Adaptive social impact management for conservation and environmental management

Concerns about the social consequences of conservation have spurred increased attention the monitoring and evaluation of the social impacts of conservation projects. This has resulted in a growing body of research that demonstrates how conservation can produce both positive and negative social, economic, cultural, health, and governance consequences for local communities. Yet, the results of social monitoring efforts are seldom applied to adaptively manage conservation projects. Greater attention is needed to incorporating the results of social impact assessments in long‐term conservation management to minimize negative social consequences and maximize social benefits. We bring together insights from social impact assessment, adaptive management, social learning, knowledge coproduction, cross‐scale governance, and environmental planning to propose a definition and framework for adaptive social impact management (ASIM). We define ASIM as the cyclical process of monitoring and adaptively managing social impacts over the life‐span of an initiative through the 4 stages of profiling, learning, planning, and implementing. We outline 14 steps associated with the 4 stages of the ASIM cycle and provide guidance and potential methods for social‐indicator development, predictive assessments of social impacts, monitoring and evaluation, communication of results, and identification and prioritization of management responses. Successful ASIM will be aided by engaging with best practices – including local engagement and collaboration in the process, transparent communication of results to stakeholders, collective deliberation on and choice of interventions, documentation of shared learning at the site level, and the scaling up of insights to inform higher‐level conservation policies‐to increase accountability, trust, and perceived legitimacy among stakeholders. The ASIM process is broadly applicable to conservation, environmental management, and development initiatives at various scales and in different contexts.     

Mapping Human and Social Dimensions of Conservation Opportunity for the Scheduling of Conservation Action on Private Land

Abstract Spatial prioritization techniques are applied in conservation‐planning initiatives to allocate conservation resources. Although typically they are based on ecological data (e.g., species, habitats, ecological processes), increasingly they also include nonecological data, mostly on the vulnerability of valued features and economic costs of implementation. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of conservation actions implemented through conservation‐planning initiatives is a function of the human and social dimensions of social‐ecological systems, such as stakeholders’ willingness and capacity to participate. We assessed human and social factors hypothesized to define opportunities for implementing effective conservation action by individual land managers (those responsible for making day‐to‐day decisions on land use) and mapped these to schedule implementation of a private land conservation program. We surveyed 48 land managers who owned 301 land parcels in the Makana Municipality of the Eastern Cape province in South Africa. Psychometric statistical and cluster analyses were applied to the interview data so as to map human and social factors of conservation opportunity across a landscape of regional conservation importance. Four groups of landowners were identified, in rank order, for a phased implementation process. Furthermore, using psychometric statistical techniques, we reduced the number of interview questions from 165 to 45, which is a preliminary step toward developing surrogates for human and social factors that can be developed rapidly and complemented with measures of conservation value, vulnerability, and economic cost to more‐effectively schedule conservation actions. This work provides conservation and land management professionals direction on where and how implementation of local‐scale conservation should be undertaken to ensure it is feasible.     

Avoiding Re‐Inventing the Wheel in a People‐Centered Approach to REDD+

One important debate regarding Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in developing countries concerns the manner in which its implementation might affect local and indigenous communities. New ways to implement this mechanism without harming the interests of local communities are emerging. To inform this debate, we conducted a qualitative research synthesis to identify best practices (BPs) from people‐centered approaches to conservation and rural development, developed indicators of BPs, and invited development practitioners and researchers in the field to assess how the identified BPs are being adopted by community‐level REDD+ projects in Latin America. BPs included: local participation in all phases of the project; project supported by a decentralized forest governance framework; project objectives matching community livelihood priorities; project addressing community development needs and expectations; project enhancing stakeholder collaboration and consensus building; project applying an adaptive management approach; and project developing national and local capacities. Most of the BPs were part of the evaluated projects. However, limitations of some of the projects related to decentralized forest governance, matching project objectives with community livelihood priorities, and addressing community development needs. Adaptive management and free and prior informed consent have been largely overlooked. These limitations could be addressed by integrating conservation outcomes and alternative livelihoods into longer‐term community development goals, testing nested forest governance approaches in which national policies support local institutions for forest management, gaining a better understanding of the factors that will make REDD+ more acceptable to local communities, and applying an adaptive management approach that allows for social learning and capacity building of relevant stakeholders. Our study provides a framework of BPs and indicators that could be used by stakeholders to improve REDD+ project design, monitoring, and evaluation, which may help reconcile national initiatives and local interests without reinventing the wheel. Evitar la Reinvención de la Rueda en un Acercamiento a REDD+ Centrado en Personas     

