Doing Science Differently: Co-producing conservation outcomes

Despite ever-increasing knowledge of conservation problems, biodiversity continues to decline. This has led to frustrations of many conservation scientists that their knowledge has failed to influence policy and practice. At the same time, 21st century conservation challenges are increasingly complex, requiring conservationists to balance trade-offs between different social, political, ecological and economic objectives, constituents and sectors. Tackling these problems requires approaches that draw on diverse expertise, integrate the concerns of actors at different scales, and evaluate trade-offs while building capacity to support adaptive learning and action. Given that the barriers to action largely revolve around the way decisions are made, simply describing problems and producing knowledge misses a core component of the conservation challenge.