Glossary

All Glos­sary terms found in this site are list­ed below.

Adap­tive Man­age­ment: A struc­tured, iter­a­tive process of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly test­ing assump­tions to learn, adapt and improve deci­sion-mak­ing in the face of uncer­tain­ty. Adap­tive man­age­ment encom­pass­es the design, man­age­ment and mon­i­tor­ing of a strategy.

Bio­di­ver­si­ty: the vari­abil­i­ty with­in and among all liv­ing organ­isms and the eco­log­i­cal com­plex­es in which they occur. Bio­di­ver­si­ty includes ecosys­tem or com­mu­ni­ty diver­si­ty, species diver­si­ty, genet­ic diver­si­ty and the eco­log­i­cal and evo­lu­tion­ary process­es that sus­tain it.

Com­mu­ni­ty of Prac­tice (CoP): As defined by Eti­enne Wenger, who coined the term, a CoP is a group “of peo­ple who share a con­cern or a pas­sion for some­thing they do and learn how to do it bet­ter as they inter­act regularly…[reflecting] the fun­da­men­tal­ly social nature of human learn­ing.” A CoP exists when a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty shares a domain, a com­mu­ni­ty and a prac­tice. http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/what-is-a-community-of-practice/

Con­cep­tu­al mod­el: A con­cep­tu­al mod­el is a tool for visu­al­ly depict­ing the con­text we want to change and, in par­tic­u­lar, the major forces that are influ­enc­ing nature and peo­ple with­in the scope ana­lyzed.  It is a dia­gram that uses a series of box­es and arrows to suc­cinct­ly rep­re­sent a set of causal rela­tion­ships among fac­tors that are believed to impact one or more con­ser­va­tion targets.

Con­ser­va­tion Action Plan­ning (CAP): CAP is the pre­cur­sor to the Open Stan­dards for Con­ser­va­tion. CAP is a frame­work devel­oped by The Nature Con­ser­van­cy in the 1990s to help prac­ti­tion­ers focus their con­ser­va­tion strate­gies on a lim­it­ed num­ber of bio­di­ver­si­ty ele­ments (con­ser­va­tion tar­gets), artic­u­late the threats to these con­ser­va­tion tar­gets, and then mea­sure and adap­tive­ly man­age the result­ing strate­gies over time. CAP was a foun­da­tion­al con­ser­va­tion plan­ning approach for the Con­ser­van­cy used exten­sive­ly inter­nal­ly and by part­ners until the mid-2000s. Since the mid-2000s, the Open Stan­dards (see below) has expand­ed and improved on CAP, and thus it is the more cur­rent method­ol­o­gy. Con­ser­va­tion by Design 2.0 and the Open Stan­dards are intend­ed to update and replace that work­book and we urge prac­ti­tion­ers to use them instead of CAP.

Con­ser­va­tion Busi­ness Plan­ning: this was the pre­vi­ous iter­a­tion of the Con­ser­van­cy’s con­ser­va­tion plan­ning approach. CbD 2.0 Guid­ance replaces Con­ser­va­tion Busi­ness Plan­ning (CBP). Note that the major­i­ty of CBP attrib­ut­es were car­ried for­ward into this Guid­ance. The prin­ci­ple objec­tive of con­ser­va­tion busi­ness plan­ning was to clar­i­fy expec­ta­tions and help man­agers and teams focus on what is most impor­tant and use­ful in plan­ning, as well as pro­duce brief, use­ful and dynam­ic con­ser­va­tion busi­ness plans. Inter­est­ed staff can find archived infor­ma­tion about CBP here

Con­ser­va­tion Coach­es Net­work (CCNet): A for­mal net­work of prac­ti­tion­ers who have been trained in the Open Stan­dards and in coach­ing oth­ers to use them. CCNet is glob­al, with over 500 trained coach­es from 60 coun­tries. Please see Appen­dix B for more infor­ma­tion about CCNet.