Economic and Social Dimensions of Environmental Behavior: Balancing Conservation and Development in Bhutan

Abstract: One of the primary approaches to environmental conservation emphasizes economic development. This conservation‐and‐development approach often ignores how development affects sociocultural characteristics that may motivate environmental behaviors (actions that actively benefit or limit one's negative impacts on the environment). Evolutionary anthropologists espouse a theoretical perspective that supports the conservation‐and‐development approach. Others believe sociocultural factors are the foundation of environmental behavior and worry that development will erode the values and norms that may shape such behavior. My research assistants and I surveyed 170 individuals from eight villages in two communities in Bhutan to explore whether economic (wealth, market integration) or social (religious behaviors, environmental values, social capital) factors are better indicators of environmental behavior. I used multilevel modeling to analyze use of fuelwood, use of agricultural chemicals, and tree planting, and to determine whether social norms were associated with these behaviors. Although economic factors were more often associated with these behaviors than social factors, local conditions and control variables were the best indicators of behaviors. Furthermore, economic factors were not always associated with positive environmental outcomes. Instead, farmers attempted to make the best economic decisions given their circumstances rather than seeking to conserve resources. Although religion was not a strong predictor of any of the behaviors I examined, I found evidence that the understanding of Buddhist philosophy is growing, which suggests that social factors may play a more prominent role as Bhutan's development progresses. My results highlight the need for conservation planners to be aware of local conditions when planning and implementing policies aimed at motivating environmental behaviors and that economic and social motivations for conservation may not be mutually exclusive.     

Mainstreaming the social sciences in conservation

Despite broad recognition of the value of social sciences and increasingly vocal calls for better engagement with the human element of conservation, the conservation social sciences remain misunderstood and underutilized in practice. The conservation social sciences can provide unique and important contributions to society's understanding of the relationships between humans and nature and to improving conservation practice and outcomes. There are 4 barriers—ideological, institutional, knowledge, and capacity—to meaningful integration of the social sciences into conservation. We provide practical guidance on overcoming these barriers to mainstream the social sciences in conservation science, practice, and policy. Broadly, we recommend fostering knowledge on the scope and contributions of the social sciences to conservation, including social scientists from the inception of interdisciplinary research projects, incorporating social science research and insights during all stages of conservation planning and implementation, building social science capacity at all scales in conservation organizations and agencies, and promoting engagement with the social sciences in and through global conservation policy‐influencing organizations. Conservation social scientists, too, need to be willing to engage with natural science knowledge and to communicate insights and recommendations clearly. We urge the conservation community to move beyond superficial engagement with the conservation social sciences. A more inclusive and integrative conservation science—one that includes the natural and social sciences—will enable more ecologically effective and socially just conservation. Better collaboration among social scientists, natural scientists, practitioners, and policy makers will facilitate a renewed and more robust conservation. Mainstreaming the conservation social sciences will facilitate the uptake of the full range of insights and contributions from these fields into conservation policy and practice.     

