Introducing Conservation by Design 2.0

Con­ser­va­tion by Design 2.0 aims to help teams devel­op strate­gies to address the major con­ser­va­tion chal­lenges of our day. These chal­lenges require us to be bold and adapt our tra­di­tion­al ways of plan­ning and imple­ment­ing our work. To achieve our mis­sion, we must move from strate­gies and projects that treat symp­toms at a local scale to strate­gies and projects that address under­ly­ing sys­temic caus­es at a much broad­er region­al and glob­al scale.

The four key advances of CbD 2.0 form the foun­da­tion for the approach described in this Guid­ance doc­u­ment, and are intend­ed to help in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of strate­gies aimed at achiev­ing sys­temic change. Indeed, we strong­ly encour­age teams to dis­cuss how these advances apply to their plan­ning con­text before ini­ti­at­ing the process, to make sure that the advances stay ful­ly embed­ded throughout.

This web­site lays out the approach used by The Nature Con­ser­van­cy to devel­op, eval­u­ate and strength­en strate­gies in sup­port of the advances described in Con­ser­va­tion by Design 2.0. It is intend­ed to describe lead­ing prac­tices for con­ser­va­tion which can read­i­ly be adapt­ed and adopt­ed by The Nature Con­ser­van­cy and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. It replaces the Con­ser­van­cy’s Con­ser­va­tion Busi­ness Plan­ning guid­ance, although near­ly every ele­ment from the busi­ness plan­ning approach is includ­ed here. Oth­er plan­ning approach­es and their plan­ning mate­r­i­al used by the Con­ser­van­cy, such as Major Habi­tat Assess­ments, Ecore­gion­al (and oth­er region­al) Assess­ments, and the Open Stan­dards for the Prac­tice of Con­ser­va­tion (the Con­ser­van­cy’s orig­i­nal Con­ser­va­tion Action Plan­ning approach is now cap­tured with­in the Open Stan­dards) may be use­ful for com­plet­ing spe­cif­ic aspects of this guidance.

Giv­en the increas­ing­ly glob­al scale of the chal­lenges we seek to address, and The Nature Con­ser­van­cy’s intent to dri­ve our work in ways that con­tribute to sys­temic change, CbD 2.0 is most appro­pri­ate­ly applied sequen­tial­ly from glob­al to region­al to whole sys­tem scales. This approach bet­ter ensures that work at small­er scales “adds up to more than the sum of the parts” in con­tribut­ing to larg­er sys­tem-scale impact. For this rea­son, we strong­ly encour­age prac­ti­tion­ers of CbD 2.0 to include in their fram­ing and scop­ing a con­sid­er­a­tion of con­ser­va­tion efforts that may be hap­pen­ing else­where and at high­er lev­els, so that their pro­posed engage­ment can align with, con­tribute to, lever­age and advance those larg­er scale strate­gies and ini­tia­tives. Con­ser­van­cy staff who have ques­tions about orga­ni­za­tion­al expec­ta­tions around The Shared Con­ser­va­tion Agen­da and CbD 2.0 imple­men­ta­tion should refer to infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed on the Shared Agen­da and CbD 2.0 pages on the Con­ser­van­cy’s inter­nal CONNECT por­tal. In addi­tion, you should become famil­iar with the con­cepts behind the The­o­ry of Trans­for­ma­tion­al Change (ToTC) as your plan­ning process gets under­way, and be pre­pared to cre­ate a ToTC dur­ing the Map Strate­gies and Places Phase.

When updat­ing an exist­ing plan, the best results will be obtained by going through the whole process, as the suc­cess of each step depends on the pre­ced­ing step. This is because, as illus­trat­ed in Table 1, out­puts from each step are used to inform sub­se­quent steps. There­fore, we cau­tion against skip­ping to the por­tion of your work that your team wants to update with­out con­sid­er­ing the key advances of CbD 2.0 in pre­vi­ous steps. Fur­ther­more, if new par­tic­i­pants are brought in at inter­me­di­ate steps, they need to be briefed about out­puts from pre­vi­ous steps as well as issues dis­cussed and deci­sions made to ensure an effec­tive process from start to fin­ish and to secure buy-in from the whole team.