Con­ser­va­tion Tar­get: is a type of pri­ma­ry inter­est that is direct­ly asso­ci­at­ed with bio­di­ver­si­ty. It is defined as enti­ties, traits, process­es or val­ues we aim to con­serve, it can include species, ecosys­tems and oth­er aspects of bio­di­ver­si­ty, as well as, envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices or nat­ur­al processes.

Dri­ver: A gener­ic term for an ele­ment of a con­cep­tu­al mod­el includ­ing direct and indi­rect threats, oppor­tu­ni­ties and stake­hold­ers. Also known as a fac­tor or root cause in Open Standards.

Eco­nom­ic bar­ri­ers: Obsta­cles to enter­ing a giv­en mar­ket. These hin­drances may include gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion such as edu­ca­tion or licens­ing require­ments, or patents, tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenges, high sunk costs, or high start-up costs.

Eco­nom­ic val­ue: The ben­e­fit an indi­vid­ual receives from a good or a ser­vice. Equal to the max­i­mum will­ing­ness of the indi­vid­ual to pay for that good or service.

Ecosys­tem ser­vices: The ben­e­fits nature pro­vides to peo­ple. Ecosys­tem ser­vices can pro­vide mate­r­i­al ben­e­fits (such as food, water and employ­ment) or intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits (such as spir­i­tu­al val­ues and intel­lec­tu­al sat­is­fac­tion) and can con­tribute to any com­po­nent of human well-being.

Eval­u­a­tion: an assess­ment of a pro­gram’s impact.

Evi­dence: the body of report­ed data and infor­ma­tion that we draw from or build in the design and imple­men­ta­tion of con­ser­va­tion strategies.

Exclud­able good: A good or ser­vice whose use or pos­ses­sion can be pre­vent­ed for those who have not paid for it.

Free, Pri­or, and Informed Con­sent (FPIC): the prin­ci­ple that any­one has the right to give or with­hold infor­ma­tion or knowl­edge that they pos­sess, and any com­mu­ni­ty or indi­vid­ual has the right to give or with­hold con­sent to pro­posed projects that may affect the lands they cus­tom­ar­i­ly own, occu­py or oth­er­wise use. It implies the absence of coer­cion and out­side pres­sure (Free), hav­ing suf­fi­cient time to allow for infor­ma­tion-gath­er­ing and full dis­cus­sion; includ­ing trans­la­tions into tra­di­tion­al lan­guages, before a project starts (Pri­or); hav­ing all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion avail­able reflect­ing all views and posi­tions (Informed); and the demon­stra­tion of clear and com­pelling agree­ment, in keep­ing with the deci­sion-mak­ing struc­tures of the com­mu­ni­ties in ques­tion, includ­ing tra­di­tion­al con­sen­sus pro­ce­dures (Con­sent). See Appen­dix C for more information

Goal, or Min­i­mum Goal State­ment: gen­er­at­ed ear­ly on in the con­ser­va­tion process and describes the low­est accept­able thresh­old for suc­cess, for nature and con­nect­ed human well-being inter­ests. Min­i­mum goals are con­vert­ed to out­come state­ments when strate­gies are select­ed and the the­o­ry of change is articulated.

Healthy Coun­try Plan­ning (“HCP”): An approach used by Indige­nous Aus­tralians, facil­i­tat­ed by con­ser­va­tion coach­es, that adapts the Open Stan­dards to guide Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties in mak­ing a plan to look after their coun­try, cul­ture, and peo­ple, and to iden­ti­fy ways to devel­op liveli­hoods while man­ag­ing their lands appro­pri­ate­ly. HCP puts the deci­sions about the plan­ning approach, the use of the plan­ning tools, the plan­ning con­tent, and the strate­gic deci­sions that emerge from it, back in the hands of the peo­ple whose coun­try it is. It is plan­ning with peo­ple and place, not for peo­ple and place.

