Sabbatical leave programme 2016

Title of the research: An integrative web-based decision support system for land-use planning processes: taking biodiversity into account

Name of staff member: Dr. Johannes Refisch

Institution: United Nations Environment Programme

Academic supervisor’s name and title: Prof. Dr. Kerrie Wilson, Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions and Dr. Hjalmar Kuehl, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Date:

© United Nations Sabbatical Leave Programme

The views and recommendations expressed in this report are solely those of the original author and other contributors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the United Nations, its agencies or its Member States. Textual material may be freely reproduced with proper citation as appropriate.

Endorsement by academic supervisor

This is to certify that this report is based on the research undertaken by Dr. Johannes Refisch during the period of February 6 2017 and April 7 at the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia under my supervision.

Signature:

Name: Kerrie Wilson

Title: Associate Professor

Date:

This is to certify that this report is based on the research undertaken by Dr. Johannes Refisch during the period of April 19 2017 and June 8 2017 at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology under my supervision.

Signature:

Name:

Title:

Date:

ST/IC/2015/28

3/30 15-23049

Abstract Africa is changing at an unprecedented rate, and a lot of this change is driven by the extractive sector and the associated infrastructure development. The Great Ape Survival Partnership (GRASP) is involved in a number of large-scale stakeholder processes related to land use planning and transboundary collaboration in great ape range states in Africa and Asia. GRASP advises governments and partners in land-use planning under full consideration of biodiversity benefits. These are very complex processes, as a) there is a wide range of stakeholders with different and sometimes conflicting interests, and b) environmental decisions are often complex in nature and it is difficult to predict the potential outcomes and repercussions of specific decisions.

This research project used state of the art models in decision making in combination with a technical, web-based decision support system to advise GRASP, great ape range state governments and the wider conservation practitioner community on land use planning.

Land use planning is both a political and a technical process. MAP-X is a data platform that maps and assesses the performance of the extractive industries. This platform demonstrates a novel approach, as it only considers concession layers which are approved by the government. In this way, the government is compelled to respond when stakeholders question the transparency of the process. Moreover, the involvement of the United Nations provides a level of impartiality, which adds credibility to the platform. MAP-X is also a valuable web-based spatial and land use planning platform. MAP-X integrates relevant case studies and scrutinized information from a number of different databases, including A.P.E.S. (Ape Populations, Environments, Surveys), MAP-X and ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project), to name a few. Preliminary results indicate that many great ape populations are found in conflict areas, and in these areas there is often an overlap with planned and existing mining concessions and artisanal mining. In some cases there are still data gaps (e.g. illegal and artisanal mining in Kahuzi-Biega National Park) which GRASP will seek to fill in early 2018 with field missions. A central question is whether conflict sensitive conservation eventually pays off in these difficult areas or whether it just absorbs more money. My exploration into this revealed that data on investments in conflict sensitive conservation remains insufficient. A questionnaire developed by IUCN and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology will help to answer this question. The questionnaire has been sent out to conservation practitioners in Central and West Africa. Together with CEED, we are exploring options for a more in-depth study into conflict sensitive conservation, involving field work in Eastern DR Congo. The roll out of MAP-X’s version 3 represents an important development, as this version combines information beyond the extractives sector. GRASP and other units in UNEP are intending to use MAP-X as the spatial planning tool for a current project, which will involve land use planning in the Congo peatlands.

This project is innovative and unique as it a) will develop a transparent cross-sectoral and multi-level governance mechanism under the leadership of the United Nations, b) applies international transparency standards to all sectors using MAP-X and c) applies new economic models, providing economic incentives to conserve biodiversity and the unique peatland landscape in which it is located. This will be the first time that such a comprehensive suite of different sectors will work together to protect and manage this unique and ecologically important peatland landscape. However, there is more to these highly complex, multi-disciplinary, dynamic and often cross-border land use planning processes than just the provision of accurate data. Decisions do not always follow an economic argument, sometimes decisions are irrational. To influence the environmental policy debate and to lead complex land use planning processes, conservation science needs to be able to articulate how individuals may respond to incentives so that unintended consequences are avoided. Behavioural economics can deliver novel insights into stakeholder responses to policy regulations and incentives – and the training in behavioural economy will change the way I have approached stakeholder dialogues in the past! Another significant issue is the feedback loop in decision making. Most projects do invest in the monitoring of socio-ecological data, however, many monitoring programmes are not adequately designed to measure impact. This is either due to small scale funding grants that do not allow for proper M&E activity, or socioeconomic and ecological monitoring activities that are implemented without coordination, at different scales, and in different geographic areas. Ideally, an evaluation should be done years after the completion of the project to assess high-level outcomes and impact; however, funds are typically no longer available at this time. This also means that information on higher-level outcomes and impact is not available to inform management action. A paper on “monitoring socio-economic systems” is currently in preparation as one of my research outcomes.

Introduction

With the exception of Malaysia, all great ape range states are in the process of development, and their GDP depends to a large extent on the extraction of natural resources. It is very difficult to prepare for future threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Such threats result from a wide range of human-related activities, such as oil and gas exploitation, mining, logging, industrial scale agriculture and climate change. Decisions related to land-use are complex, multi-disciplinary, dynamic, and multi-facetted, and often have impacts across national borders. However, this is largely new territory for scientific research of social and ecological systems, which has typically remained inside =disciplinary borders. CEED has developed innovative methodologies for integrating social behaviours, social preferences, ecological processes and human-nature interaction in an environmental decision analysis framework (Pooley et al. 20131, Raymond et al.

1 Pooley et al. (2013): Hunting down the chimera of mult-disciplinarity in conservation science. Conservation Biology 28 (1),

ST/IC/2015/28

5/30 15-23049

20132). These methodologies are yet to be applied to inter-governmental processes, such as transboundary collaboration initiatives. I am a trained ecologist. However environmental decision making is more than just understanding the ecological context. In this way, I decided to commence my research sabbatical at CEED, in order to learn from their innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies. I sought, to gain from CEED’s experience in social behaviour and human-nature interactions, and to learn models and tools for environmental decision making. However, models for stakeholder consultation processes and decision making are only as valuable as the information which is fed into the decision making process. This project used great apes as an indicator for biodiversity, the IUCN SSC (Species Survival Commission) and the A.P.E.S. database and portal (Ape Populations Environments Surveys) . The A.P.E.S database and portal is an integrative web-based decision support system, which is hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; hence I spent the second part of my sabbatical study leave at the Max Planck Institute. The A.P.E.S. portal was originally started as a global database for great ape population and habitat data, but the lack of contextual information limited the functionality and potential of the database. In 2014-2015, GRASP supported a project that overlaid carbon layers and information on great ape populations and habitats, revealing areas with high carbon value and great ape populations. Recommendations from this project inform decisions on REDD+ (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) investments in great ape range states. At the Max Planck Institute I worked closely with the Dr. Hjalmar Kuehl’s Team, especially with the A.P.E.S. database analyst and programmer. In previous years the team had produced Status Reports on Great Apes for GRASP and the ARCUS foundation, which analyzed great ape population numbers and changes in population densities. We are now exploring methods to analyze great ape population declines and predict future trends. Extractive industries and development are impacting large landscapes and have a significant impact on great ape populations. We used the DR Congo as a pilot study, providing great ape population numbers to the MAP-X project. MAP-X is a joint initiative of the World Bank and UNEP, which aims to increase transparency in the extractives sector. We overlaid information on mining concessions (active and planned) with information on great ape habitat. We also met as a team and gave the programmer instructions on how to improve the functionality of the database and allow the user to run simple analytics.

