Increasingly, people and nature face connected challenges presented by larger human populations, higher consumption rates, larger-scale development projects, and diminishing and degrading natural resources, all intensified by a changing climate. In this context, conservation efforts have an opportunity to enhance the chances for nature to flourish by offering solutions to some of earth’s greatest social and economic challenges. Capitalizing on these opportunities requires a robust, science-based conservation approach that draws on existing strengths, and expands to embrace new disciplines from economics to anthropology, from demography to health.
The Conservation by Design 2.0 conservation process builds off of the strong and widely adopted approach of adaptive management. Adaptive management is a structured, iterative process of systematically testing assumptions to learn, adapt and improve decision-making in the face of uncertainty. From previous, common applications of this approach in conservation, Conservation by Design 2.0 has evolved to incorporate four major advances: 1) explicitly consider linkages between people and nature, 2) design interventions focused on creating systemic change, 3) integrate spatial planning with the development of new conservation strategies, and 4) robustly draw upon and build the evidence base for conservation. We believe that these advances will lead to better conservation strategies and better conservation outcomes, for both nature and people. These four advances are interrelated and each is elaborated upon in this website.