Improving conservation practice with principles and tools from systems thinking and evaluation

In the operating conditions of the 21st century it is impossible to be competent alone' (O'Hara & Leicester, 2019, p. 16). Competence in leading and managing, as in any professional practice, is best understood as the ability to work with others to meet important challenges in complex human systems (Rychen & Salganik, 2003). Systems thinkers such as Oshry (1999, 2007, 2018, 2019, 2020) recognise that competence is a function of systems and culture; that is, of relationships. This insight acknowledges the importance of being able to work effectively in group settings but goes further in recognising that our lives are always lived in complex patterns of relationships with others (O'Hara & Leicester, 2019).

Society's mental models and causal beliefs are being seriously challenged by the complexity, scale and speed of global environmental change in the Anthropocene. To understand how to regulate business in this context, a recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependency between business and the rest of society and the environment is crucial. Social-ecological systems (SES) thinking is an approach that facilitates a better understanding of how to see the relationship between structure and behaviour, which can alleviate the understanding of how systems work. However, despite its convincing benefits, it is yet to be fully integrated into legal analysis. Building on recent literature in the field, I delineate business law as fit for purpose in the Anthropocene through synthesising the terms institutional fit, complexity, interconnectivity, and polycentricity from an ethical perspective. The SES approach is uniquely suited for this exercise as it warrants that all relevant issues are taken into account.

Although a plethora of habitat-connectivity plans exists, protecting and restoring connectivity through on-the-ground action has been slow. We identified challenges to and opportunities for connectivity conservation through a literature review of project implementation, a workshop with scientists and conservation practitioners, 3 case studies of connectivity projects, and interviews with conservation professionals. Connectivity challenges and solutions tended to be context specific, dependent on land-ownership patterns, socioeconomic factors, and the policy framework. Successful connectivity implementation tended to be associated with development and promotion of a common vision among diverse sets of stakeholders, including nontraditional conservation actors, such as water districts and recreation departments, and with communication with partners and the public. Other factors that lead to successful implementation included undertaking empirical studies to prioritize and validate corridors and the identification of related co-benefits of corridor projects. Engaging partners involved in land management and planning, such as nongovernmental conservation organizations, public agencies, and private landowners, is critical to effective strategy implementation. A clear regulatory framework, including unambiguous connectivity conservation mandates, would increase public resource allocation, and incentive programs are needed to promote private sector engagement. Connectivity conservation must move more rapidly from planning to implementation. We provide an evidence-based solution composed of key elements for successful on-the-ground connectivity implementation. We identified the social processes necessary to advance habitat connectivity for biodiversity conservation and resilient landscapes under climate change.

The rise of Industry 4.0 has led to a rapid increase in digitalization and industrial operations. However, it has recently been deemed insufficient in fulfilling European objectives for 2030. In response, and to counteract the unintended negative consequences triggered by Industry 4.0, Industry 5.0 has been introduced. The purpose of this article is to shed light on how the architecture, engineering, construction, management, operation, and conservation industry can adapt and better prepare to embrace novel Industry 5.0 principles and enabling technologies, ultimately resulting in enhanced conservation practices for the built cultural heritage environment. To achieve this, a systematic literature review was conducted following the PRISMA methodology. The principal results of this article highlight the work of different conservation professionals and our views on the potential of Industry 5.0 for enhancing conservation practices. Major conclusions indicate that artificial intelligence and digital twins are the two most studied technologies in the field. Sustainability is broadly discussed throughout the analyzed literature, whereas resilience and human centrism require further research and implementation efforts to achieve a holistic Industry 5.0 adoption. The significant scientific novelty of this work lies in the comprehensive scope of the review in terms of principles and enabling technologies, with a particular emphasis on heritage buildings. Thus, it is valuable for conservation practitioners seeking best practices, for policymakers as it suggests ways to encourage the adoption of novel technologies and principles in conservation, and for researchers as it highlights gaps and stimulates further paths of research and innovation.