2 Raymond et al (2013): Applying social research techniques to improve the effectiveness of conservation planning. BioScience

63 (5): 320-321

Body of the report

Models in Environmental Decision Making

1) Behavioural Economics To influence the environmental policy debate, conservation science needs to be able to articulate how individuals may respond to incentives so that unintended consequences are avoided; for example, panic land clearing in response to proposed legislation changes. Behavioural economics can deliver novel insights into stakeholder responses to policy regulations and incentives. I attended a five day workshop, which brought together a mixture of academic, government and industry groups. The workshop provided (1) a foundation in behavioural economics, presented by researchers from the University of Western Australia, and the University of Queensland; (2) the opportunity to learn-through-doing by observing behavioural economics experiments; and (3) an opportunity to develop a collaborative research agenda. Using a recent land clearing event in Queensland, Australia as a case study, a behavioural economics approach was used to investigate of the behavioural drivers of compliance with conservation legislation on private lands. This scenario provided useful insights, which can be extended to other parts of the world. This was a useful workshop, which provided me with tools to facilitate stakeholder processes and to better understand and predict the behaviour of key stakeholder groups. The workshop team has been working on a publication, however GRASP was unable to contribute data. Despite this, the workshop was very relevant to my current work; GRASP and other UNEP units (terrestrial and freshwater) are currently developing a large project for cross-sectorial and multi-stakeholder land use planning. The land use planning project must allow for the sustainable development of the Congo peatland, while considering biodiversity and ecosystem services. This is a huge project, for which I will have the technical lead. The tools I have learnt in this workshop will help me to better understand the different stakeholders and their interest and behaviour.

In addition to the aforementioned workshop, I attended another workshop on monitoring socio-ecological systems, during which I played a more active role.

2) Monitoring Socio-ecological systems Making good conservation decisions requires information and understanding of the ecological, social and economic components of the issue at hand. Monitoring and research can provide this information, but this costs money and time and the true conservation benefits are often unknown. In the conservation sciences, optimal monitoring, value of information analysis, and management strategy evaluation have provided insights into the value of monitoring and research. But this work has focussed almost entirely on the ecological components of decision problems, with little value being found in the resultant output. As a consequence, such work often fails to incorporate the complex socio-ecological systems in which these problems exist. This results in a lack of understanding of the value of different types of information (e.g., ecological, social, and economic), and a lack of

ST/IC/2015/28

7/30 15-23049

direction for research and monitoring. Such a knowledge base critically limits the extent to which we can transparently: (1) prioritise research investment among ecological, social and economic aspects of conservation decision problems, and (2) inform monitoring choices among ecological, social and economic components to evaluate conservation outcomes and inform adaptive management. This workshop addressed such issues, by bringing together a multi-disciplinary team to achieve the following aims:

(1) Develop a conceptual framework for prioritising research investment

and monitoring among ecological, social and economic components of conservation problems.

(2) Quantify the value of monitoring and research for ecological, social, and economic components in a number of conservation examples including the issue of monitoring the impact of livelihood projects to reduce illegal hunting.

(3) Identify and plan future collaborative work (e.g. future working group funding, engagement with decision makers, symposia, policy briefs etc.).

Workshop participants discussed the GRASP case study of monitoring the impact of livelihood projects on reducing poaching pressure. The GRASP case study will be fed into a larger theoretic paper which I attach at the end of the report (Rhodes et al, to be submitted to Frontiers in Ecology and the environment)

2.1 GRASP Case Study Bushmeat hunting represents one of the biggest threats to tropical forest ecosystems, including primates and great apes, and a number of strategies have been tested with the aim of reducing bushmeat consumption and trade. Interventions range from education campaigns to law enforcement, to alternative livelihood projects with the aim to provide alternative protein and income generating activities. However, there is very little evidence that these activities have reduced pressure on wild populations. Wicander and Coad (2014)3 analysed 64 livelihood projects in Central Africa and found almost no evidence that these projects benefited wild populations. There could be many reasons for this, such as livelihood projects being seen as additional income activities rather than substitutional activities in the lack of sanctions and conditions. Furthermore, monitoring programmes are not adequately designed to measure impact, either because limited funding from small scale grants is not sufficient to undertake a proper M&E activity, or because socioeconomic and ecological monitoring activities are implemented without coordination, at different scales, and in different geographic areas. In terms of monitoring high level outcomes and impact, an evaluation should be done years after the completion of the project, however funds are rarely available at this time.

3 Wicander, S. and Coad, L. (2014): Learning our Lessons: A review of alternative livelihoods projects in Central Africa. ECI,

University of Oxford. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN

The management objective is to reduce hunting pressure on wild populations. There are many proposed interventions such as recruitment of “converted” poachers as eco-guards, provision of alternative livelihoods (to generate income and to provide other options for protein procurement), law enforcement, education, transfer of wildlife stewardship to communities and so on. For the overall management it is important to know whether the implemented activities do indeed reduce the pressure on wild populations, and if so, which activities are the most promising, under which circumstances, and at which costs.

Management Objective

Social Ecological

Mon

itori

ng O

bjec

tive

Accounting Monitor social state variables (income, employment, provision with animal protein, number of poachers)

Monitor ecological state variablesTarget wildlife population

Informing Management Choices

Monitor the social and/or ecological pathways linking decisions to social outcomes Number of poachers converted to ecoguards and farmers Number of poachers arrested

Monitor the social and/or ecological pathways linking decisions to ecological outcomes Wildlife presence in proximity to villages

Public Engagement

Monitor social and/or ecological variables that align with the public’s values Community members engaged in education campaigns, wildlife and habitat monitoring

Monitor social and/or ecological variables that align with the public’s values

Surveillance Spread monitoring across social and ecological components

Spread monitoring across social and ecological components

Table 1: Proposed principles for monitoring socio-ecological systems under different management and monitoring objectives.

