No abstract

Environmental education is frequently undertaken as a conservation intervention designed to change the attitudes and behaviour of recipients. Much conservation education is aimed at children, with the rationale that children influence the attitudes of their parents, who will consequently change their behaviour. Empirical evidence to substantiate this suggestion is very limited, however. For the first time, we use a controlled trial to assess the influence of wetland-related environmental education on the knowledge of children and their parents and household behaviour. We demonstrate adults exhibiting greater knowledge of wetlands and improved reported household water management behaviour when their child has received wetland-based education at Seychelles wildlife clubs. We distinguish between 'folk' knowledge of wetland environments and knowledge obtained from formal education, with intergenerational transmission of each depending on different factors. Our study provides the first strong support for the suggestion that environmental education can be transferred between generations and indirectly induce targeted behavioural changes.

a b s t r a c tWe present the results of a review of the empirical evidence and of the state of knowledge regarding the mechanisms linking ecosystem services and poverty alleviation. The review was undertaken to determine the state of current knowledge about the scale and nature of these linkages, and focus the future research agenda. Research has, to date, focussed largely on provisioning services, and on just two poverty dimensions concerning income and assets, and food security and nutrition. While many papers describe links between ecosystem services and dimensions of poverty, few provide sufficient context to enable a thorough understanding of the poverty alleviation impacts (positive or negative), if any. These papers contribute to the accumulating evidence that ecosystem services support well-being, and perhaps prevent people becoming poorer, but provide little evidence of their contribution to poverty alleviation, let alone poverty elimination. A considerable gap remains in understanding the links between ecosystem services and poverty, how change occurs, and how pathways out of poverty may be achieved based on the sustainable utilisation of ecosystem services.

Conservation funders require methods by which to evaluate the relative success of projects within their portfolios. One approach is to develop robust indices of success that are consistent between projects and evaluators. We used three contrasting indices to evaluate factors contributing to success of projects funded by the UK Government's Darwin Initiative. The indices were: Darwin Outputs (related to the Darwin Initiative's own method of evaluating the success of the projects it supports), Impact Assessment (based on the method developed by Mace et al. for evaluating the success of projects supported by zoos) and a Ranked Outcomes (a qualitatively ranked outcome index). We evaluated the internal consistency of the indices by comparing the assessments of multiple independent scorers. We assessed their robustness by checking for differences between indices and assessors in the success level assigned to a given project. We then used mixed effects models to analyse the factors contributing to project success, as expressed by each index, and compared the factors highlighted as important by each index. Although there were systematic differences between scorers, relative rankings between scorers were consistent. The indices were in fair agreement as to project success ranks, although the success ranks assigned by subjective ranked outcomeand output-based indices were more consistent between assessors than the impact assessment index. Higher levels of funding led to projects receiving consistently higher success scores. Other variables varied in their importance between indices, although metrics of education were consistently important. This study shows that it is possible to develop robust outcome-based indices of conservation success for comparison of projects within a funder's portfolio, although the nuances picked up by different indices suggest a need for multiple indices to capture different facets of success. We also highlight the need for thorough testing of the robustness of success indices before widespread adoption.

Purpose In occupational rehabilitation, the biopsychosocial model endorses the role of social factors in worker recovery. We conducted a systematic review to explore three questions examining the role of social support for the return-to-work (RTW) of individuals with work-related injury: (1) What are the worker-identified social barriers and facilitators in RTW; (2) What is the relationship between social factors and RTW; and (3) What is the effectiveness of social interventions for RTW. Methods Systematic searches of six databases were conducted for each research question. These identified 11 studies meeting inclusion criteria for Research Question 1, and 12 studies for Research Question 2. No studies were identified that met inclusion criteria for Research Question 3. A narrative synthesis approach was used to analyse the included studies. Results Research Question 1 identified five themes in social barriers and facilitators to RTW, including contact / communication, person-centred approaches, mutual trust, reaction to injury , and social relationships . Research Question 2 identified moderate support for reaction to injury and social integration / functioning as predictors of RTW and weak evidence for co-worker support . Four studies reported significant associations between social factors and RTW, six reported mixed findings with at least one significant social predictor, and two found no significant relationships. However, conclusions were limited by the inconsistency in measurement of social factors. Conclusions Our findings indicate that social support and integration may influence RTW following work-related injury, and highlights the need for further systematic examination of social factors in the field of occupational rehabilitation.