TY - JOUR
T1 - The major barriers to evidence‐informed conservation policy and possible solutions
AU - Rose, David C.
AU - Sutherland, William J.
AU - Amano, Tatsuya
AU - González-Varo, Juan P.
AU - Robertson, Rebecca J.
AU - Simmons, Benno I.
AU - Wauchope, Hannah S.
AU - Kovacs, Eszter
AU - Durán, América Paz
AU - Vadrot, Alice B. M.
AU - Wu, Weiling
AU - Dias, Maria P.
AU - Di Fonzo, Martina M. I.
AU - Ivory, Sarah
AU - Norris, Lucia
AU - Nunes, Matheus Henrique
AU - Nyumba, Tobias Ochieng
AU - Steiner, Noa
AU - Vickery, Juliet
AU - Mukherjee, Nibedita
PY - 2018/9
Y1 - 2018/9
N2 - Conservation policy decisions can suffer from a lack of evidence, hindering effective decision‐making. In nature conservation, studies investigating why policy is often not evidence‐informed have tended to focus on Western democracies, with relatively small samples. To understand global variation and challenges better, we established a global survey aimed at identifying top barriers and solutions to the use of conservation science in policy. This obtained the views of 758 people in policy, practice, and research positions from 68 countries across six languages. Here we show that, contrary to popular belief, there is agreement between groups about how to incorporate conservation science into policy, and there is thus room for optimism. Barriers related to the low priority of conservation were considered to be important, while mainstreaming conservation was proposed as a key solution. Therefore, priorities should focus on convincing the public of the importance of conservation as an issue, which will then influence policy‐makers to adopt pro‐environmental long‐term policies.
AB - Conservation policy decisions can suffer from a lack of evidence, hindering effective decision‐making. In nature conservation, studies investigating why policy is often not evidence‐informed have tended to focus on Western democracies, with relatively small samples. To understand global variation and challenges better, we established a global survey aimed at identifying top barriers and solutions to the use of conservation science in policy. This obtained the views of 758 people in policy, practice, and research positions from 68 countries across six languages. Here we show that, contrary to popular belief, there is agreement between groups about how to incorporate conservation science into policy, and there is thus room for optimism. Barriers related to the low priority of conservation were considered to be important, while mainstreaming conservation was proposed as a key solution. Therefore, priorities should focus on convincing the public of the importance of conservation as an issue, which will then influence policy‐makers to adopt pro‐environmental long‐term policies.
KW - conservation policy
KW - evidence‐based conservation
KW - evidence‐informed conservation
KW - knowledge exchange
KW - political science
KW - science communication
KW - science‐policy
U2 - 10.1111/conl.12564
DO - 10.1111/conl.12564
M3 - Article
SN - 1755-263X
VL - 11
JO - Conservation Letters
JF - Conservation Letters
IS - 5
M1 - e12564
ER -