date Issued
2022-01-01
Date Acceptance
2021-10-22
Citation
Conservation Science and Practice, 2022, 4 (1)
ISSN
2578-4854
Publisher
Wiley
Journal / Book Title
Conservation Science and Practice
Volume
4
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Conservation Science and Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000721476000001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=a2bf6146997ec60c407a63945d4e92bb
Subjects
Biodiversity & Conservation
Biodiversity Conservation
conservation management
cost-effectiveness
decision support tools
decision-making
evidence-based
KNOWLEDGE
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
MANAGEMENT
practitioner knowledge
SCIENCE
Science & Technology
transparency
values
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e579
Date Publish Online
2021-11-23