This is a highly complex socio-economic and ecological environment, with interdependencies and also external factors such as demand for bushmeat and influx of bushmeat hunters from other areas. Project monitoring and evaluation

ST/IC/2015/28

9/30 15-23049

is crucial for adaptive project management (Salafski et al. 20014). The collection of socio-economic and ecological information in the target areas is a pre-requisite for any monitoring programme. With this information project managers can determine whether the status has changed over time or not. Monitoring project implementation and measuring output will also allow managers to evaluate the effectiveness of activities.

Behaviour change is key; the project aims to reduce poaching pressure on wild populations, so it is vital to measure whether there is less hunting in the target region in response to the project activities. Monitoring behaviour will show whether the assumptions made under the theory of change hold true or not. It is also important to consider the risk of unanticipated negative effects. For example, communities or community members who do not directly benefit from the project may seek to undermine its success.

Socio-economic outcomes and ecological outcomes In order to measure changes in local livelihoods and target wildlife populations, baseline information can be compared to repeat socio-economic and ecological surveys. While the comparison between socio-economic and ecological baseline information and repeat surveys is useful, establishing causality here is not as easy. Changes in wealth can be observed within much shorter time periods than in large mammal population. Livelihood projects are often restricted to “punctual”, small scale integrated conservation and development projects (IDPs) while the area for target species is much larger. Also, often it is difficult to link bushmeat to a specific catchment area (bushmeat can come from outside the project areas, same as poachers).

3) Stepping into the future: Driving the Technology agenda in Ecology and Conservation

Technology promises to revolutionise wildlife and habitat monitoring. The timely convergence of accelerating engineering progress, affordable manufacturing and global data connectivity offers an unprecedented opportunity to boost science and practice in Ecology and Conservation. It is time for these communities to go beyond their technology-consumer role to formally drive the interdisciplinary agenda of conservation technology or technoecology. While global collaborations are starting to emerge, the situation is still scattered. Furthermore, an explicit link to data analysis and decision-making is largely lacking. We need to develop a coordinated interdisciplinary collaboration between technologists, data modellers and the conservation community. This 4-day workshop gathered key global players in conservation technology

4 Salafsky, N., Margoluis, R. and Redford, K. (2001): Adaptive management: a tool for conservation practitioners. Biodiversity

Support Program, Washington, D.C.

and experts in ecological modelling and applied decision science, to shape he technology agenda in Ecology and Conservation. The following topics were discussed:

• Synthesis of current status: mapping the landscape of international players in conservation technology (research groups, NGOs, agencies, industry partnerships, online platforms/collaborations);

• Horizon scan to identify opportunities from current and emerging technologies: imagining the future of biodiversity monitoring;

• Road-mapping an agenda for research, development and international collaboration;

• Open-source technology: how to make it happen in practice, when is it (or when is it not) a good strategy, what support does it need to grow (e.g. online platform) and how do we fund this?

• Different "business models" or strategies for long-term sustainable development, financing and production of technology for ecology and conservation; and

• A review of what other bridges we need to build and how to get the ball rolling: data repositories, statistical / data analysis community, social sciences (e.g. ethical issues and new challenges like drones and privacy), legal issues (e.g. issues of IP and open-source licensing), emerging threats from technology (could organise a horizon scanning workshop "a la Sutherland et al."?)

The workshop group is also working on two scientific papers, the first is more technical, the second will focus more on the policy angle and will solicit my input.

4) Conflict sensitive conservation

Many great apes live in conflict and post-conflict countries. Conservation work in those areas is difficult and a high risk. Edd Hamill and colleagues from CEED published an interesting paper in 2016 on Risk modelling in Nature Communications, which incorporates attitudes towards armed conflict risk into the selection of protected areas (Hammill et al 20165). The high incidence of armed conflicts in biodiverse regions poses significant challenges in achieving international conservation targets. Due to the fact that attitudes towards risk vary, a range of different strategies for protected area planning were assessed. These reflected alternative attitudes towards the risk of armed conflicts. Findings revealed that ignoring conflict risk will deliver the lowest return on investment. Opting to completely avoid conflict-prone areas offers limited improvements and could lead to species receiving no protection. Accounting for conflict by protecting additional areas to offset the impacts of armed conflicts would not only increase the return on investment (an effect that is enhanced when high-risk areas are excluded) but also increase upfront conservation costs. These results also indicate that fine-scale

5 Hammill, E., Tulloch, A.I.T., Possingham, H.P., Strange, N. and Wilson, K. (2016): Factoring attitudes towards armed conflict

risk into selection of protected areas for conservation. Nature communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11042

ST/IC/2015/28

11/30 15-23049

estimations of conflict risk could enhance the cost-effectiveness of investments. The authors conclude that achieving biodiversity targets in volatile regions will require greater initial investment and will benefit from fine-resolution estimates of conflict risk. In light of the inconsistent nature of the quality and quantity of data across the African continent, this study used a continental perspective- exploring a range of countries across Africa.. Following this, it was decided that the study would reduce the scale and focus on the great ape range countries. I had the privilege of discussing ideas for a follow up paper with the authors. We started to compile a database with protected areas in great ape range states, and tried to extract information on management plans from IUCN reports and databases (e.g. World Database on protected areas hosted by the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, the IUCN database PAME (Protected Area Management Effectiveness) and METT (Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool). The resolution of data was not sufficient to understand whether protected area managers were investing in conflict sensitive conservation. We are now partnering with IUCN and the Max Planck Institute, and as part of the Western Chimpanzee conservation action planning process, have contributed to a questionnaire that has been sent out to >150 conservation practitioners. This questionnaire seeks information on management plans and implementation, as well as investments into conflict sensitive conservation. Once the questionnaires are returned, we will overlay this information with great ape population densities (over time) and incidences of armed conflict (ACLED data). At a more local scale, GRASP has secured follow up funding for its conflict resolution work in Eastern DR Congo. GRASP and partners developed a conflict resolution strategy for the national park, and the issue of illegal and artisanal mining inside the park was ranked as a major threat to the park and priority for conflict resolution work. GRASP is partnering with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and International Peace Information Service (IPIS) and will organise a field mission to the mining areas. The mission will be used to investigate the number of miners in the area, how much they earn, whether their labour is forced, whether the mines are controlled by negative forces, and so on. It is hoped that this preparatory work will lead to a much larger intervention, which will help to solve the issue of illegal mining by providing alternatives to the local population and evaporating the sources of income from the negative forces. Results from this project will also be fed into the “conflict study” described above. We are currently discussing the option of having a student from CEED look more closely into investments towards conflict sensitive conservation and the associated biodiversity benefits.

