Practical actions for applied systematic conservation planning

Abstract

Systematic conservation planning is intended to inform spatially explicit decision making. Doing so requires that it be integrated into complex regulatory and governance processes, and there are limited instances where this has been achieved effectively. South Africa is a global leader in the application of conservation plans, the outputs of which are widely used for spatial planning and decision making in many spheres of government. We aimed to determine how conservation planning in the country progressed from theory to implementation, and to identify practical actions that enabled this transition, by assessing temporal trends in the characteristics of conservation plans (1990–2017, n = 94). Since 2010 conservation planning has entered an operational period characterized by government leadership of plans, administrative rather than ecological planning domains, decreasing size of planning units, increasing emphasis on end‐user products, and scheduled revision of plans. Key actions that enabled this progression include transitioning leadership of plans from scientists to practitioners, building capacity within implementing agencies, creating opportunities to integrate plans in legislative processes, establishing a strong community of practice, adopting implementation‐focused methods, and balancing standardization with innovation. Learning from this model will allow other countries, particularly those with a similar megadiverse, developing context, to operationalize conservation planning into spatial planning and decision making.

Post‐normal conservation science fills the space between research, policy, and implementation

“…Although success in conservation planning is difficult to quantify, South Africa is recognized internationally as a leader in using multi-stakeholder engagement to develop conservation plans suited for implementation on the ground (Balmford, 2003;Knight et al, 2006;Smith, Veríssimo, Leader-Williams, Cowling, & Knight, 2009). A key ingredient of this success was the willingness of planners to work beyond their familiar scientific paradigms (e.g., life sciences, earth sciences, or social sciences) by focusing on decisionmaking, behavioral change and policy implementation (Botts et al, 2019;Reyers et al, 2010). Pragmatic decisions could be made based on combinations of the best available scientific data and the practical experience of practitioners (Botts et al, 2019.…”

“…A key ingredient of this success was the willingness of planners to work beyond their familiar scientific paradigms (e.g., life sciences, earth sciences, or social sciences) by focusing on decisionmaking, behavioral change and policy implementation (Botts et al, 2019;Reyers et al, 2010). Pragmatic decisions could be made based on combinations of the best available scientific data and the practical experience of practitioners (Botts et al, 2019. Through engagement with a broader community of stakeholders (i.e., the extended peer community of researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, and government officials), the values of those outside of traditional science informed the motives for conservation planning (Nel et al, 2016).…”

“…Although SANBI has a central role at institutional and purposive levels of the PNS process (Table 1), they acknowledged that they cannot meet their core mandate without external contributions from other stakeholders. Therefore, they endeavored to nurture an extended peer community with the autonomy to self-mobilize (Botts et al, 2019). SANBI expends both funding and institutional resources to coordinate conservation planning in South Africa, but wider collaboration throughout the extended peer community makes it possible to leverage serendipitous external opportunities.…”

“…Since members of the extended peer community work independently, it is important that their separate efforts can be synthesized (Botts et al, 2019). This was especially true for the national map of critical biodiversity areas in South Africa, which is a composite of prioritizations from different ecological realms (terrestrial, freshwater, estuarine, coastal and marine) and provincial jurisdictions.…”

“…In this article, we present PNS as a way to occupy the research-implementation space. This assertion is based on spatial conservation planning in South Africa, which has transitioned from a science-focused to implementationfocused planning (Botts et al, 2019) through a model that can be defined as PNS. The South African example is distinct because of intentional efforts to cultivate an extended peer community and embrace extended facts.…”