Using a social–ecological framework to inform the implementation of conservation plans

One of the key determinants of success in biodiversity conservation is how well conservation planning decisions account for the social system in which actions are to be implemented. Understanding elements of how the social and ecological systems interact can help identify opportunities for implementation. Utilizing data from a large‐scale conservation initiative in southwestern of Australia, we explored how a social–ecological system framework can be applied to identify how social and ecological factors interact to influence the opportunities for conservation. Using data from semistructured interviews, an online survey, and publicly available data, we developed a conceptual model of the social–ecological system associated with the conservation of the Fitz‐Stirling region. We used this model to identify the relevant variables (remnants of vegetation, stakeholder presence, collaboration between stakeholders, and their scale of management) that affect the implementation of conservation actions in the region. We combined measures for these variables to ascertain how areas associated with different levels of ecological importance coincided with areas associated with different levels of stakeholder presence, stakeholder collaboration, and scales of management. We identified areas that could benefit from different implementation strategies, from those suitable for immediate conservation action to areas requiring implementation over the long term to increase on‐the‐ground capacity and identify mechanisms to incentivize implementation. The application of a social–ecological framework can help conservation planners and practitioners facilitate the integration of ecological and social data to inform the translation of priorities for action into implementation strategies that account for the complexities of conservation problems in a focused way.     

Scale Mismatches,Conservation Planning,and the Value of Social‐Network Analyses

Many of the challenges conservation professionals face can be framed as scale mismatches. The problem of scale mismatch occurs when the planning for and implementation of conservation actions is at a scale that does not reflect the scale of the conservation problem. The challenges in conservation planning related to scale mismatch include ecosystem or ecological process transcendence of governance boundaries; limited availability of fine‐resolution data; lack of operational capacity for implementation; lack of understanding of social‐ecological system components; threats to ecological diversity that operate at diverse spatial and temporal scales; mismatch between funding and the long‐term nature of ecological processes; rate of action implementation that does not reflect the rate of change of the ecological system; lack of appropriate indicators for monitoring activities; and occurrence of ecological change at scales smaller or larger than the scale of implementation or monitoring. Not recognizing and accounting for these challenges when planning for conservation can result in actions that do not address the multiscale nature of conservation problems and that do not achieve conservation objectives. Social networks link organizations and individuals across space and time and determine the scale of conservation actions; thus, an understanding of the social networks associated with conservation planning will help determine the potential for implementing conservation actions at the required scales. Social‐network analyses can be used to explore whether these networks constrain or enable key social processes and how multiple scales of action are linked. Results of network analyses can be used to mitigate scale mismatches in assessing, planning, implementing, and monitoring conservation projects. Discordancia de Escalas, Planificación de la Conservación y el Valor del Análisis de Redes Sociales     

Studying citizen science through adaptive management and learning feedbacks as mechanisms for improving conservation

Citizen science has generated a growing interest among scientists and community groups, and citizen science programs have been created specifically for conservation. We examined collaborative science, a highly interactive form of citizen science, which we developed within a theoretically informed framework. In this essay, we focused on 2 aspects of our framework: social learning and adaptive management. Social learning, in contrast to individual‐based learning, stresses collaborative and generative insight making and is well‐suited for adaptive management. Adaptive‐management integrates feedback loops that are informed by what is learned and is guided by iterative decision making. Participants engaged in citizen science are able to add to what they are learning through primary data collection, which can result in the real‐time information that is often necessary for conservation. Our work is particularly timely because research publications consistently report a lack of established frameworks and evaluation plans to address the extent of conservation outcomes in citizen science. To illustrate how our framework supports conservation through citizen science, we examined how 2 programs enacted our collaborative science framework. Further, we inspected preliminary conservation outcomes of our case‐study programs. These programs, despite their recent implementation, are demonstrating promise with regard to positive conservation outcomes. To date, they are independently earning funds to support research, earning buy‐in from local partners to engage in experimentation, and, in the absence of leading scientists, are collecting data to test ideas. We argue that this success is due to citizen scientists being organized around local issues and engaging in iterative, collaborative, and adaptive learning.     

