Browsing by Author "Possingham, Hugh P."

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    How conservation initiatives go to scale
    (2019) Mills, Morena; Bode, Michael; Mascia, Michael B.; Weeks, Rebecca; Gelcich, Stefan; Dudley, Nigel; Govan, Hugh; Archibald, Carla L.; Romero-de-Diego, Cristina; Holden, Matthew; Biggs, Duan; Glew, Louise; Naidoo, Robin; Possingham, Hugh P.
    Although a major portion of the planet's land and sea is managed to conserve biodiversity, little is known about the extent, speed and patterns of adoption of conservation initiatives. We undertook a quantitative exploration of how area-based conservation initiatives go to scale by analysing the adoption of 22 widely recognized and diverse initiatives from across the globe. We use a standardized approach to compare the potential of different initiatives to reach scale. While our study is not exhaustive, our analyses reveal consistent patterns across a variety of initiatives: adoption of most initiatives (82% of our case studies) started slowly before rapidly going to scale. Consistent with diffusion of innovation theory, most initiatives exhibit slow-fast-slow (that is, sigmoidal) dynamics driven by interactions between existing and potential adopters. However, uptake rates and saturation points vary among the initiatives and across localities. Our models suggest that the uptake of most of our case studies is limited; over half of the initiatives will be taken up by <30% of their potential adopters. We also provide a methodology for quantitatively understanding the process of scaling. Our findings inform us how initiatives scale up to widespread adoption, which will facilitate forecasts of the future level of adoption of initiatives, and benchmark their extent and speed of adoption against those of our case studies.
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    Insights on fostering the emergence of robust conservation actions from Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE program
    (2019) Biggs, Duan; Ban, Natalie C.; Castilla, Juan Carlos; Gelcich, Stefan; Mills, Morena; Gandiwa, Edson; Etienne, Michel; Knight, Andrew T.; Marquet, Pablo A.; Possingham, Hugh P.
    One strategy to address threats to biodiversity in the face of ongoing budget constraints is to create an enabling environment that facilitates individuals, communities and other groups to self-organise to achieve conservation outcomes. Emergence (new activities and initiatives), and robustness (durability of these activities and initiatives over time), two related concepts from the common pool resources literature, provide guidance on how to support and enable such self-organised action for conservation. To date emergence has received little attention in the literature. Our exploratory synthesis of the conditions for emergence from the literature highlighted four themes: for conservation to emerge, actors need to 1) recognise the need for change, 2) expect positive outcomes, 3) be able to experiment to achieve collective learning, and 4) have legitimate local scale governance authority. Insights from the literature on emergence and robustness suggest that an appropriate balance should be maintained between external guidance of conservation and enabling local actors to find solutions appropriate to their contexts. We illustrate the conditions for emergence, and its interaction with robustness, through discussing the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe and reflect on efforts at strengthening local autonomy and management around the world. We suggest that the delicate balance between external guidance of actions, and supporting local actors to develop their own solutions, should be managed adaptively over time to support the emergence of robust conservation actions. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.
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    Revisiting "success" and "failure" of marine protected areas : A conservation scientist perspective
    (2018) Giakoumi, Sylvaine; McGowan, Jennifer; Mills, Morena; Beger, Maria; Bustamante, Rodrigo H.; Charles, Anthony; Christie, Patrick; Fox, Matthew; Garcia-Borboroglu, Pablo; Gelcich, Stefan; Guidetti, Paolo; Mackelworth, Peter; Maina, Joseph M.; McCook, Laurence; Micheli, Fiorenza; Morgan, Lance E.; Mumby, Peter J.; Reyes, Laura M.; White, Alan; Grorud-Colvert, Kirsten; Possingham, Hugh P.