Knowing But Not Doing: Selecting Priority Conservation Areas and the Research–Implementation Gap

Conservation assessment is a rapidly evolving discipline whose stated goal is the design of networks of protected areas that represent and ensure the persistence of nature (i.e., species, habitats, and environmental processes) by separating priority areas from the activities that degrade or destroy them. Nevertheless, despite a burgeoning scientific literature that ever refines these techniques for allocating conservation resources, it is widely believed that conservation assessments are rarely translated into actions that actually conserve nature. We reviewed the conservation assessment literature in peer-reviewed journals and conducted survey questionnaires of the authors of these studies. Two-thirds of…

• WB
  World Bank Group
• GE
  Global Environment Facility
• RU
  Rhodes University
• NM
  Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University