Conservation conversations: a typology of barriers to conservation success

Abstract

Despite considerable achievements in the field of conservation, biodiversity continues to decline and conservation initiatives face numerous barriers. Although many of these barriers are well known, for example insufficient funding and capacity, there has been no systematic attempt to catalogue and categorize them into a typology. Because risks compromise the conservation mission, any barrier to success is a risk. Here we present the first attempt at identifying key barriers. We analyse extensive interviews with 74 conservationists, primarily from Africa but with international experience, to identify potential risks to their projects and use that information to create a typology of barriers to conservation success. We draw on the literature to explain the prevalence of some of the barriers identified. We suggest that this typology could form the basis of heuristic tools that conservationists can use to identify and manage potential risks to their projects, thereby improving decision-making, strategic planning and, ultimately, overall impact. The typology is also useful for the conservation community (comprising conservationists and funders) to help implement better practices and improve the likelihood of success. We present examples of such work already underway and suggest more can be done to continue to improve.

Practitioner insights as a means of setting a context for conservation

“…Our first key finding was that professionals working internationally across continents concur with the barriers to conservation previously raised in face‐to‐face interviews with a predominantly African‐based conservationists (Sanders et al. ). The relative scores (Table ) of all barriers exceeded 50%, suggesting all were considered somewhat important.…”

“…We believe some of these limitations were overcome by our original list of barriers (Sanders et al. ). It would, however, be interesting to repeat this study in future and compare results to see whether and how prioritization of barriers have changed.…”

“…An online survey with 56 Likert‐scale questions was developed using the barriers identified by Sanders et al. (). The survey was pilot tested by 3 independent NPOs and feedback assimilated before it was applied.…”

“…We recently consolidated these into a typology of barriers (Sanders et al. ), which allows one to picture the context in which conservationists operate. A better understanding of this context allows conservationists and their funders to improve decision making regarding choice of intervention and deployment of limited resources.…”

Monitoring should not be a barrier to conservation success: a response to Sanders et al.

“…Sanders et al (2021) interviewed conservationists (mostly from Kenya and South Africa) to produce a useful typology of the main barriers to conservation success. They found that the inability to demonstrate impact was the second most commonly cited barrier of the 74 identified.…”