Background

Over the past few years, there have been advances in measuring the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation projects, programs, and organizations. There is still, however, a major gap between the rhetoric of organizations, including funders, around the desirability of measuring conservation effectiveness, versus the reality of actually adopting and implementing specific and transparent systems that allow us to improve our collective work.

Purpose

The Measuring Conservation Effectiveness Summits (held in May 2010 and November 2011) brought together top program managers and scientists from leading conservation organizations and environmental program directors and officers from major funding organizations to discuss a collective vision and approach to systematically measuring conservation performance. The Summits led to an expanding Community of Practice focused on measuring conservation effectiveness and results-based management.

Our Vision

Global conservation efforts will be more efficient and effective as we increasingly know how to leverage or replicate what works and not repeat what doesn’t based upon credible measurement of our effectiveness and the open sharing of the lessons we learn.

Summit Materials and Products

Consensus Statement (2010) – Summit participants endorsed this joint statement of vision and key actions to advance results based management in conservation.

Survey of Current Practice – Summit participants conducted a survey of current results-based management practices in the conservation community. See report and PPT.

Presentations -To set the stage for the Summit, participants gave presentations providing overviews of the conceptual basis and status of results based management in conservation and highlighting ‘bright spots’ of current practice.

Our Vision

Global conservation efforts will be more efficient and effective as we increasingly know how to leverage or replicate what works and not repeat what doesn’t based upon credible measurement of our effectiveness and the open sharing of the lessons we learn.

Key Documents & Notes

The following are raw, unedited notes taken at the 2010 Summit. They are provided in the interest of transparency and to help Summit participants reflect on and share their meeting experience with others.

Working Agenda
Sheila’s Notes – Notes by Sheila O’Connor
Matt’s Notes – Notes by Matt Muir
Survey Data – This contains the analysis sent around before the Summit(3.5 mb pptx)
Survey Questionnaire: NGOs – Questions asked of NGOs(668 kb pdf)
Survey Questionnaire: Funders – Questions asked of funders(879 kb pdf)

Notes, documents, and other materials from the Summit are archived here.

For additional information please contact RBM@ConservationMeasures.org

Presentations

Overview

Overture – Nick Salafsky’s overview presentation (4.8 mb)
Survey Results – Elizabeth O’Neill and Matt Muir’s presentation of survey results (2.6 mb)

Bright Spot

AWF Presentation – Adam Henson (12 mb)
Conservation  International Presentation – Hari Balasubramanian (12 mb)
Moore MCI Presentation – Emily Goodwin (2 mb)
USAID Presentation – Cynthia Gill (426kb)
NFWF Presentation – Matt Birnbaum (1.7 mb)
TNC Presentation – Peter Kareiva (271 kb)
Rare Presentation – Dale Galvin (6.2 mb)
WCS-MIIS-FOS Presentation – Karl Didier (3.7 mb)
Miradi & ConPro Presentation – Information Systems for tracking and reporting on results-based management, Dan Salzer (3.4 mb)
GEF Presentation – Mark Zimsky (2.6 mb)

Other

Vision Presentation – Packard/Walton presentation about vision using Gulf as example (4.6 mb)
Berwick Video – Rare’s interview with Donald Berwick (YouTube Video)