Effect of Local Cultural Context on the Success of Community‐Based Conservation Interventions

Abstract: Conservation interventions require evaluation to understand what factors predict success or failure. To date, there has been little systematic investigation of the effect of social and cultural context on conservation success, although a large body of literature argues it is important. We investigated whether local cultural context, particularly local institutions and the efforts of interventions to engage with this culture significantly influence conservation outcomes. We also tested the effects of community participation, conservation education, benefit provision, and market integration. We systematically reviewed the literature on community‐based conservation and identified 68 interventions suitable for inclusion. We used a protocol to extract and code information and evaluated a range of measures of outcome success (attitudinal, behavioral, ecological, and economic). We also examined the association of each predictor with each outcome measure and the structure of predictor covariance. Local institutional context influenced intervention outcomes, and interventions that engaged with local institutions were more likely to succeed. Nevertheless, there was limited support for the role of community participation, conservation education, benefit provision, and market integration on intervention success. We recommend that conservation interventions seek to understand the societies they work with and tailor their activities accordingly. Systematic reviews are a valuable approach for assessing conservation evidence, although sensitive to the continuing lack of high‐quality reporting on conservation interventions.     

A comparative approach to assess drivers of success in mammalian conservation recovery programs

The outcomes of species recovery programs have been mixed; high‐profile population recoveries contrast with species‐level extinctions. Each conservation intervention has its own challenges, but to inform more effective management it is imperative to assess whether correlates of wider recovery program success or failure can be identified. To contribute to evidence‐based improvement of future conservation strategies, we conducted a global quantitative analysis of 48 mammalian recovery programs. We reviewed available scientific literature and conducted semistructured interviews with conservation professionals involved in different recovery programs to investigate ecological, management, and political factors associated with population recoveries or declines. Identifying and removing threats was significantly associated with increasing population trend and decreasing conservation dependence, emphasizing that populations are likely to continue to be compromised in the absence of effective threat mitigation and supporting the need for threat monitoring and adaptive management in response to new and potential threats. Lack of habitat and small population size were cited as limiting factors in 56% and 42% of recovery programs, respectively, and both were statistically associated with increased longer term dependence on conservation intervention, demonstrating the importance of increasing population numbers quickly and restoring and protecting habitat. Poor stakeholder coordination and management were also regularly cited by respondents as key weaknesses in recovery programs, indicating the importance of effective leadership and shared goals and management plans. Project outcomes were not influenced by biological or ecological variables such as body mass or habitat, which suggests that these insights into correlates of conservation success and failure are likely to be generalizable across mammals.     

Putting People on the Map through an Approach That Integrates Social Data in Conservation Planning

Conservation planning is integral to strategic and effective operations of conservation organizations. Drawing upon biological sciences, conservation planning has historically made limited use of social data. We offer an approach for integrating data on social well‐being into conservation planning that captures and places into context the spatial patterns and trends in human needs and capacities. This hierarchical approach provides a nested framework for characterizing and mapping data on social well‐being in 5 domains: economic well‐being, health, political empowerment, education, and culture. These 5 domains each have multiple attributes; each attribute may be characterized by one or more indicators. Through existing or novel data that display spatial and temporal heterogeneity in social well‐being, conservation scientists, planners, and decision makers may measure, benchmark, map, and integrate these data within conservation planning processes. Selecting indicators and integrating these data into conservation planning is an iterative, participatory process tailored to the local context and planning goals. Social well‐being data complement biophysical and threat‐oriented social data within conservation planning processes to inform decisions regarding where and how to conserve biodiversity, provide a structure for exploring socioecological relationships, and to foster adaptive management. Building upon existing conservation planning methods and insights from multiple disciplines, this approach to putting people on the map can readily merge with current planning practices to facilitate more rigorous decision making. Poner a la Gente en el Mapa por Medio de una Estrategia que Integra Información Social en la Planeación de la Conservación     