Human Well-Being: A state of being in which one’s needs are met, one can act mean­ing­ful­ly to pur­sue cho­sen goals, and one enjoys a sat­is­fac­to­ry qual­i­ty of life. Human well-being is a com­plex state that can be defined by mul­ti­ple com­po­nents, includ­ing basic sus­te­nance, health, edu­ca­tion, work and leisure, gov­er­nance, social cohe­sion, secu­ri­ty, and equality.

Human well-being focal area: Broad aspects of life that broad­ly define human well-being. The Con­ser­van­cy has devel­oped a human well-being frame­work that includes eight focal areas. Please see Appen­dix E for more details.

Human well-being inter­est: a type of pri­ma­ry inter­est that deals specif­i­cal­ly with peo­ple. It spec­i­fies the human well-being focal area or com­po­nent that the Con­ser­van­cy and oth­er project part­ners care about. Typ­i­cal­ly the draft goal state­ment and final out­come state­ments are set for only a sub­set of iden­ti­fied human well-being interests.

Impact: The desired future state of a con­ser­va­tion tar­get or human well-being.

Inter­me­di­ate result: essen­tial pre­cur­sors to achiev­ing out­comes. Inter­me­di­ate results are often the near-term focus of strate­gies and evi­dence that the the­o­ry of change is play­ing out as expected.

Knowl­edge shar­ing: the spec­trum of activ­i­ties through which infor­ma­tion, skills, and exper­tise are exchanged.

Mar­ket forces: Fac­tors that deter­mine the sup­ply and the demand for a good or a service.

Mar­ket trans­ac­tions: The vol­un­tary exchange of goods and services.

Mar­ket val­ue: The amount of resources an indi­vid­ual must give up to obtain the good or the ser­vice in ques­tion. Indi­cates the min­i­mum will­ing­ness to pay of a con­sumer for the good or ser­vice in question.

Mea­sures: express the results of mon­i­tor­ing and analy­sis in the con­text of out­comes and man­age­ment decisions.

Mon­i­tor­ing: the act of col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion over time to pro­vide data on a pro­jec­t’s status.

Nature: Bio­di­ver­si­ty and ecosys­tem ser­vices, as well as the process­es nec­es­sary to main­tain them.

Open Stan­dards: A project of the Con­ser­va­tion Mea­sures Part­ner­ship (CMP) to com­bine prin­ci­ples and best prac­tices in adap­tive man­age­ment and results-based man­age­ment from con­ser­va­tion and oth­er fields to cre­ate the Open Stan­dards for the Prac­tice of Con­ser­va­tion. The Open Stan­dards bring togeth­er com­mon con­cepts, approach­es, and ter­mi­nol­o­gy in con­ser­va­tion project design, man­age­ment, and mon­i­tor­ing in order to help prac­ti­tion­ers improve the prac­tice of conservation.

Out­come: state­ment detail­ing desired impact of project, such as the desired future sta­tus of a con­ser­va­tion tar­get or human well-being inter­est. An out­come state­ment should be linked to con­ser­va­tion tar­gets and/or con­nect­ed human well-being inter­ests, impact ori­ent­ed, mea­sur­able, time lim­it­ed and specific.

Out­come Map­ping: “an approach to plan­ning, mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion that puts peo­ple at the cen­tre; defines out­comes as changes in behav­ior; and helps mea­sure con­tri­bu­tion to com­plex change process­es.” www.outcomemapping.ca

Pri­ma­ry inter­ests: A gen­er­al term for the top­ics that plan­ning orga­ni­za­tions, influ­en­tial actors, and impor­tant stake­hold­ers care about in the con­text of the socio-eco­log­i­cal sys­tem or prob­lem, and their desires for con­ser­va­tion. There are two major types of pri­ma­ry inter­ests: nature (i.e., bio­di­ver­si­ty, con­ser­va­tion tar­get) and peo­ple (i.e., human well-being inter­est). Typ­i­cal­ly draft goals and out­comes are set for only a sub­set of iden­ti­fied pri­ma­ry interests.

Rel­e­vant groups: the peo­ple that are affect­ed — pos­i­tive­ly or neg­a­tive­ly — by envi­ron­men­tal change and con­ser­va­tion actions.

