A perennial lament of nearly every conservation scientist — at least at some point (often later in one’s career) — is that the years of blood, sweat and tears spent to obtain those precious results count for nought in terms of improving real biodiversity conservation.
Conservation scientists often claim, especially in the first and last paragraphs of their papers and research proposals, that by collecting such-and-such data and doing such-and-such analyses they will transform how we manage landscapes and species to the overall betterment of biodiversity. Unfortunately, most of these claims are hollow (or just plain bullshit) because the results are either: (i) never read by people who actually make conservation decisions, (ii) not understood by them even if they read the work, or (iii) never implemented because they are too vague or too unrealistic to translate into a tangible, positive shift in policy.
A depressing state of being, I know.
This isn’t any sort of novel revelation, for we’ve been discussing the divide between policy makers and scientists for donkey’s years. Regardless, the whinges can be summarised succinctly:
Scientists: “Policy makers should get off their arse and read the great papers we publish”.
Policy makers: “Scientists have no idea how policies are made or how to research issues that have real relevance.”
Sound familiar?
I’ve also argued more times than I care to admit that most conservation scientists could give up their day job tomorrow without fear of exacerbating the biodiversity crisis. The main reason for this sobering conclusion is that we already have a pretty good grasp of what causes species to dwindle and go extinct (e.g., habitat loss, fragmentation, over-exploitation, genetic erosion, climate change, etc.), such that the ‘problem’ of biodiversity erosion is no longer a result of lack of scientific knowledge. Any hope we might have at all to slow the extinction crisis now is to manage human society and the decisions it makes over the coming decades and centuries, including inter alia major changes in how we grow our food, produce our energy, manage our population growth, elect our leaders, educate our children and run our economies.
The take-home message could be then that you should abandon conservation science now and become a demographer, an economist, a politician, a farmer or an engineer.
Perhaps that’s a little extreme, but I hope you take my point.
Instead of the extreme action of giving up now, there are some things that one can do to increase the likelihood that your research will be heard, understood and implemented into policies that will benefit biodiversity. I am by no means able to claim that much of my work has clearly shifted policies in the right direction, and I’ll bet that not many scientists can say differently (there are, of course, some exceptions), but there are a few approaches that can help.
- I think one of the first (and potentially easiest) things to consider is what you study. It’s great that we have so many keen students wanting to save species x, y and z, but to be honest, much of the current conservation research being done merely confirms what we already know well. A challenge to both established and up-and-coming conservation scientists is to break out of the mold of asking simplistic questions like “What makes this population decline?” or “Is there genetic structure in this species”, or “I wonder how much fragmentation will affect this species”, to attacking more nuanced questions that involve experimental demonstrations of how differing decision regimes do better or worse for species and ecosystems of concern. This is one of the reasons I’ve started to branch out and investigate things like the relationships between electricity production and biodiversity, the processes that limit human population growth, and the economics of carbon sequestration.
- Following the first point closely is the idea of covering a wider arena of disciplines in your research. This might sound like the classic lip service to ‘interdisciplinarity‘, but I mean truly breaking out of your comfort zone and not only collaborating with the likes of agronomists, epidemiologists, economists, and social scientists of all stripes, but actually doing some of that stuff yourself. It requires a little lateral thinking and some reading, but because you are an intelligent person, it’s completely possible to do this. Yes, a lot of us do work with economists, but the reality is that most economists are as out of touch (if not more so) as conservation scientists with the practicalities of policy making.
- Engagement — that highly abused term referring to communication with those who will make the policy changes — is of course best done before the research starts. Few people like to be told what to do, or worse, be given advice by someone who knows bugger all about the process. How many times have you seen this in a paper? — “… our results demonstrate that managers should …”. It behoves us then at least to talk to policy people before we design our experiments and research questions, and collect our data.
- It follows then that direct involvement of policy people in the research team from the outset makes particularly good sense. Nothing ‘engages’ more than when someone has invested time and effort in the research process. The more someone like a government manager or policy person invests precious cerebral capacity and time into a project, the greater the chances of them championing the results in their daily mandate. Some ways to do this are involving them in scoping or analysis workshops, inviting them to work in your lab on secondment, and taking them on as research students.
- The flip side of this approach is to go work in a government department yourself — in some cases you might be able to arrange a secondment from your academic institution. Think about it — you could be the enemy within!
- Seek out opportunities to engage politicians directly, either by organising face-to-face meetings, becoming involved with ENGO lobby groups, or getting yourself onto an expert parliamentary/congressional panel. If you can get your spoken words directly into the ears of the decision-makers, the chances of having your research influence policy will skyrocket.
- Going above and beyond the peer-reviewed article as the only medium for your research communication is, of course, essential — if you leave it there and refuse to blog, be on social media, or become a media tart, I’m afraid your message won’t get heard by the people who call the shots.
- Politicians in particular, and society in general, tend to respect ‘experts’ with credentials (e.g., lauded track records, lists of prizes, acknowledgements from expert societies, etc.). It’s superficial, I know, but use this to your advantage in the policy realm.
- Get involved with ENGOs and/or other societies that have some lobbying capacity. While this is one of the weakest forms of getting your message out there, it can occasionally produce results.
- On rare occasions, it might be a good idea to get yourself arrested. Yes, I’m taking about the ultimate form of advocacy: political demonstration. If you know that something needs to be done to improve the world based on the results of your good science, you should consider standing up to the people who don’t see the need or who actively oppose it.
- On ever rarer occasions, it might be politically expedient to align yourself with the opposition party to stand up to bad policies of the current party in power. An opposition party will do almost anything to embarrass their political rivals; but tread carefully here — you will make enemies and will most likely be used as political fodder by those who have agendas other than environmental sustainability.
- I can’t sign-off on this topic without mentioning the need for a really high standard of writing. It’s perhaps the least influential of the tools at your disposal, but writing opaquely will ensure that your work is never taken up.
Good luck — you’ll need it.
CJA Bradshaw
