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| Commonalities and complementarities among approaches to conservation monitoring and evaluation
(M&E) are not well articulated, creating the potential for confusion, misuse, and missed opportunities
to inform conservation policy and practice. We examine the relationships among five approaches to conservation
M&E, characterizing each approach in eight domains: the focal question driving each approach,
when in the project cycle each approach is employed, scale of data collection, the methods of data collection
and analysis, the implementers of data collection and analysis, the users of M&E outputs, and
the decisions informed by these outputs. Ambient monitoring measures status and change in ambient
social and ecological conditions, independent of any conservation intervention. Management assessment
measures management inputs, activities, and outputs, as the basis for investments to build management
capacity for conservation projects. Performance measurement assesses project or program progress toward
desired levels of specific activities, outputs, and outcomes. Impact evaluation is the systematic process of
measuring the intended and unintended causal effects of conservation interventions, with emphasis upon
long-term impacts on ecological and social conditions. Systematic review examines existing research findings
to assess the state of the evidence regarding the impacts of conservation interventions, and to synthesize
the insights emerging from this evidence base. Though these five approaches have some
commonalities, they complement each other to provide unique insights for conservation planning, capacity-
building, adaptive management, learning, and accountability. Ambient monitoring, management
assessment, and performance measurement are now commonplace in conservation, but opportunities
remain to inform conservation policy and practice more fully through catalytic investments in impact
evaluations and systematic reviews. | |
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