Reconciling diverse viewpoints within systematic conservation planning

Abstract

Conservation encompasses numerous alternative viewpoints on what to value (features suchas biodiversity, ecosystem services or socio-economic benefits) and how to convert these values into conservation policies that deliver for nature and people. Reconciling these differing values and viewpoints in policy development and implementation is a perennial challenge. 2. Balancing differing stakeholder viewpoints within a single conservation plan risks some viewpoints overshadowing others. This can occur as some dominant viewpoints may lead to more marginal views being suppressed, and also through social biases during the planning process. 3. Here we develop four separate 'caricature' conservation viewpoints, and spatially quantify each of them in order to test different approaches to equitable reconciliation. Each viewpoint prioritises different locations, dependent on the extent to which they deliver a variety of different biodiversity, well-being and economic goals. 4. We then show how these different viewpoints can be reconciled using numeric methods. We find that a pluralist approach, which accounts for the spatial similarities and differences between viewpoints, is able to deliver equitably for multiple conservation features. This pluralist approach provides a coherent spatial conservation strategy with the capacity to satisfy advocates of quite divergent approaches to conservation.People and Nature: Confidential review copy Viewpoints within the conservation community are often considered in terms of 'traditional' or 'new' conservation (Matulis and Moyer, 2017). 'Traditional' conservation follows an ecocentric viewpoint, conserving species diversity and natural habitats for their intrinsic value . It is often regarded as the antithesis of 'new' conservation, which follows a more anthropocentric viewpoint motivated by achieving conservation action through attaining economic and social benefit . However, this is a simplification of the diverse range of views on approaches to conservation. The Future of Conservation survey (http://futureconservation.org) sought to establish a framework to further categorise different viewpoints within conservation (https://www.futureconservation.org/about-the-debate) but in reality the views of conservation researchers and practitioners are spread over a continuum between and beyond these viewpoint groupings, with no clear 'camps , making it difficult to evaluate potential approaches against each other (Hunter Jr, Redford and Lindenmayer, 2014). It is not this work's aim to revisit debate about the relative merit of any conservation viewpoint. Rather, it accepts that there exists a breadth of viewpoints that need to be reconciled during conservation policy development, whilst recognising that conservation is likely to be more successful if focused on common ground within the conservation community .The important step of identifying and balancing stakeholder viewpoints is typically undertaken at the beginning of the planning process in an attempt to agree weightings or goals for diff...

Identifying relationships between landscape values, spatial perceptions of risk, and physical assets

“…Researchers have found that PPGIS can explore these correlates when used as part of a suite of methods (Elwood, 2010) Also beyond the scope of this paper was a comparative analysis between people's spatial perception of risk and the projected climate risks (Brown et al, 2004). Since the local council has exclusively relied on projected risks for management and planning decisions, identifying areas where there is a high perception of risk and low projected risk, and vice versa, could assist local governments in reducing con ict between stakeholders and decision-makers (Carmen et al, 2022;Cunningham et al, 2023). Additionally, this paper discussed the role of the land management authority, which can limit the potential scope or ambition of local adaptation actions due to ambiguity or contestation over jurisdiction.…”