Conservation genetics is a well-established scientific field. However, limited information transfer between science and practice continues to hamper successful implementation of scientific knowledge in conservation practice and management. To mitigate this challenge, we have established a conservation genetics community, which entails an international exchange-and-skills platform related to genetic methods and approaches in conservation management. First, it allows for scientific exchange between researchers during annual conferences. Second, personal contact between conservation professionals and scientists is fostered by organising workshops and by popularising knowledge on conservation genetics methods and approaches in professional journals in national languages. Third, basic information on conservation genetics has been made accessible by publishing an easy-to-read handbook on conservation genetics for practitioners. Fourth, joint projects enabled practitioners and scientists to work closely together from the start of a project in order to establish a tight link between applied questions and scientific background. Fifth, standardised workflows simplifying the implementation of genetic tools in conservation management have been developed. By establishing common language and trust between scientists and practitioners, all these measures help conservation genetics to play a more prominent role in future conservation planning and management.

Systems thinking (ST) skills are often the foundation of sustainability science curricula. Though ST skill sets are used as a basic approach to reasoning about complex environmental problems, there are gaps in our understanding regarding the best ways to promote and assess ST learning in classrooms. Since ST learning provides Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students’ important skills and awareness to participate in environmental problem-solving, addressing these gaps is an important STEM learning contribution. We have created guidelines for teaching and measuring ST skills derived from a hybrid of a literature review and through case study data collection. Our approach is based on semi-quantitative cognitive mapping techniques meant to support deep reasoning about the complexities of social–ecological issues. We begin by arguing that ST should be evaluated on a continuum of understanding rather than a binary of correct/incorrect or present/absent. We then suggest four fundamental dimensions of teaching and evaluating ST which include: (1) system structure, (2) system function, (3) identification of leverage points for change, and (4) trade-off analysis. Finally, we use a case study to show how these ideas can be assessed through cognitive maps to help students develop deep system understanding and the capacity to propose innovative solutions to sustainability problems.

ABSTRACTSocial factors play a critical role in almost every conservation problem. There is a pressing need for conservation researchers and practitioners to understand both the ecological and human dimensions of their systems in order for projects to be successful. At the same time, many conservation professionals come from a natural science background with little training in or limited access to social research methodologies. The purpose of this article is to review the principal methods of social science field research relevant for biological conservation: archival research, key informant interviews, oral histories, surveys, focus groups, participant observation, discourse analysis and participatory research. Our goal is to provide a scaffold of knowledge for those unfamiliar with these methods, outlining each approach and providing examples of how they have been applied to conservation problems. We emphasise social research designed to advance conservation objectives, particularly in the case of the conservation of biodiversity on islands internationally, where high endemism and risk of extinction combine with diverse human needs, values and belief systems. Based on the literature reviewed, we contribute a timeline suggesting when to implement these social methodologies during conservation efforts on inhabited islands.

COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the practice of Emergency Medicine (EM). Care delivery on the front lines has historically depended upon ostensibly reliable input-output models for staffing, supplies, policies, and therapies. Challenged by the complexity of healthcare during the pandemic, the fallibility of these reductionist models was quickly revealed. Providers and systems quickly had to reconceptualize their dependence on the wider, complex system in which healthcare operates and find adaptive solutions to rapid changes. This papers seeks to review and describe how Systems Thinking and Complexity Theory (ST/CT)-concepts, principles, and tools that can be used to understand and impact our constantly evolving health system-can be applied to better understand and enact change in complex settings such as during COVID-19. Some of these ST/CT are described through the real world example of the Alameda Health System Vaccine Taskforce. ST/CT concepts such as Unintended Consequences, Interrelationships, Emergent Behavior, Feedback Loops, and Path Dependence can help EM providers and planners understand the context in which their system operates. Key principles such as Collaboration, Iterative Learning, and Transformational Leadership can help these actors respond to current and future challenges. The integration of these concepts and principles into the Learning Health System offers a model for tying these key concepts and principles together into an adaptive, cross-sectoral organizational approach. By integrating ST/CT into the practice of EM, we can not only improve our ability to care for patients but also our capacity to understand and strengthen our wider systems of care.

