Biodiversity is declining and the expansion of the protected area network has been the focus of international biodiversity policy in addressing this loss. What is not known is how protected areas are coping with increasing land-use change pressures and there is a risk that many areas end up as paper parks, established on paper but lacking the resources to mitigate threats. Studies using so-called counterfactual comparisons, such as matching, for evaluating the impacts of different conservation interventions are getting increased attention. However, it is not known what the enabling or limiting factors for sustainable outcomes for protected areas are, especially in tropical forests where both biodiversity and land use pressure is high.
In our research, we aim to tackle this question using methods that span multiple disciplines, using quantitative matching methods for evaluating impact and qualitative approaches to evaluate policy and local conditions.
In our research group, we believe that effective conservation efforts are best achieved through collaborative partnerships that bring together diverse perspectives and expertise. Our theme of coproducing knowledge emphasizes the importance of engaging conservation practitioners, local communities, and stakeholders in the research process. By fostering a two-way dialogue, we aim to bridge the gap between scientific research and practical application, ensuring that our findings are both relevant but also actionable.
Through workshops, participatory research initiatives, and focus group discussions, we work closely with practitioners to identify pressing conservation challenges and co-create innovative solutions. This collaborative approach allows us to integrate local knowledge and experiences, enriching our understanding of conservation strategies and how they play out in practice.
We are particularly keen in developing new methods for evaluating what works in conservation and integrating the most recent advances from remote sensing and Earth Observation. Members of the team are actively developing or introducing novel methods that can be used to assess conservation actions and their outcomes, spanning from counterfactual impact evaluation to qualitative attribution methods. We have also been involved in developing frameworks for how to select between existing methods in order to aid the uptake of such methods in the conservation community. We are currently experimenting with geoparsing approaches to generate spatial data from textual sources and exploring the potential of this for building a database of conservation funding.
In terms of advancing methods and promoting their uptake in the conservation community, we are collaborating closely with the Impact Evaluation Working Group of the Society for Conservation Biology.