Applying This Guidance: Essential Reading for Practitioners

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.