This paper discusses the vision, history, and milestones of Southern University's Urban Forestry program

Traditional farming communities make use of their local knowledge systems and resources to design sustainable livelihood strategies. Designing adaptive solutions to diverse environmental and livelihood uncertainties at the local community level is a systemic process that takes into account the intricate linkages between several dynamic components of a social-ecological system. This chapter illustrates this everyday practice of designing livelihood strategies by analysing and comparing the seed conservation and management practices among three different farming communities in rural India. It further analyses specific contextual factors that affect such knowledge and practices, which are associated with responsible design problems or solutions. It also provides insights into the structure–agency interfaces in the everyday lives of resource users, the embedded nature of assets within a specific social-ecological system, and the situated or temporal–spatial dynamics of livelihood strategies. This chapter is based on insights gathered from three distinct ethnographic qualitative researches conducted among traditional farming communities in Kochi, Purulia and Ahmednagar, respectively. The findings of this study shows that many well-intended projects could disrupt the balance of social-ecological systems and worsen the vulnerabilities of marginalized communities dependent on these resources, if they fail to follow an integrated design-cum-development practice at the local level. The outcomes of such projects could end up as ‘irresponsible’ design problems that are consistently interfacing with traditional and modern power structures as well. Insights from this chapter could help us look at responsible design thinking as a creative space to facilitate holistic systemic thinking among different stakeholders and design development projects at the grassroots accordingly.KeywordsLivelihoodsSeed managementIndigenousFarmersKnowledgeDesign

This study investigates the importance of social-ecological systems in the conservation of forest and woodland resources in a planned resettlement area in Zimbabwe. The study uses methodological integration, comprising a questionnaire survey and participatory rural appraisal that were conducted on five randomly selected farms to explore the way resettled communities interact with tree resources and the cultural and traditional practices that they employ to conserve the resources. The study concludes that forest and woodland resource conservation is a function of complex and dynamically linked processes that are not only embedded in biophysical space but also connected to socio-economic and political realms depicting the livelihoods, social needs and culture of members of the resettled communities. This knowledge is important for designing conservation strategies in future resettlement areas.

This article reports on an action research project to reorient forestry and natural resources higher education in Ethiopia. The study used a combination of methods, including questionnaires and secondary information, to understand the existing higher-education system in Ethiopia. Based on the initial analysis, a workshop was held to deliberate the findings and to draw up guidelines for forestry and natural resources higher education that reflect education for sustainable development (ESD) approaches. The results of the study show that the state of higher education with regard to forestry and natural resources has, in about half a century of such education, been influenced by several internal and external factors. It progressively evolved from endeavours dependent on foreign aid to a self-sufficient Ethiopian system. During this time, the structural distribution of graduates moved in emphasis from an earlier emphasis on the diploma to a BSc-level emphasis. Little progress has been made with regard to female graduates, student enrolment is limited and the desirability of forestry education has declined. Despite this, most of the 31 public universities in the country offer natural resources education. Curricula were found to be inadequate for the challenges of the times, as was the national demand for expert professionals. Existing epistemological foundation adheres to forestry as a commodity rather than as a social-ecological system influencing conceptual definitions of forest, forestry and forester. Within an ESD perspective, forests are identified as social–ecological systems, forestry is seen as a sustainability science and a sustainable development sector, and the forester is viewed as a systems thinker and change agent. It is agreed that higher education relating to forestry and natural resources in Ethiopia requires guidelines that encompass a non-reductionist and comprehensive disciplinary base where synergy of multidisciplinary approaches is emphasised, as in ESD. The guidelines outlined indicate how to adapt higher education in respect of forestry and natural resources to changing societal needs in Ethiopia. The emerging guidelines also point to a reorientation of academic institutional foundations and leadership and to the need for a relevant epistemological framework to guide higher-education curricula on forestry and natural resources. The emerging guidelines further stress that higher education should engage more strongly with pertinent global and national issues.

The Conservation Agriculture Project (CAP) of the North Dakota Natural Resources Trust (Trust) has demonstrated a new concept for delivering conservation education that improves farm economics while enhancing environmental health, restoring landscape functions and providing societal benefits. The 5-year project, initiated by the Trust in 2000, incorporated Resource Analysis Teams to assist four farmers and farm families serving as a demonstration in developing and implementing holistic farm plans. Resource Analysis Team members were agricultural, environmental, conservation and economic professionals. Resource Analysis Teams met with each demonstration farm family twice each year in a non-threatening setting, usually around the family's kitchen table. The integration of diverse knowledge bases resulted in an educational roundtable with all participants being educators and students at the same time. As round-table participants became familiar with the intricacies of each particular farm and with each other, adversarial relationships dissolved and team members worked together to move the farms toward sustainability—economic, environmental and social. This approach differs from most federal conservation programs to date, which have approached on-farm conservation in a piecemeal manner, only protecting a parcel of land or a critical problem area. For those programs, responsibility for searching out and implementing conservation practices has fallen primarily on the farmer, who also has had to assume associated risks. The Conservation Agriculture Project has demonstrated that the Resource Analysis Team approach yields positive results for the environment, wildlife, farm families and society while enhancing information delivery and improving communication and acceptance among diverse groups with varying agendas. Most importantly, it has demonstrated the need and positive impacts of delivering conservation education directly to farmers and ranchers, who manage 43% of the land nationwide.

