Specify Planning Context

Identify Challenges and Goals
Specify Planning Context

Purpose

Articulate how the planning effort is intended to benefit the organization’s and/or project team’s mission.
Identify the scope of planning, so that it is clear what the plan covers and what it does not, and who is expected to use the plan to implement conservation strategies.

Products

Statement of the scope of the planning effort
Statement of who is expected to implement the plan

As you and your team embark on this work, the critical first step is to ensure that everyone understands the scope and purpose of what you are undertaking, including who will be involved, and who will be using the plan. This section will help you answer those questions and lay a strong foundation for your strategy development.

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Specify audiences for planning and products.

Planning is done to guide action by an organization, or a team within an organization, or across several organizations. Specify who the audience(s) is that is expected to use the plan to take action.

External Resources

Spark Policy Institute Toolbox

The Spark Policy Institute hosts a community toolbox contributed to by experienced and cutting-edge social innovators. Twelve toolkits provide practical tools to help funders, nonprofits, business and community leaders enhance their ability to ignite social change.

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Specify topical constraints and geographic scope.

The conservation process described in this document is most appropriately applied at global, national, or whole system (e.g. river basin, growing region) scales. This Guidance will be sub-optimal for conservation work implemented entirely within a local-scale site because of the focus on achieving systemic change, which is hard to achieve working only at a local scale. Topical constraints could include habitat type or realm (e.g. marine, coral reefs, or forests), or socio-economic topics, such as major sectors (energy sector, health sector) or challenges (e.g. food security, disaster risk reduction, transportation infrastructure expansion).

Tools You Can Use

Tools for urban conservation strategies

A collaborative project of The Nature Conservancy and the Center for Whole Communities, the Field Guide to Conservation in Cities in North America shares early lessons about planning, getting programs off the ground, handling partnerships and promoting engagement in urban conservation.
Ensure that planning focuses on significant conservation challenges.
Global and regional applications of this science-based approach can help identify the most important challenges for the organization to confront (Appendix H). When this information is not known, it is critical to conduct the situation analysis (see next step) before constraining the scope too far. Starting into a planning exercise with pre-determined foci that were not chosen through a science-based process risks missing important challenges and opportunities for conservation within a socio-ecological system.
Pro Tips
- Refer to Appendix H
  
  Appendix H
Consider a broad geographic scope.

The socio-ecological system can be as large as the globe or focused on a predominantly ecologically or politically defined area. Consider whole basins or areas where a particular conservation challenge is evidenced. The scale of the socio-ecological system should encourage the identification of major drivers change and opportunities to create systemic change, recognizing that the strategies ultimately selected for implementation may end up being focused on smaller subsets of places or specific actors.
Do a wall-to-wall analysis within your geographic scope.

When the team is focused on a geography (e.g., Yangtze River Basin), they should start by considering the whole socio-ecological system, rather than a predetermined subset of places within it thought to be most important for biodiversity. This allows full consideration of working lands, ecosystem services, landscape processes, and drivers of processes in the situation analysis.

Minimum Standard Questions

Have the target audience(s) that are expected to take action been identified, along with a draft list of the products each needs from the planning and implementation process?
Is the effort scoped to solve conservation challenges that will meaningfully benefit the organization’s mission or project team’s goals?
Were existing science-based organizational analyses considered when identifying the conservation challenges or socio-ecological system to focus on?
Is the geographic scope at the right scale to identify strategies that can achieve systemic change?
Is the effort scoped to solve conservation challenges that will meaningfully benefit nature?

FAQS Show All

Why aren’t conservation targets (species, systems, processes, services) selected as part of scoping?

How are focal conservation challenges identified?

Specify Planning Context

Specify audiences for planning and products.

Specify topical constraints and geographic scope.

Ensure that planning focuses on significant conservation challenges.

Consider a broad geographic scope.

Do a wall-to-wall analysis within your geographic scope.

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