Incorporating geodiversity into conservation decisions

In a rapidly changing climate, conservation practitioners could better use geodiversity in a broad range of conservation decisions. We explored selected avenues through which this integration might improve decision making and organized them within the adaptive management cycle of assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring. Geodiversity is seldom referenced in predominant environmental law and policy. With most natural resource agencies mandated to conserve certain categories of species, agency personnel are challenged to find ways to practically implement new directives aimed at coping with climate change while retaining their species‐centered mandate. Ecoregions and ecological classifications provide clear mechanisms to consider geodiversity in plans or decisions, the inclusion of which will help foster the resilience of conservation to climate change. Methods for biodiversity assessment, such as gap analysis, climate change vulnerability analysis, and ecological process modeling, can readily accommodate inclusion of a geophysical component. We adapted others’ approaches for characterizing landscapes along a continuum of climate change vulnerability for the biota they support from resistant, to resilient, to susceptible, and to sensitive and then summarized options for integrating geodiversity into planning in each landscape type. In landscapes that are relatively resistant to climate change, options exist to fully represent geodiversity while ensuring that dynamic ecological processes can change over time. In more susceptible landscapes, strategies aiming to maintain or restore ecosystem resilience and connectivity are paramount. Implementing actions on the ground requires understanding of geophysical constraints on species and an increasingly nimble approach to establishing management and restoration goals. Because decisions that are implemented today will be revisited and amended into the future, increasingly sophisticated forms of monitoring and adaptation will be required to ensure that conservation efforts fully consider the value of geodiversity for supporting biodiversity in the face of a changing climate.     

Conservation Planning as a Transdisciplinary Process

Abstract: Despite substantial growth in the field of conservation planning, the speed and success with which conservation plans are converted into conservation action remains limited. This gap between science and action extends beyond conservation planning into many other applied sciences and has been linked to complexity of current societal problems, compartmentalization of knowledge and management sectors, and limited collaboration between scientists and decision makers. Transdisciplinary approaches have been proposed as a possible way to address these challenges and to bridge the gap between science and action. These approaches move beyond the bridging of disciplines to an approach in which science becomes a social process resolving problems through the participation and mutual learning of stakeholders. We explored the principles of transdisciplinarity, in light of our experiences as conservation‐planning researchers working in South Africa, to better understand what is required to make conservation planning transdisciplinary and therefore more effective. Using the transdisciplinary hierarchy of knowledge (empirical, pragmatic, normative, and purposive), we found that conservation planning has succeeded in integrating many empirical disciplines into the pragmatic stakeholder‐engaged process of strategy development and implementation. Nevertheless, challenges remain in engagement of the social sciences and in understanding the social context of implementation. Farther up this knowledge hierarchy, at the normative and purposive levels, we found that a lack of integrated land‐use planning and policies (normative) and the dominant effect of national values (purposive) that prioritize growth and development limit the effectiveness and relevance of conservation plans. The transdisciplinary hierarchy of knowledge highlighted that we need to move beyond bridging the empirical and pragmatic disciplines into the complex normative world of laws, policies, and planning and become engaged in the purposive processes of decision making, behavior change, and value transfer. Although there are indications of progress in this direction, working at the normative and purposive levels requires time, leadership, resources, skills that are absent in conservation training and practice, and new forms of recognition in systems of scientific reward and funding.     

Equity trade‐offs in conservation decision making

Conservation decisions increasingly involve multiple environmental and social objectives, which result in complex decision contexts with high potential for trade‐offs. Improving social equity is one such objective that is often considered an enabler of successful outcomes and a virtuous ideal in itself. Despite its idealized importance in conservation policy, social equity is often highly simplified or ill‐defined and is applied uncritically. What constitutes equitable outcomes and processes is highly normative and subject to ethical deliberation. Different ethical frameworks may lead to different conceptions of equity through alternative perspectives of what is good or right. This can lead to different and potentially conflicting equity objectives in practice. We promote a more transparent, nuanced, and pluralistic conceptualization of equity in conservation decision making that particularly recognizes where multidimensional equity objectives may conflict. To help identify and mitigate ethical conflicts and avoid cases of good intentions producing bad outcomes, we encourage a more analytical incorporation of equity into conservation decision making particularly during mechanistic integration of equity objectives. We recommend that in conservation planning motivations and objectives for equity be made explicit within the problem context, methods used to incorporate equity objectives be applied with respect to stated objectives, and, should objectives dictate, evaluation of equity outcomes and adaptation of strategies be employed during policy implementation.     

