title: Making parks make a difference: poor alignment of policy, planning and management with protected-area impact, and ways forward.
abstract: Policy and practice around protected areas are poorly aligned with the basic purpose of protection, which is to make a difference. The difference made by protected areas is their impact, defined in program evaluation as the outcomes arising from protection relative to the counterfactual of no protection or a different form of protection. Although impact evaluation of programs is well established in fields such as medicine, education and development aid, it is rare in nature conservation. We show that the present weak alignment with impact of policy targets and operational objectives for protected areas involves a great risk: targets and objectives can be achieved while making little difference to the conservation of biodiversity. We also review potential ways of increasing the difference made by protected areas, finding a poor evidence base for the use of planning and management 'levers' to better achieve impact. We propose a dual strategy for making protected areas more effective in their basic role of saving nature, outlining ways of developing targets and objectives focused on impact while also improving the evidence for effective planning and management.
authors.affiliation: Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia bob.pressey@jcu.edu.au.
authors.forename: Robert L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Pressey
authors.affiliation: Microsoft Research, Computational Science Laboratory, 21 Station Road, Cambridge CB1 2FB, UK.
authors.forename: Piero
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Visconti
authors.affiliation: Carey School of Business and Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Ferraro
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D017753:Ecosystem; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D000068316:Parks, Recreational; D011050:Policy Making
keywords: conservation planning; impact evaluation; performance management; policy targets; saving biodiversity