IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Salafsky, N.; Margoluis, R. | |
| Threat reduction assessment: a practical and cost-effective approach to evaluating conservation and development projects | |
| 1999 Conservation Biology (13): 830-841 | |
There is a growing debate over the extent to which integrated conservation and development projects are contributing to conservation. One of the chief reasons for this debate is that here are few if any standardized and cost-effective methods for defining and measuring conservation success so that different projects can be assessed over time or compared to other projects in different ecological and socio-economic contexts. Current biologically based approaches to measuring conservation outcome have a number o practical limitation that preclude their us by typical project team. As a result, most project teams do no measure project outcome and thus find it difficult to determine whether their interventions are working. To address this problem, we have developed an approach called threat reduction assessment (TRA) that measures project outcome. We explore the background for this approach, focusing o program evaluation in other disciplines, including engineering and public health; next we develop a model of the conservation and development context. We then propose one way in which this approach might be implemented through the calculation of a TRA index. finally we present and analyse examples of the approach in use in projects from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Madagascar. We found that although the TRA approach has the theoretical advantages of being sensitive to changes over short time periods and throughout a project site, and of allowing comparison among projects in different settings. Furthermore, it is practical and cost-effective because it is based on data collected through simple techniques it is directly related to project interventions, it is readily interpreted by project staff, and it can be done in retrospect. Although the TRA approach will need further refinement, it could be an important complement to biological approaches to measuring conservation project successs. |
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