Contribution of Systematic Reviews to Management Decisions

Systematic reviews comprehensively summarize evidence about the effectiveness of conservation interventions. We investigated the contribution to management decisions made by this growing body of literature. We identified 43 systematic reviews of conservation evidence, 23 of which drew some concrete conclusions relevant to management. Most reviews addressed conservation interventions relevant to policy decisions; only 35% considered practical on‐the‐ground management interventions. The majority of reviews covered only a small fraction of the geographic and taxonomic breadth they aimed to address (median = 13% of relevant countries and 16% of relevant taxa). The likelihood that reviews contained at least some implications for management tended to increase as geographic coverage increased and to decline as taxonomic breadth increased. These results suggest the breadth of a systematic review requires careful consideration. Reviews identified a mean of 312 relevant primary studies but excluded 88% of these because of deficiencies in design or a failure to meet other inclusion criteria. Reviews summarized on average 284 data sets and 112 years of research activity, yet the likelihood that their results had at least some implications for management did not increase as the amount of primary research summarized increased. In some cases, conclusions were elusive despite the inclusion of hundreds of data sets and years of cumulative research activity. Systematic reviews are an important part of the conservation decision making tool kit, although we believe the benefits of systematic reviews could be significantly enhanced by increasing the number of reviews focused on questions of direct relevance to on‐the‐ground managers; defining a more focused geographic and taxonomic breadth that better reflects available data; including a broader range of evidence types; and appraising the cost‐effectiveness of interventions. Contribuciones de las Revisiones Sistemáticas a las Decisiones de Manejo     

An agenda for assessing and improving conservation impacts of sustainability standards in tropical agriculture

Sustainability standards and certification serve to differentiate and provide market recognition to goods produced in accordance with social and environmental good practices, typically including practices to protect biodiversity. Such standards have seen rapid growth, including in tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybeans, and tea. Given the role of sustainability standards in influencing land use in hotspots of biodiversity, deforestation, and agricultural intensification, much could be gained from efforts to evaluate and increase the conservation payoff of these schemes. To this end, we devised a systematic approach for monitoring and evaluating the conservation impacts of agricultural sustainability standards and for using the resulting evidence to improve the effectiveness of such standards over time. The approach is oriented around a set of hypotheses and corresponding research questions about how sustainability standards are predicted to deliver conservation benefits. These questions are addressed through data from multiple sources, including basic common information from certification audits; field monitoring of environmental outcomes at a sample of certified sites; and rigorous impact assessment research based on experimental or quasi‐experimental methods. Integration of these sources can generate time‐series data that are comparable across sites and regions and provide detailed portraits of the effects of sustainability standards. To implement this approach, we propose new collaborations between the conservation research community and the sustainability standards community to develop common indicators and monitoring protocols, foster data sharing and synthesis, and link research and practice more effectively. As the role of sustainability standards in tropical land‐use governance continues to evolve, robust evidence on the factors contributing to effectiveness can help to ensure that such standards are designed and implemented to maximize benefits for biodiversity conservation.     