5) Land use planning in great ape range states with data provision from the A.P.E.S. portal and linked databases (MAP-X)

GRASP is assisting and facilitating a number of land use planning processes in great ape range states. Particularly in Africa, landscapes are changing at an unprecedented rate; this often coincides with a lack of proper land use

planning processes, leading to the occurrence of unplanned development. One of the main drivers of change is the extractives sector and associated development. In many cases, the lack of strategic planning processes and stakeholder engagement have led to local insecurity. This component tries to answer two key research questions: • Where do existing and planned resource extraction concessions overlap with

great ape habitat? • Where do great ape populations exist in conflict- and post-conflict

environments?

We used a combination of a technical (online database) and political approach to answer these questions: 5a) Carbon tool The A.P.E.S portal (http://apesportal.eva.mpg.de/database/archiveTable) is an online tool that provides real-time, visual representation of information about great apes, their habitats, populations, threats and conservation efforts around the world. The A.P.E.S project was initiated in 2005 as a joint effort between the Great Apes Section (SGA) of the Primate Specialist Group and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The first two years of the project focused on compiling ape population data and developing an access and release policy. In 2007, the A.P.E.S. project was combined with an initiative by the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge, UK), the Arcus Foundation and the Jane Goodall Institute which has evolved into the current platform. The website and database is hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the dashboard is hosted by UNEP-WCMC. GRASP supported an online mapping project that overlaid information on carbon values with information on great ape populations and habitats. Spatial information on protected areas was derived from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), which is housed by UNEP-WCMC (http://apesportal.eva.mpg.de/database/archiveTable) (see screenshot of output for Liberia below). I have co-authored a resulting publication on biodiversity benefits under REDD+, which is currently under revision (Vimal et al 20166).

6 Vimal et al (revised for new submission): Beyond protected areas: can great apes benefit from carbon stocks? Science

Advances

ST/IC/2015/28

13/30 15-23049

Figure 1: overlap of information on carbon stocks and great ape habitat (SEC= Species Environmental Conditions, details are below)

5b) MAP-X version 2: mapping and assessing the performance of the extractive industries As mentioned above, UNEP has launched a joint project with the World Bank (MAP-X, https://www.mapx.io) in order to increase transparency in the extractives sector. Extractive resources such as oil, gas, minerals and timber can have a transformative impact on the development trajectory of a country. They can create jobs, generate revenue to fund basic government services and stimulate further economic growth. However, in many cases the extractives sector is plagued by decades of opaque contracts, backroom deals and decisions taken without public consultation or dialogue with local communities. As a result, stakeholder trust breaks down, benefits are not shared equitably, and there is little public access to authoritative information about the profits the sector is generating, the development gains it is catalyzing or the risks it is causing. Despite significant progress, current transparency initiatives need to be taken further to enable data to be published in an open, easily accessible and interoperable format. Stakeholders can benefit from access to financial information, as well as data relating to social and environmental benefits and risks of concern to local communities. The range of transparency information can also be presented in more compelling visual and interactive formats that support dialogue and decision-making. Mapping and Assessing the Performance of Extractive Industries͟, or MAP-X, is an answer to some of these challenges.

Open data platform MAP-X will offer a national open data platform for

visualizing extractives sector data that can be tailor-made to local needs, is owned by stakeholders, and supported by UNEP and the World Bank. MAP-X is a tool that can reinforce the implementation of national transparency commitments, such as those under EITI as well as National Action Plans of the Open Government Partnership. Normative data standard and workflow MAP-X will support data suppliers and other stakeholders in consolidating, validating, reconciling and licensing the data and presenting it in standardized open data formats. This will ensure that separate data sets can be compiled, and will that all the data fed into the system is accurate, authorized, validated and interoperable. Stakeholder capacity building MAP-X will offer a capacity building programme, supporting stakeholders to comply with the standard, manage the workflow and use the open data platform to inform decision-making. This will ensure a bottom-up approach and strengthen the national ownership of the platform, allowing it to become valuable information and monitoring tool that can be adapted to a range of conflict-affected contexts.

Given recent advances in information technology and communications, the MAP-X initiative is being designed to function at three different scales and be accessible by either web-connected computers or mobile smart phones. Local level stakeholders will be provided with a range of tools to access the operational requirements of individual concessions in order to monitor their compliance and performance throughout the value chain. This will cover financial, social and environmental aspects using a score card system. National level: The platform will permit open access to authoritative information on all extractive industry concessions, including ownership, duration, resource type, and payments. It will support strategic planning and investments by providing other important contextual data layers, and helping to identify key risks and potential development impacts. Global level: Data from country platforms can also be integrated at a global level, providing a basis for comparative analysis and tracking the performance of individual companies.

The MAP-X platform is unique in four important ways:

1. UN impartiality and the ability to act as a trusted broker of public and private data; 2. Data integrity assessment framework to promote data reliability; 3. User driven customization and co-design of tools and dashboards; and 4. Transparency and integration of economic, social and environmental factors.

The innovative element in MAP-X is that data layers have been approved by the relevant government offices, and have not been obtained by third party. This is very different from any other web based data platform on extractives. MAP-X is designed to be rolled out in fragile countries and EITI member countries (Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative). Together with the Max Planck and MAP-X Team at Grid Geneva we decided to

ST/IC/2015/28

15/30 15-23049

use DR Congo as a pilot country, with the aim of identifying areas where active and planned concessions would overlap with important great ape habitat. Great ape distribution is characterised by ‘presence points’ in the A.P.E.S. database, the normalized Species Environmental Conditions (SEC values) derived from Junker et al (2012)7 and African range wide density distribution values from Sop et al (in prep.). All data was aggregated in 25 skm hexagonal grid covering the entire great ape distribution area. This data was moved to a separate server for download and integrated into the MAP-X layers. However, MAP-X version 2 is not designed to overlay vector layers and WMS layers. Over the past weeks, Version 3 of MAP-X has been rolled out, which is able to interpret both vector and data layers. We are now in the process of moving the great ape data from the Max Planck Institute to a HTTPS server, which is the pre-condition for the data transfer. This new technical environment will allow much more functionality. The next step will be to overlay concessions, great ape populations and habitat, and conflict layers (derived from the ACLED data, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, https://www.acleddata.com). MAP-X has already incorporated layers on artisanal mining that have been provided by IPIS, however these data sets do not include artisanal mining in protected areas. The GRASP project in Kahuzi-Biega will try to fill this important gap.

7 Junker et al (2012): Recent decline in suitable environmental conditions for African great apes. Divers. Distrib. 18, 1077-

1091.

Figure 2: MAP –X concession layers for DR Congo.

5c) MAP-X Version 3: A cloud solution for mapping and monitoring the sustainable use of natural resources. MAP-X has been pilot-tested in three locations, each with different objectives; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MAP-X was used to link payment and production data with the development and environmental performance of the mining sector; in Afghanistan, MAP-X was used to map and assess conflict drivers at the project level; and in Nigeria, the platform was used for environmental monitoring of the oil spill clean-up in Ogoniland. MAP-X is currently preparing to support countries in monitoring mercury reduction in the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector, enable territorial planning in post-conflict countries and support participatory environmental monitoring by integrating community data.

