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The Role of the Social Sciences in Conservation Planning
Session Organizer: Tara Lee Teel
When: July 10-13, 2008

Description:
Humans impact and also depend heavily upon nature. Successful biodiversity conservation efforts therefore require understanding not only of the natural environment but the needs, interests, and capacities of stakeholders. These social considerations are critical to ensuring conservation decisions adequately address challenges and opportunities associated with human factors. Failed conservation attempts resulting from an ignorance of the social context abound, including strategies that:
* did not account for local cultural or spiritual customs;
* were selected by experts without the involvement of local people;
* lacked a clear decision structure in which to balance biological and social information;
* ignored constraints imposed by local economies and political structures; and
* failed to consider the foundation for conflict in the form of competing stakeholder values and preferences.

The role of human factors in the successes and failures of conservation has resulted in greater attention to the social sciences within the conservation community. In addition, various social science disciplines have increasingly recognized environmental issues as an important focus of research. In 2003, these trends led to establishment of SCB's Social Science Working Group (SSWG), a global community of more than 600 scientists and practitioners dedicated to strengthening conservation social science and its application to conservation practice.

Though the importance of social information to conservation success is increasingly recognized, conservation practitioners often lack the expertise necessary to assess "the human dimension" and to integrate this information effectively into conservation strategies. As part of its efforts, the SSWG seeks to respond to these kinds of challenges by building social science capacity among conservation practitioners. In particular, the SSWG works to provide training and develop resources that help practitioners better solve conservation problems through integration of social science approaches into their work. We propose a short course providing training in the contributions of the core social science disciplines to assist with these efforts. This SSWG-sponsored event would build from our recent experiences in South Africa, where we offered a one-day short course on the social sciences in conjunction with the 2007 SCB annual meeting. The course will be directed at building capacity among conservation practitioners, offering them a framework for thinking about conservation challenges and the role of the social sciences in helping to address such challenges.

Approach:
The course will be designed to target a diverse audience, including conservation researchers and practitioners as well as graduate students in conservation-related fields of study and early-career conservation social scientists. In line with SSWG's recent emphasis on capacity building for practitioners in developing countries, we hope to ensure representation of this particular audience by recruiting a small number of participants from less developed countries through targeted fund-raising.

Our approach will be to introduce an interdisciplinary planning framework and then have speakers with social science expertise present on the contributions of different social science disciplines using a combination of lecture, case study presentation, and group discussion/activity. Approximately half a day will be allocated for each social science session which will be organized around the following themes: (1) the general scope or breadth of the discipline; (2) the common methodologies employed by the discipline; (3) the focus of the discipline's application to conservation, including case study illustration; and (4) examples of applied tools introduced by the discipline that can assist on-the-ground conservation efforts.

Outline:
* Introduction: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Conservation Planning and an Overview of the Need for Social Science Perspectives (half day)

* Psychology, Dr. Tara Teel, SSWG Psychology Representative & Assistant Professor, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University

* Anthropology, Dr. Diane Russell, SSWG Conservation Committee Vice-Chair & Biodiversity and Social Science Specialist, U.S. Agency for International Development

* Political Science, Dr. Michael Mascia, SSWG President & Senior Social Scientist, World Wildlife Fund-US

* Sociology, Dr. Tammy Lewis*, SSWG Sociology Representative, Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Muhlenberg College

* Economics, Dr. Steve Polasky*, Professor, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota

* Human Geography, Dr. William Forbes*, SSWG Geography Representative & Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Geography, and Public Administration, Stephen F. Austin State University

* Course Wrap-Up and Group Discussion (half day)

*Speaker to be confirmed

Relevance to Meeting Themes and SCB Goals:

The proposed course is relevant to the overall conference theme which emphasizes the diversity and "interconnectedness" among the many ecosystems and aspects of conservation. Training provided by this course is intended to help practitioners working in a variety of environments (terrestrial, freshwater, marine, etc.) expand their view of conservation through consideration of its social aspects. This broader, interdisciplinary perspective is critical to understanding complex society-biodiversity connections in conservation and to being able to address today's conservation challenges that transcend ecosystem types and boundaries.

Course intent is clearly aligned with the SSWG's desire to build capacity in social science applications to conservation. The course also supports SCB's goal of education in that it is intended to provide professional development opportunities to help support current and future generations of conservation practitioners. In addition, it supports several of SCB's strategic objectives, including: improve communication between researchers and managers; enhance integration of research results into management decisions; and create continuing education and professional development opportunities for conservation scientists and practitioners at annual meeting.