Assessing diverse evidence to improve conservation decision-making
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Meeting the urgent need to protect and restore ecosystems requires effective decision-making through wisely considering a range of evidence. However, weighing and assessing evidence to make complex decisions is challenging, particularly when evidence is of diverse types, subjects, and sources, and varies greatly in its quality and relevance. To tackle these challenges, we present the Balance Evidence Assessment Method (BEAM), an intuitive way to weigh and assess the evidence relating to the core assumptions underpinning the planning and implementation of conservation projects, strategies, and actions. Our method directly tackles the question of how to bring together diverse evidence whilst assessing its relevance, reliability, and strength of support for a given assumption, which can be mapped, for example to a Theory of Change. We consider how simple principles and safeguards in applying this method could help to respectfully, and equitably, include more local forms of knowledge when assessing assumptions, such as by ensuring diverse groups of individuals contribute and assess evidence. The method can be flexibly applied within existing decision-making tools, platforms, and frameworks whenever assumptions (i.e., claims and hypotheses) are made. This method could greatly facilitate and improve the weighing of diverse evidence to make decisions in a range of situations, from local projects to global policy platforms.
Date Issued
2023-10-01
Date Acceptance
2023-09-06
Citation
Conservation Science and Practice, 2023, 5 (10)
ISSN
2578-4854
Publisher
Wiley
Journal / Book Title
Conservation Science and Practice
Volume
5
Issue
10
Copyright Statement
© 2023 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:001068107700001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=a2bf6146997ec60c407a63945d4e92bb
Subjects
Biodiversity & Conservation
Biodiversity Conservation
conservation evidence
decision-making
evidence assessment
evidence-based
evidence-informed
GUIDE
KNOWLEDGE
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
local knowledge
project management
RELIABILITY
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e13024
Date Publish Online
2023-09-22