ST/IC/2015/28

17/30 15-23049

Figure 3: Coincidence analysis of artisanal mine sites, oil concessions and protected areas in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The new version of MAP-X will go well beyond the extractives sector. MAP-X 3.0 vision is to support the sustainable use of natural resources by increasing access to the best available geospatial information, technology and monitoring tools. The MAP-X process focuses on generating actionable insights from geospatial data to inform dialogue and help all stakeholders understand benefits and risks, manage expectations and formulate evidence-based decisions. MAP-X works by:

• Helping stakeholders share, access and publish the best available geospatial

data; • Supporting collaborative decision-making based on a common pool of trusted

data; • Helping monitor progress and performance using customized maps and

dashboards; • Supporting outreach and communication through story maps and compelling

visualizations; and • Offering tailored data streams for due diligence and sustainability reporting.

I am currently in the process of developing a large project with colleagues in the UNEP terrestrial and freshwater team. The project will mitigate climate and development impacts on biodiversity and carbon in the Lac Tele/Lac Tumba landscape in the Republic of Congo (RoC), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The area contains the highest densities of western lowland gorillas in the world, as well as bonobos, chimpanzees and forest elephants. It also holds vast stocks of carbon, and large areas of untouched rainforest. The peatlands remain largely a pristine freshwater ecosystem that helps to manage and purify water and contribute significantly by offering a buffer and resilience to the most vulnerable groups impacted by climate change. This is a critical moment for intervention, as oil exploration and large-scale infrastructure development is beginning to emerge in the region.

The project will work with stakeholders and global experts to develop tools and methods to inform decision making and generate sustainable land use policy and legislation. A structured framework for linking project research, stakeholder dialogue, and policy-implementation will be created. A set of cross-sectoral stakeholder platforms will also be established.

Deployment of mapping tools such as MAP-X will support the overall project goal of ensuring that the planned large-scale economic activities are planned and executed in a sustainable way with risk mitigation measures in place. Being a neutral platform, MAP-X brings transparency and credibility to the extractives sector by consolidating and presenting only authoritative data that is validated by a multi-stakeholder governance structure. Through various analytical tools, the stakeholders are able to assess extractive companies’ economic and social performance and how are they benefiting the local communities and livelihoods. Depending on the availability of data, stakeholders can monitor companies in terms of payments to the central government, implementation of contractual obligations, such as local content and environmental management requirements, as well as other benefit sharing and community development activities. This project is innovative and unique in its nature as it a) will develop a transparent cross-sectoral and multi-level governance mechanism under the leadership of the Unite Nations, b) apply international transparency standards via MAP-X to all sectors, and c) utilize new economic models to provide economic incentives that will conserve biodiversity and the unique peatland landscape in which it is exists. This project will largely benefit from my experience at CEED and the MPI, as I will have the technical lead within UNEP and will facilitate part of the stakeholder dialogue. The European Union passed the conflict mineral rule, similar to the US rule on conflict minerals. There are deliberations whether MAP-X could advise the European Union as a spatial transparency platform and provide an answer to the question of whether minerals are coming from conflict areas or not.

ST/IC/2015/28

19/30 15-23049

6) Outreach and communication activities February 28: Presentation on my research topic at the department seminar at CEED

An integrative web-based decision support system for land-use planning processes: taking biodiversity into account

Abstract The Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) is a global partnership of great ape range state governments, donor country governments, non-governmental organisations, private sector and research institutions, all united under the umbrella of the United Nations to ensure the survival of great apes – gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. GRASP is involved in a number of large scale stakeholder processes related to land use planning and transboundary collaboration in great ape range states in Africa and Asia. GRASP advises governments and partners in land use planning under full consideration of biodiversity benefits. These are very complex processes, as a) there is a wide range of stakeholders with different and sometimes conflicting interests, and b) environmental decisions are often of very complex nature, making it difficult to predict the potential outcomes and repercussions of specific decisions. This research project will use state of the art models in decision making in combination with a technical, web-based decision support system to simulate the outcome of potential decisions. The findings will be used to provide GRASP and UNEP with specific recommendations to make increase the effectiveness and efficiency of GRASP’s transboundary and land-use planning work in Africa and Asia. Specific attention will be given to a nexus perspective on competing land use choices and wildlife.

March 15: Panel discussion on career pathways in conservation This event was organised by the HR department of the University of Queensland, Biological Sciences, and I was one of four panellists to share my experience in conservation and working with the UN. The discussion was very well attended; many students asked me for a bilateral meeting and showed interest in the work of GRASP and UNEP. March 31: Friday talk before the social gathering

Their fate is ours, the humanity in great apes

Abstract I never thought that my photos would end up in an exhibition. I enjoy taking photos, and started earlier on in my life to document my work as primatologist and conservationist. I could not have predicted that my photos, taken in the early 90s in former Zaire, would gain the historical value that they now possess. Unfortunately,

such historic value has arisen because the forests that feature in these pictures have since been lost. It began in 2012, when the Alliance Française in Nairobi, Kenya approached the Great Ape Survival Partnership (GRASP) and asked whether we could develop an exhibition focusing on great apes. They hoped to highlight the important issues around the fate of the great apes, and communicate these to local schools and the broader public in Africa. The exhibition is designed as a “touring exhibition”, and has been displayed in Nairobi and Mombasa (both in Kenya), Bujumbura (Burundi), Paris (France), Vienna (Austria), and Dinslaken and Bonn (both in Germany). The exhibition shows the fascinating aesthetics of great apes and their habitats, it shows the humans who share their habitat with great apes, the many similarities between great apes and humans, and it also shows the threats and challenges in the conservation of great apes. The exhibition not only intends to provide pleasure through good photos, but also to raise awareness of the fate of great apes, with the aim of encouraging commitment to save great apes. I have had the privilege of observing chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans in their natural environment, sometimes in some of the most remote landscapes on this planet, and only few people have had this privilege. I am always fascinated by encounters with great apes and never was there a boring day! With this exhibition and this little booklet I want to pass on some of this passion but also the concerns related to the many challenges in great ape conservation. This talk captures the story line and some of the photos of the exhibition and provides insight into the day-to-day work in great ape conservation. Such work is for the gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, to ensure their long-term survival.

