J.S. Brooks et al. DEVELOPMENT AS A CONSERVATION TOOL: EVALUATING ECOLOGICAL, ECONOMIC, ATTITUDINAL, AND BEHAVIORAL OUTCOMES: REVIEW REPORT is an excellent attempt at a systematic review. Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with lack of quality data.
Main Results
The results of this review are that (1) very few studies provide adequate quantitative measures of success across multiple outcomes to provide a strong test of the hypotheses, and (2) that two separate statistical approaches to the data indicate market selling opportunities are associated with attitudinal outcomes, and community involvement in decision making and implementation is associated with behavioral success.
Conclusions
As regards the first objective, it is clear that without far better monitoring schemes in place it is still impossible to provide a systematic evaluation of how different strategies are best suited to different conservation challenges. First, there is a paucity of high quality data. Second, few studies provide quantitative evaluations of success. Third, few studies evaluate across the full range of relevant outcomes – behavioral, attitudinal, economic and ecological…
This and other papers can be found at the Centre for Evidence-Based Conservation at the University of Birmingham, U.K.