We note at mul­ti­ple places through­out this web­site that a trained facil­i­ta­tor or coach can be very help­ful for par­tic­u­lar steps. The Con­ser­van­cy has a rich his­to­ry of peer ‘​coach­ing’ via our Efroym­son Coach­es Net­work, which has since evolved into the Con­ser­va­tion Coach­es Net­work (CCNet), a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty of prac­ti­tion­ers who sup­port the appli­ca­tion of the Open Stan­dards for the Prac­tice of Con­ser­va­tion. Please see Appen­dix B for more infor­ma­tion about CCNet as it relates to CbD 2.0. New, spe­cial­ized coach­ing approach­es are in devel­op­ment at TNC; we hope to pro­vide a search­able reg­istry of gen­er­al­ist and spe­cial­ist coach­es soon.

This guid­ance is intend­ed to be com­pre­hen­sive enough to help prac­ti­tion­ers iden­ti­fy suc­cess­ful strate­gies, choose the most effec­tive areas to work, and avoid com­mon pit­falls. How­ev­er, it is by no means a detailed, step- by-step guide for each com­po­nent. The book by Groves and Game, Con­ser­va­tion Plan­ning: Informed Deci­sions for a Health­i­er Plan­et is an excel­lent source for more detailed infor­ma­tion and exam­ples on some key ele­ments of the CbD 2.0 process. Where rel­e­vant, more detailed explo­ration of each step is pro­vid­ed via exam­ples, rec­om­mend­ed prac­tices, pro tips, and links to addi­tion­al learn­ing resources.

Read More

The pri­ma­ry text of this web­site was cre­at­ed from the Con­ser­va­tion by Design 2.0 Guid­ance Doc­u­ment. It is use­ful to think of the Guid­ance Doc­u­ment as a text­book — pro­vid­ing step-by-step instruc­tions on what a full CbD 2.0 strate­gic process entails. The web­site sup­ple­ments the Guid­ance by pro­vid­ing prac­ti­tion­ers with imple­men­ta­tion tips, exam­ples, tools, and best prac­tices, which are found in close prox­im­i­ty to the sec­tions of the Guid­ance that they sup­port. We will con­tin­ue to update the web­site with addi­tion­al exam­ples and resources as we iden­ti­fy them, and towards that end we encour­age you to sub­mit your exam­ples, case stud­ies, and oth­er tools that you find use­ful using the com­ment box­es at the bot­tom of most pages.

In addi­tion to guid­ing teams through the plan­ning method­ol­o­gy itself, the web­site includes a spe­cial sec­tion on the Key Advances that rep­re­sent the major evo­lu­tion­ary ele­ments of this sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of Con­ser­va­tion by Design. These four sec­tions pro­vide impor­tant con­text to under­stand the moti­va­tions behind the updat­ed method­ol­o­gy, and a con­cep­tu­al frame­work for its imple­men­ta­tion. We con­sol­i­dat­ed the dis­cus­sion of the Key Advances in one place because they per­me­ate Con­ser­va­tion by Design 2.0, mak­ing it redun­dant to include this infor­ma­tion at every place that it is rel­e­vant. More­over, it is essen­tial for teams to under­stand these advances if they are to effec­tive­ly imple­ment CbD 2.0.

The CbD 2.0 method­ol­o­gy is orga­nized into 14 steps, grouped into five over­ar­ch­ing phas­es which you will find by mou­s­ing over “Our Approach” on the top nav­i­ga­tion. Each Phase has a land­ing page, and each step con­tains a sum­ma­ry of its pur­pose, intend­ed prod­ucts, the process itself, min­i­mum stan­dard ques­tions that your team should ask at the end of every phase, and FAQs. Learn­ing resources are found through­out. By click­ing on “Expand All,” you can see all of the con­tent of each page. By click­ing on indi­vid­ual bul­lets, you can see addi­tion­al con­tent on that top­ic. A series of appen­dices, found under the “Resources” drop­down, pro­vide links to addi­tion­al exter­nal guid­ance, tools, and fur­ther dis­cus­sion on relat­ed topics.

Two exam­ple strate­gies recur through­out the web­site, to facil­i­tate under­stand­ing of how teams adjust their think­ing when pro­gress­ing through the steps of CbD 2.0. Table 2 pro­vides an overview of con­clu­sions from rel­e­vant steps for each strategy.

Read More