May 12: Presentation at a school near Wesel, Germany, with 180 school children attending May 13: Presentation at the Annual General Meeting of GRASP partner “Berggorilla & Regenwald Direkthilfe”. The meeting was hosted at the Krefeld Zoo in Germany May 15: Presentation at the NABU (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union). NABU is one of the oldest and largest environment associations in Germany. The association encompasses more than 560,000 members and sponsors, who commit themselves to the conservation of threatened habitats, flora and fauna, to climate protection and energy policy. NABU's main objectives are to preserve habitats and biodiversity; to promote sustainability in agriculture, forest management and water supply and distribution; and to enhance the significance of nature conservation in our society. June 1: Official opening of the GRASP photo exhibit “Their Fate is Ours – The Humanity in Great Apes”

ST/IC/2015/28

21/30 15-23049

June 2: Pizza talk on career pathways in conservation and work for the UN at the German Centre for integrative biodiversity research (iDiv) Bioscience 67: 1-8: “Border walls and biodiversity” The current volume of Bioscience cites my previous work in the Virungas. The contact to the author came through my research stay at the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions in Australia, and one of my colleagues, Niels Strange from the University of Copenhagen, who is also cited in this article. Conclusions and recommendations

These were four incredibly rich and inspiring months. However, the sabbatical was planned and approved when we had a full team in place for the Great Apes Survival partnership. In November my supervisor left the organisation, around the same time the junior project officer left as well, and I was asked to step in as Officer in Charge to lead the GRASP secretariat. I am very grateful that UNEP – despite the capacity challenges in the secretariat – let me pursue my sabbatical. It was a challenge, for me and for UNEP, but I think it worked out well, we managed to overcome the period of very tight staff resources, and I used the sabbatical to establish new networks, alliances, and explore new opportunities. I can only advise other staff members to do the same. As anticipated, the opportunity to work in cross-disciplinary teams at CEED and at the Max Planck Institute provided a great environment for brainstorming new ideas. I also found the close interaction with students incredibly inspiring. And these interactions led to new opportunities and partnerships: • Prof Niels Strange from Copenhagen University, who was a visiting scientist at

CEED at the same time, put me in contact with the author of the BioScience article, and my work on transboundary collaboration in the Virungas was featured in this article (Bioscience 67:1-8).

• Edd Hammill (who is also a visiting scientist at CEED) and I started a project on conflict sensitive conservation; we will submit a joint proposal with CEED to the National Science Foundation in the US.

• Many students came to see me after my talks at CEED and at the Max Planck Institute. Two of the CEED master students have joined GRASP as interns on July 17. One of the interns is considering the idea of doing a PhD with a focus on great apes and conflict sensitive conservation. A master student from the Max Planck Institute is involved in the Western Chimpanzee Action planning process and incorporated in her questionnaire a couple of questions on conflict sensitive conservation. This is a topic we want to explore further as many GRASP projects are in conflict and post conflict and countries.

• CEED has been doing substantive work on illegal wildlife trade. UNEP is partnering with other key institutions on a study called “Conservation Futures”;

I have proposed that CEED be involved in this project. • GRASP and CEED have been involved in the Borneo Futures Initiative and

have looked into options for sustainable palm oil. This is a huge undertaking, and GRASP/UNEP want to make sure that the devastating impacts that palm oil has had on Southeast Asia’s biodiversity will not be repeated in Africa. We are liaising closely with the new IUCN Task Force on palm oil and are already discussing projects in great ape range states in Africa.

• A new German funded project (just approved) will focus on conflict resolution in Eastern DR Congo and will work with the information provided via the A.P.E.S. portal and the MAP-X project that I led during my sabbatical.

• Alongside colleagues from the UNEP terrestrial and freshwater unit, I am developing a huge land-use planning project for the Congo peatlands. The proposal development largely benefits from initial work with MAP-X, which we intend to use as a central spatial planning tool. Training at CEED will assist me to facilitate stakeholder dialogues and design of the monitoring framework.

• Finally, CEED offered me the position of an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow for 3 years (renewable).

Annexes or Appendices

Annex 1: draft scientific article

Selecting Socio-ecological Indicators for Conservation

Journal: Frontiers in Ecology and Environment

Authors: Jonathan Rhodes (lead), Graeme Cumming, Duan Biggs, Angela Guererro, Johannes Refisch, Sarah Bekessy, Jacob Phelps, Niels Strange, Sayed Iftekhar, Introduction Conservation science has come a long way from its ecological roots and is now a multidisciplinary field, which integrates ecological and social components to solve conservation problems (Ban et al. 2013, Bennett et al. 2017). Social and economic factors drive important components of conservation problems such as implementation success, the constraints under which conservation activities are undertaken, and the likelihood of the adoption of conservation practices (Guerrero et al. 2010, Bryan et al. 2011, Moon et al. 2014, Blythe et al. 2017, Church and Prokopy 2017). Such drivers mean that information on the social, as well as the ecological context is critical to inform the design, evaluation and communication of conservation strategies. Monitoring of socio-ecological systems is a core activity that provides this information (Lotze-Campen et al. 2008). Yet, although there has been considerable focus on the monitoring of ecological variables in the conservation sciences (Regan et al. 2006, Rhodes and Jonzen 2011, Pereira et al. 2013, Wilson et al. 2015), insights into monitoring social and socio-ecological systems has lagged behind (Hicks et al. 2016, McKinnon et al. 2016, Rita et al. 2017, Waylen and Blackstock 2017).

ST/IC/2015/28

23/30 15-23049

As a consequence, we lack clear strategies for addressing the broader problem of monitoring socio-ecological systems in conservation programs. It is common for conservation initiatives to identify indicators and utilize these to track environmental change. (refs?). The indicator approach generally focuseses on identifying metrics that represent systems of interest and their current states. These can be direct measurements of variables of interest, measurement of proxies for variables of interest, or composite indicators of variables of interest (refs?). Measuring indicators of social change or socio-ecological change are increasingly recognized as important, particularly for programs with social, as well as ecological objectives (Hicks et al. 2016, Game et al. 2017). In this context, identifying which indicators to monitor is crucial, and this has been the focus of several recent frameworks in socio-ecological systems (Reyers et al. 2013, Rita et al. 2017). For example, Reyers et al. (2013) use a socio-ecological framework to identify indicators to track progress in ecosystem service provision for human wellbeing. The use of a socio-ecological framework is useful when identifying indicators, as it enables important insights into system behavior and monitoring. However, it is rare that these frameworks explicitly outline monitoring or management objectives. This is problematic, as such objectives can be critical to informing decisions around which indicators should be monitored. If our choices of socio-ecological indicators are to be most effective at meeting monitoring objectives, then it is vital that monitoring and management objectives are incorporated into indicator selection frameworks. Broadly speaking, there are four main reasons to monitor: (1) Accounting – measuring progress towards the achievement of a management objective, (2) Improving Management Decisions – targeted learning about a system to reduce uncertainty and improve future management decisions, (3) Engagement – communication and engagement with the public or stakeholders, and (4) Surveillance – non-targeted monitoring in the hope of discovering something that was not previously known (Stem et al. 2005, Nichols and Williams 2006, Wintle et al. 2010, Dickinson et al. 2012). Monitoring, of course, can also be conducted purely for the purpose of scientific discovery, but here we focus only on monitoring in an applied setting. Each of these reasons to monitor have quite different objectives and therefore quite different metrics by which a monitoring strategy should be evaluated. For example, a citizen science program designed to improve public engagement should be evaluated against its ability to change public behavior. On the other hand, monitoring to improve management should be evaluated against its ability to improve future management decisions. In these cases, the processes that lead to the realization benefits depend critically on the objective and the mechanisms that link monitoring outcomes to the objective. Ultimately, the best choice of indicators will depend crucially on the monitoring objective and therefore must be considered in frameworks for socio-ecological indicator selection. Here we propose a socio-ecological framework for selecting relevant indicators for conservation. This framework is explicit about its monitoring