Social‐Psychological Principles of Community‐Based Conservation and Conservancy Motivation: Attaining Goals within an Autonomy‐Supportive Environment

Abstract: Community‐based natural resource conservation programs in developing nations face many implementation challenges underpinned by social‐psychological mechanisms. One challenge is garnering local support in an economically and socially sustainable fashion despite economic hardship and historical alienation from local resources. Unfortunately, conservationists' limited understanding of the social‐psychological mechanisms underlying participatory conservation impedes the search for appropriate solutions. We address this issue by revealing key underlying social‐psychological mechanisms of participatory conservation. Different administrative designs create social atmospheres that differentially affect endorsement of conservation goals. Certain forms of endorsement may be less effective motivators and less economically and socially sustainable than others. From a literature review we found that conservation initiatives endorsed primarily for nonautonomous instrumental reasons, such as to avoid economic fines or to secure economic rewards, are less motivating than those endorsed for autonomous reasons, such as for the opportunity for personal expression and growth. We suggest that successful participatory programs promote autonomous endorsement of conservation through an administrative framework of autonomy support—free and open democratic participation in management, substantive recognition and inclusion of local stakeholder identity, and respectful, noncoercive social interaction. This framework of the autonomy‐supportive environment (self‐determination theory) has important implications for future research into program design and incentive‐based conservation and identifies a testable social‐psychological theory of conservancy motivation.     

Feedbacks between conservation and social-ecological systems

Robust ways to meet objectives of environmental conservation and social and economic development remain elusive. This struggle may in part be related to insufficient understanding of the feedbacks between conservation initiatives and social-ecological systems, specifically, the ways in which conservation initiatives result in social changes that have secondary effects on the environments targeted by conservation. To explore this idea, we sampled peer-reviewed articles addressing the social and environmental dimensions of conservation and coded each paper according to its research focus and characterization of these feedbacks. The majority of articles in our sample focused either on the effect of conservation initiatives on people (e.g., relocation, employment) or the effect of people on the environment (e.g., fragmentation, conservation efficacy of traditional management systems). Few studies in our sample empirically addressed both the social dynamics resulting from conservation initiatives and subsequent environmental effects. In many cases, one was measured and the other was discussed anecdotally. Among the studies that describe feedbacks between social and environmental variables, there was more evidence of positive (amplifying) feedbacks between social and environmental outcomes (i.e., undesirable social outcomes yielded undesirable environmental effects and desirable social outcomes yielded desirable environmental effects). The major themes within the sampled literature include conflict between humans and wild animals, social movements, adaptive comanagement, loss of traditional management systems, traditional ecological knowledge, human displacement and risks to livelihoods, and conservation and development. The narratives associated with each theme can serve as hypotheses for facilitating further discussion about conservation issues and for catalyzing future studies of the feedbacks between conservation and social-ecological systems.     

Current Practice and Future Prospects for Social Data in Coastal and Ocean Planning

Coastal and ocean planning comprises a broad field of practice. The goals, political processes, and approaches applied to planning initiatives may vary widely. However, all planning processes ultimately require adequate information on both the biophysical and social attributes of a planning region. In coastal and ocean planning practice, there are well‐established methods to assess biophysical attributes; however, less is understood about the role and assessment of social data. We conducted the first global assessment of the incorporation of social data in coastal and ocean planning. We drew on a comprehensive review of planning initiatives and a survey of coastal and ocean practitioners. There was significantly more incorporation of social data in multiuse versus conservation‐oriented planning. Practitioners engaged a wide range of social data, including governance, economic, and cultural attributes of planning regions and human impacts data. Less attention was given to ecosystem services and social–ecological linkages, both of which could improve coastal and ocean planning practice. Although practitioners recognize the value of social data, little funding is devoted to its collection and incorporation in plans. Increased capacity and sophistication in acquiring critical social and ecological data for planning is necessary to develop plans for more resilient coastal and ocean ecosystems and communities. We suggest that improving social data monitoring, and in particular spatial social data, to complement biophysical data, is necessary for providing holistic information for decision‐support tools and other methods. Moving beyond people as impacts to people as beneficiaries, through ecosystem services assessments, holds much potential to better incorporate the tenets of ecosystem‐based management into coastal and ocean planning by providing targets for linked biodiversity conservation and human welfare outcomes. La Práctica Actual y los Prospectos Futuros para los Datos Sociales en la Planeación Costera y Oceánica