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Enabling conservation theories of change

Nature Sustainability volume 7, pages 73–81 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Global theories of change (ToCs) can provide broad, overarching guidance for conservation and sustainable use of Earth’s ecosystems. However, broad guidance alone cannot inform how conservation actions will lead to desired socioecological outcomes. Here we develop a framework for translating a global-scale ToC into focused, ecosystem-specific ToCs that consider feasibility of actions, as determined by national socioeconomic and political contexts (that is, enabling conditions). We used coastal wetlands as a case study for developing the framework and identified six distinct multinational profiles of enabling conditions (‘enabling profiles’) for their conservation. For countries belonging to profiles with high internal capacity to enable conservation, we described plausible ToCs that involved strengthening policy and regulation. Alternatively, for profiles with low internal enabling capacity, plausible ToCs typically required formalizing community-led conservation. Our ‘enabling profile’ framework can be applied to other ecosystems to help operationalize the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and meet sustainable development goals.

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Fig. 1: Operationalizing a global ToC.
Fig. 2: Enabling profiles for conserving coastal wetland ecosystems.
Fig. 3: Drivers of mangrove loss in enabling profiles.
Fig. 4: Drivers of seagrass loss in enabling profiles.
Fig. 5: Enabling conditions inform nested ToCs.

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Data availability

All input data used in analyses were obtained from published sources cited in the Methods and Supplementary Information. They are stored on GitHub (https://github.com/cabuelow/enabling-theories-of-change) and archived on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8125788).

Code availability

The code to run the analyses and reproduce the figures is available on GitHub (https://github.com/cabuelow/enabling-theories-of-change), including an interactive application for exploring the profiles (https://github.com/cabuelow/enabling-profiles-app). The code is archived on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8125788).

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding support from the Global Wetlands Project, supported by a charitable organization that neither seeks nor permits publicity for its efforts. M.S. acknowledges support from Griffith University Postdoctoral Fellowship and an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (no. DE220100079). A.I.S. acknowledges support from Portuguese national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). I.P. acknowledges support from project CEECIND/00962/2017 and the FCT/Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior through the support to CESAM (UIDB/50017/2020, UIDP/50017/2020, LA/P/0094/2020). P.S.M. acknowledges support from Alluvium Consulting Australia. J.C.D. acknowledges support from a Canadian Graduate Doctoral Scholarship (CGSD3-518641-2018) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. C.J.B. acknowledges support from a Future Fellowship (no. FT210100792) from the Australian Research Council.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coastal and Marine Research Centre, Australian Rivers Institute, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Christina A. Buelow, Rod M. Connolly, Laura Griffiths, Briana Holgate, Ryan M. Pearson, Michael Sievers, Vivitskaia J. D. Tulloch, Mischa P. Turschwell, Jaramar Villarreal-Rosas & Christopher J. Brown

  2. Pacific Biological Station, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada

    Jillian C. Dunic

  3. Simon F.S. Li Marine Science Laboratory, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, China

    Shing Yip Lee

  4. Griffith Climate Action Beacon, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Brendan G. Mackey

  5. Alluvium Consulting Australia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Paul S. Maxwell

  6. Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa

    Anusha Rajkaran

  7. ECOMARE–Laboratory for Innovation and Sustainability of Marine Biological Resources, CESAM–Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Department of Biology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, Aveiro, Portugal

    Ana I. Sousa

  8. Conservation Decisions Lab, Department of Forest and Conservation Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Vivitskaia J. D. Tulloch

  9. Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Taroona, Tasmania, Australia

    Christopher J. Brown

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  1. Christina A. Buelow
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Contributions

C.A.B., C.J.B., R.M.C., L.G. and V.J.D.T. conceived the project. C.A.B., C.J.B., R.M.C., L.G., V.J.D.T., B.H., J.C.D., S.Y.L., B.G.M., P.S.M., R.M.P., A.R., M.S., A.I.S., M.P.T. and J.V.-R. contributed to the methodology. L.G., C.A.B. and B.H. collected the data. C.A.B. and C.J.B. analysed the data. C.A.B. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. C.J.B., R.M.C., L.G., V.J.D.T., B.H., J.C.D., S.Y.L., B.G.M., P.S.M., R.M.P., A.R., M.S., A.I.S., M.P.T. and J.V.-R. contributed to revising the manuscript. C.J.B., B.G.M. and R.M.C. resourced the project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christina A. Buelow.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Jiangxiao Qiu and Thomas Pienkowski for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

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Supplementary Tables 1–4, Figs. 1–8 and Appendix 1.

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Buelow, C.A., Connolly, R.M., Dunic, J.C. et al. Enabling conservation theories of change. Nat Sustain 7, 73–81 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01245-y

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