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Can social capital created through project assignments increase the diffusion of sustainability practices, and if so, what types of social ties and conditions are likely to be most effective in doing so? We use a mixture of survey and qualitative evidence from a social network at a large organization, The Nature Conservancy, to help answer these questions. Our analysis supports the argument that cross-organizational unit ties promote adoption of complex practices by having the benefits of both external and internal ties (i.e., exposure to novel practices and on-the-job social learning experiences, respectively). Specifically, staff learned new sustainability practices from project teammates in other organizational units who were already employing sustainability evidence-based practices. Thus, a practical and cost-effective way to promote organizational learning for sustainability may be to strategically form cross-organizational unit project teams that include sustainability practice innovators. Internal fellowships and short-term assignments may be other effective ways to do this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Nature conservation and social equity issues have been approached in a myriad of ways by conservation, humanitarian, and development practitioners. The rapid and shifting urbanization of the globe makes the interaction of these issues paramount and it is imperative to articulate pathways to harmonizing these relationships readily followed by conservation practitioners. We describe the processes and compare the resulting social equity and conservation objectives of two initiatives purposefully integrating these approaches. A private nonprofit seeking to develop an urban conservation program in the Atlanta metropolitan area purposefully engaged residents from surrounding communities and self‐identified local and sector leaders to identify communities where social equity and conservation objectives could be created together. A public agency, built on a century‐long history of environmental stewardship for migratory birds and pollinators, integrated 20 years of participatory action research to engage the surrounding communities using methods suggested and developed by the communities themselves. In both cases, community‐based research approaches have helped establish cocreated objectives and flexible monitoring and evaluation baselines. Both initiatives found a need to appropriately resource and train staff to remain open to learning and evolving new objectives as additional perspectives emerge and the impact on conservation and equity objectives is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral sciences can advance conservation by systematically identifying behavioral barriers to conservation and how to best overcome them. Behavioral sciences have informed policy in many other realms (e.g., health, savings), but they are a largely untapped resource for conservation. We propose a set of guiding questions for applying behavioral insights to conservation policy. These questions help define the conservation problem as a behavior change problem, understand behavioral mechanisms and identify appropriate approaches for behavior change (awareness, incentives, nudges), and evaluate and adapt approaches based on new behavioral insights. We provide a foundation for the questions by synthesizing a wide range of behavior change models and evidence related to littering, water and energy conservation, and land management. We also discuss the methodology and data needed to answer these questions. We illustrate how these questions have been answered in practice to inform efforts to promote conservation for climate risk reduction. Although more comprehensive research programs to answer these questions are needed, some insights are emerging. Integrating two or more behavior change approaches that target multiple, context-dependent factors may be most successful; however, caution must be taken to avoid approaches that could undermine one another (e.g., economic incentives crowding out intrinsic incentives). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective biodiversity monitoring is critical to evaluate, learn from, and ultimately improve conservation practice. Well conceived, designed and implemented monitoring of biodiversity should: (i) deliver information on trends in key aspects of biodiversity (e.g. population changes); (ii) provide early warning of problems that might otherwise be difficult or expensive to reverse; (iii) generate quantifiable evidence of conservation successes (e.g. species recovery following management) and conservation failures; (iv) highlight ways to make management more effective; and (v) provide information on return on conservation investment. The importance of effective biodiversity monitoring is widely recognized (e.g. Australian Biodiversity Strategy). Yet, while everyone thinks biodiversity monitoring is a good idea, this has not translated into a culture of sound biodiversity monitoring, or widespread use of monitoring data. We identify four barriers to more effective biodiversity monitoring in Australia. These are: (i) many conservation programmes have poorly articulated or vague objectives against which it is difficult to measure progress contributing to design and implementation problems; (ii) the case for long-term and sustained biodiversity monitoring is often poorly developed and/or articulated; (iii) there is often a lack of appropriate institutional support, co-ordination, and targeted funding for biodiversity monitoring; and (iv) there is often a lack of appropriate standards to guide monitoring activities and make data available from these programmes. To deal with these issues, we suggest that policy makers, resource managers and scientists better and more explicitly articulate the objectives of biodiversity monitoring and better demonstrate the case for greater investments in biodiversitymonitoring. There is an urgent need for improved institutional support for biodiversity monitoring in Australia, for improved monitoring standards, and for improved archiving of, and access to, monitoring data. We suggest that more strategic financial, institutional and intellectual investments in monitoring will lead to more efficient use of the resources available for biodiversity conservation and ultimately better conservation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]