Conservation Standards Workbook of Indicators
The use of adaptive management frameworks in conservation continues to grow. Yet, there is a persistent desire across the conservation community to provide proof-of-concept. Our intention with this Workbook of Indicators is to provide a go-to set of indicators, methods, tools and other resources that help organizations and practitioners to seek evidence of the utility and efficacy of using the Conservation Standards, or other similar frameworks.
Who is the audience?
The Workbook of Indicators and monitoring protocol can be used by any project team or conservation organization that is applying the Conservation Standards or a similar adaptive management framework. While the workbook was developed with projects or programs in mind, it could be useful at any scale as long as there is an underlying theory of change with results similar to the those described here. The main audience for this workbook are organizations, practitioners and CCNet coaches that are familiar with the Conservation Standards. Others could also benefit though they may want to refer to the Conservation Standards 4.0 for an overview of terms and concepts.
Theory of Change
The Conservation Standards workbook categories are based off the high-level group results defined in the CSEI theory of change. Teams are able to test the assumptions along this theory of change by monitoring selected indicators within each category.
How do I use it?
The Workbook of Indicators consists of seven pages, each of which includes a set of indicators (with details, methods, tools and resources) for teams to choose from to help them answer key questions and test common assumptions:
Enabling Conditions: Is the team ready to effectively use the Conservation Standards?
Planning: Does the plan contain all the elements of a 'good' plan?
Implementation: Are we doing what we said we would do? Are we doing it well?
Adaptive Management: Are we using evidence to effectively assess and adapt our plans?
Support: Does our project have sufficient support?
Impact: Are we having an impact?
External Limiting Factors: What unexpected, external factors are limiting our work?
Click on the links below to navigate to the respective pages.