and management objectives (Ostrom 2009). We first outline the general characteristics of monitoring programs that are required to meet different monitoring and management objectives. We then present an analytical approach for socio-ecological indicator selection that is explicit about the monitoring and management objectives and illustrate its application using two examples. Finally, we provide recommendations for operationalizing our approach.

The Decision Context: the Role of Monitoring and Management Objectives The vast majority of conservation monitoring programs will be motivated by on or more of the aforementioned reasons to monitor. [PROVIDE HERE SOME REAL EXAMPLES, INCLUDING WHERE MORE THAN THE DESIGN IS FOR MORE THAN ONE PURPOSE]. We argue that these monitoring objectives are key determinants of the most appropriate monitoring strategy, asthey ultimately determine the types of indicators that will meet those objectives. However, as discussed, monitoring objectives are often not explicitly stated in the selection of socio-ecological indicators (Reyers et al. 2013)(refs?). This suggests that there are key opportunities for improvement in the selection of socio-ecological indicators by being more explicit about monitoring objectives. The vast majority of conservation programs have ecological management objectives; however the integration of social objectives into conservation programs is becoming increasingly common. For example, the Coral Triangle Initiative for Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (http://www.coraltriangleinitiative.org/) has a core goal to develop a comprehensive reserve system, but this is being developed using both ecological and social criteria (Weeks et al. 2014). Notwithstanding such examples, the extent to which conservation programs consider social and ecological objectives varies widely (ref?). We argue that, in addition to the monitoring objectives, the focus of management objectives (i.e. social or ecological) can also be a key determinant of the appropriate monitoring strategy or choice of indicators. The consideration of the management objectives is important in situations where monitoring is aimed at accounting or improving management; this is because the relevant social or ecological indicators should reflect the management objectives.

In Table 1 we present a decision matrix that articulates the appropriate characteristics of the socio-ecological indicators that should be selected for meeting different monitoring and management objectives. When monitoring is designed to track performance or progress towards objectives (i.e. accounting) then chosen indicators should measure the management objective of interest. Hence, whether the objectives are social, ecological or both determines whether indicators should be social or ecological. Where monitoring objectives are to improve management outcomes, then reducing the critical uncertainties that link management activities to social or ecological objectives should be the indicator targets. More often than not these will be indicators of links or dependencies between ecological, social, or socio-ecological components.

ST/IC/2015/28

25/30 15-23049

Importantly, even when management focuses on narrow ecological objectives, both social and ecological indicators are likely to be required to inform management. When the focus is on engagement, then monitoring should concentrate on those ecological and social variables that align with public or stakeholder values, or those which influence their level of engagement. Finally, surveillance is less directed and the best strategy then may be to spread monitoring across variables and links in the socio-ecological systems. Such a strategy is most likely to uncover previously unknown aspects of behaviour within the socio-ecological system. Although these principles highlight broad guidance on appropriate monitoring strategies across different monitoring and management objectives, they provide little guidance on which indicators to monitor. In the next section we outline how these principles can be combined with a socio-ecological systems approach to identify indicators for monitoring.

Management Objective

Social Ecological

Mon

itori

ng O

bjec

tive

Accounting Monitor social state variables that represent the management objective

Monitor ecological state variables that represent the management objective

Informing Management Choices

Monitor the social, ecological and socio-ecological pathways linking monitoring, management actions, and social outcomes

Monitor the social, ecological and socio-ecological pathways linking monitoring, management actions, and ecological outcomes

Public Engagement

Monitor social and ecological variables that align with public or stakeholder values

Monitor social and ecological variables that align with public or stakeholder values

Surveillance Spread monitoring across social and ecological components

Spread monitoring across social and ecological components

Table 2. Proposed principles for monitoring socio-ecological systems under different management and monitoring objectives.

Choosing Indicators for Monitoring Socio-ecological Systems

• Introduce the IAD Framework (Institutional Analysis and Development

Framework). Refer to Fig. 1. • Decision context refers to the characteristics of the decision situation,

including: the nature of the decision-makers, the objectives, costs, and constraints relevant to the management decision.

• The IAD Framework can help us in two ways:

• (1) Allows us to describe a given “action situation” which is comprised of actors, their interactions and a given/negotiated set of management and monitoring objectives that identifies the “decision context”, and

• (2) Helps us to identify the pathways between the action situation and the variables that relate to the management and monitoring objectives. These pathways indicate the state and interaction variables that are likely to be most important to monitor.

• Appropriate indicators arise from a combination of the management/monitoring objectives within the action situation and are selected to reflect the most important variables based on the IAD analysis.

• For example, in a project about local people living in a protected area, one could choose a (wrong) social indicator, such as income. However, an analysis of the SES using IAD might show us that fairness is actually much more important than income to determining people’s participation in the project (and therefore ecological outcomes). Thus an indicator centered around fairness is perhaps far more significant to local actors in that system (rather than income).

• Introduce a typology of indicators (maybe – although could be better placed in the Conclusion?). This could introduce the broad types of indicator that we need to consider and how they relate to the IAD framework(e.g. interface indicators, social predictors, policy indicators, etc.).

Figure.41. The IAD framework modified to reflect where the decision context sits within the framework and how it can inform the identification of appropriate indicators.

ST/IC/2015/28

27/30 15-23049

Figure 5: further development of the IAD framework

Application of the Framework • Here we will illustrate the application of the framework to the GRASP case

study • For our selection of case studies, we see clear value of having a historical

example where ecological indicators were (inappropriately) chosen for an SES system. We then present the same example of how it would change when presented with our framework.

• three potential case studies: (1) great apes (social variables measured, but perhaps the wrong ones?), (2) Bush Heritage (only ecological variables measured), (3) koala recovery planning (only ecological variables measured)

• Contents for each case study: (1) Context for the problem (place problem in Table 1) , (2) management objectives, (3) monitoring objectives, (4) what is being monitored currently, (5) description of SES as in Fig. 1, (6) application of framework.