Expectations of what natural forests and cultural woodlands should provide vary among locations, stakeholder groups, and over time. Developing multifunctional forest landscapes requires understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamic roles of traditions and cultural legacies in social-ecological systems. Using Sweden as an example, this presentation explores the emergence of even-aged silvicultural traditions focusing on sustained yield of wood, and the importance of applying different vantage points in social-ecological systems to identify barriers and levers, which can support transitions towards multifunctional forest landscapes. I identify levers from three groups of vantage points. They are: (1) the biosphere, with biodiversity as short-hand for forest composition, structure and function as supporters of human well-being; (2) society, comprising stakeholder interactions across local to global levels, and (3) economy, represented by value chain hierarchies and currencies. I will show how the intensive wood production offered by even-aged silviculture (established >200 years ago) led to a conflict between forest ecosystem values – sustained yield wood production and biodiversity – fuelled by lack of shared knowledge of their differences and similarities. A review of six groups of stakeholders’ insights highlights inequalities in income and power distribution across governance levels, effectively marginalising less powerful actors. This is further complicated by the spatio-temporal dynamics of financial outcomes along the value chain, and by the impossibility of attributing monetary value to all forest ecosystem services. A review of cultural trajectories in pan-European forest management illustrates that forest history patterns repeat themselves and legacies of even-aged silviculture are resistant to change. Shifting to multifunctional forest landscapes requires several forest management systems and landscape planning. This requires learning through evaluation of multiple forest values and learning of different forest owners’ and users’ preferences. Another key solution will be to handle the manufacturing of doubt and decay of truth, which diminish the role of evidence and systems analyses in political and civic discourses. Actual change will also require strong external drivers. Finally, longitudinal transdisciplinary case studies across countries and regions can help foster holistic multi-dimensional and multilevel systems thinking.

Expectations of what forests and woodlands should provide vary among locations, stakeholder groups, and over time. Developing multifunctional forests requires understanding of the dynamic roles of traditions and cultural legacies in social-ecological systems at multiple levels and scales. Implementing policies about multifunctional forests requires a landscape and social-ecological perspective, and recognition of both spatial and temporal features at multiple scales. This study explores the dissemination of even-aged silviculture in central, eastern and northern Europe, and the consequences of choosing different vantage points in social-ecological systems for mapping of barriers, and to identify levers, towards multifunctional forest landscapes. Using a narrative approach, we first summarise the development of even-aged silviculture in four European regions. Next, we focus on Sweden as a keen adopter of even-aged silviculture, and identify levers at three groups of vantage points. They were (1) biosphere with biodiversity as short-hand for composition, structure and function of ecosystems, which support human well-being at multiple scales; (2) society in terms of different levels of stakeholder interactions from local to global, and (3) economy represented by value chain hierarchies and currencies. The emergence of even-aged silviculture >200 years ago formed an expanding frontier from central to northern Europe. Sustained yield wood production and biodiversity conservation encompass different portfolios of ecosystem aspects and spatio-temporal scales. Ignorance and lack of knowledge about these differences enforce their mutual rivalry. An exploratory review of six groups of stakeholders at multiple levels in the traditional industrial forest value chain highlights inequalities in terms of distribution of income and power across different levels of governance. This effectively marginalises other than powerful industrial actors. The distribution of financial results along the value chain is dynamic in space and time, and not all benefits of forest ecosystems can be measured using monetary valuation. There are also other currencies and incentives. A discussion of cultural trajectories in central and eastern European, Russian and Swedish forest management illustrates that forest history patterns repeat themselves. Longitudinal case studies of countries and regions can help foster holistic multi-dimensional and multi-level systems thinking. Application of deep levers of change is likely to require external drivers. A key challenge is to handle the manufacturing of doubt and decay of truth, i.e., the appearance of alternative facts, and the diminishing role of evidence and systems analyses in political and civic discourses. This transition is fuelled by new and rapidly evolving digital arenas.