Where’s the Room for Improvement for M&E in Conservation?

Version 3.0: Updating the Conservation Measures Partnership Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation

Richard Margoluis, Foundations of Success

The Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (The “Open Standards”) are the product of the best thinking of conservation practitioners from around the world on project/program conceptualization, design, management, and M&E. In effect, they represent a consensus statement of how these practitioners – and the organizations they represent – define quality in conservation action management. The Standards have influenced the approaches of countless organizations, and these organizations have, in turn, influenced the development of the CMP Standards. This is now your opportunity to provide input into the next version of the Standards, due to be released in the Fall of 2011. Participants in this workshop will be asked to read the Standards before the session and be prepared to provide concrete and constructive suggestions for their improvement. We will work in breakout groups and plenary to address specific steps as well as the overall approach and framework of the Standards. The product of this working session will be presented to the CMP Executive Committee. Please join us and help shape the next version of the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation!

Building a Framework of Approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in Conservation

Michelle Thieme, World Wildlife Fund; Andy Rowe, ARCeconomics

Scholars and practitioners assess conservation initiatives in widely varied ways, attributable to the great diversity of contexts within which conservationists work and the variety of questions that they need answered. Diverse evaluative approaches have thus emerged, often independently and without coordination among conservationists, leading to a general lack of understanding how these approaches are implemented and used and how they may compliment or diverge from one another. Our lack of knowledge of the relationships and appropriate applications of differing evaluation approaches limits the rigor of evaluation in conservation, ultimately undermining the role of M&E, and restricting its uptake in the field. To address this issue, we review and categorize M&E approaches in conservation based upon the question each approach seeks to answer. In this presentation we identify, characterize and describe five major approaches to M&E in conservation, provide guidance on useful application of the approaches, and identify areas of growth and improvement for M&E in conservation.

1 Comment

  1. Matt
    16 June 11, 8:47am

    The Conservation Measures Partnership
    http://www.conservationmeasures.org/

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