Conclusion • Reiterate the major contribution of this work • Operationalising the framework • Incorporating cost and uncertainty to prioritise indicators • Future advances – adapting VOI to apply to socio-ecological systems

References Ban, N., M. MIlls, J. Tam, C. C. Hicks, S. Klain, N. Stoeckl, M. C. Bottrill, J. Levine,

R. L. Pressey, T. Satterfield, and K. M. A. Chan. 2013. A social–ecological approach to conservation planning: embedding social considerations. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11:194-202.

Bennett, N. J., R. Roth, S. C. Klain, K. M. A. Chan, D. A. Clark, G. Cullman, G. Epstein, M. P. Nelson, R. Stedman, T. L. Teel, R. E. W. Thomas, C. Wyborn, D. Curran, A. Greenberg, J. Sandlos, and D. Veríssimo. 2017. Mainstreaming the social sciences in conservation. Conservation Biology 31:56-66.

Blythe, J., R. Sulu, D. Harohau, R. Weeks, A.-M. Schwarz, D. Mills, and M. Phillips. 2017. social dynamics shaping the diffusion of sustainable aquaculture innovations in the Solomon Islands. Sustainability 9:126.

Bryan, B. A., C. M. Raymond, N. D. Crossman, and D. King. 2011. Comparing spatially explicit ecological and social values for natural areas to identify effective conservation strategies. Conservation Biology 25:172-181.

Church, S. P., and L. S. Prokopy. 2017. The influence of social criteria in mobilizing watershed conservation efforts: A case study of a successful watershed in the Midwestern U.S. Land Use Policy 61:353-367.

Dickinson, J. L., J. Shirk, D. Bonter, R. Bonney, R. L. Crain, J. Martin, T. Phillips, and K. Purcell. 2012. The current state of citizen science as a tool for ecological research and public engagement. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10:291-297.

Game, E. T., L. L. Bremer, A. Calvache, P. H. Moreno, A. Vargas, B. Rivera, and L. M. Rodriguez. 2017. Fuzzy models to inform social and environmental indicator selection for conservation impact monitoring. Conservation Letters:n/a-n/a.

Guerrero, A. M., A. T. Knight, H. S. Grantham, R. M. Cowling, and K. A. Wilson. 2010. Predicting willingness-to-sell and its utility for assessing conservation opportunity for expanding protected area networks. Conservation Letters 3:332-339.

Hicks, C. C., A. Levine, A. Agrawal, X. Basurto, S. J. Breslow, C. Carothers, S. Charnley, S. Coulthard, N. Dolsak, J. Donatuto, C. Garcia-Quijano, M. B. Mascia, K. Norman, M. R. Poe, T. Satterfield, K. St. Martin, and P. S. Levin. 2016. Engage key social concepts for sustainability. Science 352:38-40.

Lotze-Campen, H., F. Reusswig, and S. Stoll-Kleemann. 2008. Socio-ecological monitoring of biodiversity change - building upon the world network of biosphere reserves. GAIA 17:107-115.

McKinnon, M. C., S. H. Cheng, S. Dupre, J. Edmond, R. Garside, L. Glew, M. B. Holland, E. Levine, Y. J. Masuda, D. C. Miller, I. Oliveira, J. Revenaz, D. Roe, S. Shamer, D. Wilkie, S. Wongbusarakum, and E. Woodhouse. 2016. What are the effects of nature conservation on human well-being? A systematic map of empirical evidence from developing countries. Environmental Evidence 5:8.

Moon, K., V. M. Adams, S. R. Januchowski-Hartley, M. Polyakov, M. Mills, D. Biggs, A. T. Knight, E. T. Game, and C. M. Raymond. 2014. A multidisciplinary conceptualization of conservation opportunity. Conservation Biology 28:1484-1496.

ST/IC/2015/28

29/30 15-23049

Nichols, J. D., and B. K. Williams. 2006. Monitoring for conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21:668-673.

Ostrom, E. 2009. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems. Science 325:419-422.

Pereira, H. M., S. Ferrier, M. Walters, G. N. Geller, R. H. G. Jongman, R. J. Scholes, M. W. Bruford, N. Brummitt, S. H. M. Butchart, A. C. Cardoso, N. C. Coops, E. Dulloo, D. P. Faith, J. Freyhof, R. D. Gregory, C. Heip, R. Höft, G. Hurtt, W. Jetz, D. S. Karp, M. A. McGeoch, D. Obura, Y. Onoda, N. Pettorelli, B. Reyers, R. Sayre, J. P. W. Scharlemann, S. N. Stuart, E. Turak, M. Walpole, and M. Wegmann. 2013. Essential biodiversity variables. Science 339:277-278.

Regan, T. J., M. A. McCarthy, P. W. J. Baxter, F. D. Panetta, and H. P. Possingham. 2006. Optimal eradication: when to stop looking for an invasive plant. Ecology Letters 9:759-766.

Reyers, B., R. Biggs, G. S. Cumming, T. Elmqvist, A. P. Hejnowicz, and S. Polasky. 2013. Getting the measure of ecosystem services: a social–ecological approach. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11:268-273.

Rhodes, J. R., and N. Jonzen. 2011. Monitoring temporal trends in spatially structured populations: how should sampling effort be allocated between space and time? Ecography 34:1040-1048.

Rita, E.-H., K. Carla, T. Thierry, A. Adam, and V. Errol. 2017. Indicators for ecosystem conservation and protected area designation in the Mediterranean context. Conservation and Society 15:217-231.

Stem, C., R. Margoluis, N. Salafsky, and M. Brown. 2005. Monitoring and evaluation in conservation: a review of trends and approaches. Conservation Biology 19:295-309.

Waylen, K. A., and K. L. Blackstock. 2017. Monitoring for adaptive management or modernity: lessons from recent initiatives for holistic environmental management. Environmental Policy and Governance 27:311-324.

Weeks, R., P. M. Aliño, S. Atkinson, P. Beldia, A. Binson, W. L. Campos, R. Djohani, A. L. Green, R. Hamilton, V. Horigue, R. Jumin, K. Kalim, A. Kasasiah, J. Kereseka, C. Klein, L. Laroya, S. Magupin, B. Masike, C. Mohan, R. M. Da Silva Pinto, A. Vave-Karamui, C. Villanoy, M. Welly, and A. T. White. 2014. Developing marine protected area networks in the Coral Triangle: good practices for expanding the Coral Triangle Marine Protected Area System. Coastal Management 42:183-205.

Wilson, H. B., J. R. Rhodes, and H. P. Possingham. 2015. Two additional principles for determining which species to monitor. Ecology 96:3016-3022.

Wintle, B. A., M. C. Runge, and S. A. Bekessy. 2010. Allocating monitoring effort in the face of unknown unknowns. Ecology Letters 13:1325-1337.

See Editorial manual for guidelines