Results Chain: A results chain is a dia­gram that depicts the assumed causal link­age between an inter­ven­tion and desired impacts through a series of expect­ed inter­me­di­ate results.

Return on Invest­ment (ROI): A per­for­mance mea­sure used to eval­u­ate the effi­cien­cy of an invest­ment or to com­pare the effi­cien­cy of a num­ber of dif­fer­ent invest­ments. In con­ser­va­tion strate­gies, return on invest­ment assess the increase in the con­ser­va­tion out­comes per unit cost of the con­ser­va­tion action.

Rival resource: A good or a ser­vice that can only be used or con­sumed by a sin­gle user. Pre­cludes use or con­sump­tion by others.

Sit­u­a­tion analy­sis: an assess­ment that iden­ti­fies and weighs the key chal­lenges affect­ing pri­ma­ry inter­ests in a place or prob­lem, includ­ing the polit­i­cal, socioe­co­nom­ic, insti­tu­tion­al, and eco­log­i­cal fac­tors cre­at­ing impacts or threats, dri­ving change, and pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­ser­va­tion intervention.

Social safe­guards: are a means to ensure we uphold human rights and achieve long-term sus­tain­able con­ser­va­tion out­comes in addi­tion to being a risk assess­ment and mit­i­ga­tion tool.

Socio-Eco­log­i­cal Sys­tem: defined by Singh et. al 2012 as: 1) a coher­ent sys­tem of bio­phys­i­cal and social fac­tors that reg­u­lar­ly inter­act, 2) a sys­tem that is defined at sev­er­al spa­tial, tem­po­ral, and orga­ni­za­tion­al scales, which may be hier­ar­chi­cal­ly linked, 3) a set of crit­i­cal resources (nat­ur­al, socioe­co­nom­ic, and cul­tur­al) whose flow and use is reg­u­lat­ed by a com­bi­na­tion of eco­log­i­cal and social sys­tems, and 4) a per­pet­u­al­ly dynam­ic sys­tem with con­tin­u­ous adaptation.

Stake­hold­er: Any indi­vid­ual, group, or insti­tu­tion who has a vest­ed inter­est in the nat­ur­al resources of the project area and/or who poten­tial­ly will be affect­ed by project activ­i­ties and have some­thing to gain or lose if con­di­tions change or stay the same.

Strat­e­gy: The set of actions or inter­ven­tions that a project imple­ments in order to achieve a desired impact for nature and people.

Strat­e­gy Map­ping: spa­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the impact of dif­fer­ent can­di­date strate­gies, based on the dis­tri­b­u­tion and sta­tus of con­ser­va­tion tar­gets, human well-being tar­gets and threats, and map­ping of enabling con­di­tions of inter­me­di­ate results.

Sys­temic Change: refers to cre­at­ing or strength­en­ing the social, eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al sys­tems that com­prise and sus­tain a socio-eco­log­i­cal system.

The­o­ry of Change: The descrip­tion of a sequence of events that is expect­ed to lead to a par­tic­u­lar desired out­come. It shows a causal path­way from the cur­rent to the desired sit­u­a­tion by spec­i­fy­ing what is need­ed for goals to be achieved, artic­u­lat­ing under­ly­ing assump­tions which can be test­ed and measured.

Whole Sys­tem: a term com­mon­ly used by the Con­ser­van­cy to describe social-eco­log­i­cal sys­tems, which have a rec­og­niz­able, uni­fy­ing eco­log­i­cal or phys­i­cal fea­ture. They are large enough to be resilient to sig­nif­i­cant dis­tur­bances and sus­tain ecosys­tem ser­vices that human com­mu­ni­ties rely on as well as key eco­log­i­cal process­es. Whole sys­tems are mosaics of high eco­log­i­cal integri­ty areas embed­ded in a matrix of lands and waters that vary in qual­i­ty but are crit­i­cal for pro­vid­ing habi­tat, increas­ing effec­tive­ness of pro­tect­ed areas, and con­tribut­ing to connectivity.