Background: Women often use natural resources differently than men yet frequently have minimal influence on how local resources are managed. An emerging hypothesis is that empowering more women in local resource decision-making may lead to better resource governance and conservation. Here we focus on the forestry and fisheries sectors to answer the question: What is the evidence that the gender composition of forest and fisheries management groups affects resource governance and conservation outcomes? We present a systematic map detailing the geographic and thematic extent of the evidence base and assessing the quality of the evidence, as per a published a priori protocol. Methods:We screened 11,000+ English-language records in Scopus, CAB abstracts, AGRIS, AGRICOLA, Google Scholar, and Google. The websites of 24 international conservation and development organisations, references of included articles, and relevant systematic reviews were also searched for possible documents. A number of groups and individuals were invited to submit documents through email 'call outs' . The inclusion criteria were that an article refers to women or gender, forests or fisheries, and a resource management group comparison in a non-OECD country plus Mexico and Chile.Results: Seventeen studies met the inclusion criteria. Four were qualitative and 13 were quantitative. Forest studies outnumbered fisheries studies 14-3. The majority of the studies came from India and Nepal and focused on forest management. All 17 studies identified improvements in local natural resource governance, and three identified conservation improvements when women participated in the management of the resources. Only two studies, however, were rated as high quality based on study design. Conclusions: For India and Nepal, there is strong and clear evidence of the importance of including women in forest management groups for better resource governance and conservation outcomes. Outside of India and Nepal, there are substantial gaps in the evidence base, but the South Asian evidence presents a compelling case for extending the research to other geographies to see if similar outcomes exist elsewhere and supports a theory of change linking the participation of women in forestry and fisheries management groups with better resource governance and conservation outcomes.

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Using six years of remote sensing data, we estimated land and forest degradation inside 1788 protected areas across 19 countries in Latin America. From 2004, the rate of land and forest degradation increased by 250% inside the protected areas, and the land and forest degradation totaled 1,097,618 hectares. Of the protected areas in our dataset, 45% had land and forest degradation. There were relatively large variations by major habitat type, with flooded grasslands/savannas and moist broadleaf forest protected areas having the highest rates of degradation. We found no association between a country's rate of land and forest degradation inside protected areas and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, GDP growth, or rural population density. We found significant, but weak, associations between the rate of land and forest degradation inside protected areas and a country's protected area system funding, the size of the protected area, and one International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) management category. Our results suggest a high degree of heterogeneity in the variables impacting land and forest degradation inside protected areas in Latin America, but that the targeting of protected area investments on a continental scale is plausible. OPEN ACCESSDiversity 2013, 5 780

There is growing use of household surveys by conservation organizations as they seek to measure the social impacts of conservation initiatives, especially in developing countries. Several recent health-sector studies suggest that computer-aided personal interviewing may be a cheaper and faster alternative to the traditional paper-based interviewing. Here, a comparison of The Nature Conservancy-funded tablet computer-based and paper-based household surveys is presented. Because the tablet and paper surveys were not identical except for the data collection tool, the results are suggestive. In the comparison, the cost per completed interview for the tablet-based survey was 74% less than the paper-based survey average, and the average time per interview question for the tablet-based survey was 46% less than the paper-based survey average. The cost saving came primarily from less need for data cleaning and lower enumerator fees. The time saving came primarily from faster data entry. The results suggest that there may be substantial savings in costs and time when using tablets rather than paper for survey data collection in a developing country.

Within conservation, the need to measure the impacts on people from conservation initiatives such as projects and programs is growing, but understanding and measuring the multidimensional impacts on human well-being from conservation initiatives is complex. To understand the constituent components of human well-being and identify which components of well-being are most common, we analyzed 31 known indices for measuring human well-being. We found 11 focal areas shared by two or more indices for measuring human well-being, and the focal areas of living standards, health, education, social cohesion, security, environment, and governance were in at least 14 of the 31 human well-being indices. We examined each of the common focal areas and assessed its relevance to measuring the human well-being impacts of a conservation initiative. We then looked for existing indices that include the relevant focal areas and recommend the use of Stiglitz et al. (2009)-a framework designed to measure economic performance and social progress-as a starting place for understanding and selecting human well-being focal areas suitable for measuring the impacts on people from a conservation initiative.

There is evidence from the development and humanitarian sectors that purposeful engagement of women can increase the impact of development. We conducted a literature review to examine whether this is also evident in conservation and natural resource management. The following themes emerged from our review: existing societal and cultural norms affect and generally limit how women can engage in conservation and natural resource management; women interact differently with the environment than men, so if they are excluded, their knowledge and perspectives on particular resources may not be considered in conservation actions; and there is often a lack of resources or dedicated effort by conservation or natural resource management programmes to understand and address the barriers that prevent women's engagement. Although there was evidence of a positive relationship between the engagement of women and environmental outcomes, some studies showed that positive conservation outcomes do not necessarily benefit women, and when women are not considered, conservation activities can perpetuate existing inequities. We conclude that although the importance of integrating gender into conservation is acknowledged in the literature, there is a need to examine how women can be meaningfully engaged in conservation. This must go beyond treating women as a homogenous group, to consider intersectionality including race, ethnicity, age, religion, poverty and disability. In addition, conservation and natural resource management institutions need to address the inclusion of women in their own staff and programmes.

We assessed a donor-funded grassland management project designed to create both conservation and livelihood benefits in the rangelands of Mongolia's Gobi desert. The project ran from 1995 to 2006, and we used remote sensing Normalized Differential Vegetation Index data from 1982 to 2009 to compare project grazing sites to matched control sites before and after the project's implementation. We found that the productivity of project grazing sites was on average within 1% of control sites for the 20 years before the project but generated 11% more biomass on average than the control areas from 2000 to 2009. To better understand the benefits of the improved grasslands to local people, we conducted 280 household interviews, 8 focus group discussions, and 31 key informant interviews across 6 districts. We found a 12% greater median annual income as well as a range of other socioeconomic benefits for project households compared to control households in the same areas. Overall, the project generated measurable benefits to both nature and people. The key factors underlying project achievements that may be replicable by other conservation projects include the community-driven approach of the project, knowledge exchanges within and between communities inside and outside the country, a project-supported local community organizer in each district, and strong community leadership.

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