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Oceans beyond the continental shelf represent the largest yet least protected environments. The new agreement to increase protection targets to 30% by 2030 and the recent United Nations (UN) High Seas Treaty try to address this gap, and an increase in the declaration of oceanic Marine Protected Areas (oMPAs) in waters beyond 200 m in depth is likely. Here we find that there is contradictory evidence concerning the benefits of oMPAs in terms of protecting pelagic habitats, providing refuge for highly mobile species, and potential fisheries benefits. We discover a mismatch between oMPA management objectives focusing on protection of pelagic habitats and biodiversity, and scientific research focusing on fisheries benefits. We suggest that the solution is to harness emerging technologies to monitor inside and outside oMPAs., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests No conflicts of interest are declared., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Two concurrent trends are contributing towards a much broader view of forest conservation. First, the appreciation of the role of forests as a nature-based climate solution has grown rapidly, particularly among governments and the private sector. Second, the spatiotemporal resolution of forest mapping and the ease of tracking forest changes have dramatically improved. As a result, who does and who pays for forest conservation is changing: sectors and people previously considered separate from forest conservation now play an important role and need to be held accountable and motivated or forced to conserve forests. This change requires, and has stimulated, a broader range of forest conservation solutions. The need to assess the outcomes of conservation interventions has motivated the development and application of sophisticated econometric analyses, enabled by high resolution satellite data. At the same time, the focus on climate, together with the nature of available data and evaluation methods, has worked against a more comprehensive view of forest conservation. Instead, it has encouraged a focus on trees as carbon stores, often leaving out other important goals of forest conservation, such as biodiversity and human wellbeing. Even though both are intrinsically connected to climate outcomes, these areas have not kept pace with the scale and diversification of forest conservation. Finding synergies between these 'co-benefits', which play out on a local scale, with the carbon objective, related to the global amount of forests, is a major challenge and area for future advances in forest conservation., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Global efforts to deliver internationally agreed goals to reduce carbon emissions, halt biodiversity loss, and retain essential ecosystem services have been poorly integrated. These goals rely in part on preserving natural (e.g., native, largely unmodified) and seminatural (e.g., low intensity or sustainable human use) forests, woodlands, and grasslands. To show how to unify these goals, we empirically derived spatially explicit, quantitative, area-based targets for the retention of natural and seminatural (e.g., native) terrestrial vegetation worldwide. We used a 250-m-resolution map of natural and seminatural vegetation cover and, from this, selected areas identified under different international agreements as being important for achieving global biodiversity, carbon, soil, and water targets. At least 67 million km 2 of Earth's terrestrial vegetation (∼79% of the area of vegetation remaining) required retention to contribute to biodiversity, climate, soil, and freshwater conservation objectives under 4 United Nations' resolutions. This equates to retaining natural and seminatural vegetation across at least 50% of the total terrestrial (excluding Antarctica) surface of Earth. Retention efforts could contribute to multiple goals simultaneously, especially where natural and seminatural vegetation can be managed to achieve cobenefits for biodiversity, carbon storage, and ecosystem service provision. Such management can and should co-occur and be driven by people who live in and rely on places where natural and sustainably managed vegetation remains in situ and must be complemented by restoration and appropriate management of more human-modified environments if global goals are to be realized., (© 2022 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.)

Background: Previous studies focusing on urban, industrialised regions have found that excess heat exposure can increase all-cause mortality, heat-related illnesses, and occupational injuries. However, little research has examined how deforestation and climate change can adversely affect work conditions and population health in low latitude, industrialising countries., Methods: For this modelling study we used data at 1 km 2 resolution to compare forest cover and temperature conditions in the Berau regency, Indonesia, between 2002 and 2018. We used spatially explicit satellite, climate model, and population data to estimate the effects of global warming, between 2002 and 2018 and after applying 1·0°C, 1·5°C, and 2·0°C of global warming to 2018 temperatures, on all-cause mortality and unsafe work conditions in the Berau regency, Indonesia., Findings: Between 2002 and 2018, 4375 km 2 of forested land in Berau was cleared, corresponding to approximately 17% of the entire regency. Deforestation increased mean daily maximum temperatures by 0·95°C (95% CI 0·97-0·92; p<0·0001). Mean daily temperatures increased by a population-weighted 0·86°C, accounting for an estimated 7·3-8·5% of all-cause mortality (or 101-118 additional deaths per year) in 2018. Unsafe work time increased by 0·31 h per day (95% CI 0·30-0·32; p<0·0001) in deforested areas compared to 0·03 h per day (0·03-0·04; p<0·0001) in areas that maintained forest cover. With 2·0°C of additional future global warming, relative to 2018, deforested areas could experience an estimated 17-20% increase in all-cause mortality (corresponding to an additional 236-282 deaths per year) and up to 5 h of unsafe work per day., Interpretation: Heat exposure from deforestation and climate change has already started affecting populations in low latitude, industrialising countries, and future global warming indicates substantial health impacts in these regions. Further research should examine how deforestation is currently affecting the health and wellbeing of local communities., Funding: University of Washington Population Health Initiative., Translation: For the Bahasa translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests We declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Indigenous knowledge systems hold detailed information on current and past environments that can inform ecological understanding as well as contemporary environmental management. Despite its applicability, there are limited examples of indigenous knowledge being incorporated in species distribution models, which are widely used in the ecological sciences. In a collaborative manner, we designed a structured elicitation process and statistical framework to combine indigenous knowledge with survey data to model the distribution of a threatened and culturally significant species (greater bilby or mankarr [Macrotis lagotis]). We used Martu (Aboriginal people of the Australian western deserts) occurrence knowledge and presence data from track-based surveys to create predictive species distribution models with the Maxent program. Predictions of species distribution based on Martu knowledge were broader than those created with survey data. Together the Martu and survey models showed potential local declines, which were supported by Martu observation. Both data types were influenced by sampling bias that appeared to affect model predictions and performance. Martu provided additional information on habitat associations and locations of decline and descriptions of the ecosystem dynamics and disturbance regimes that influence occupancy. We concluded that intercultural approaches that draw on multiple sources of knowledge and information types may improve species distribution modeling and inform management of threatened or culturally significant species., (© 2019 Society for Conservation Biology.)

The accelerating loss of tropical forests in the 21st century has eliminated cooling services provided by trees in low latitude countries. Cooling services can protect rural communities and outdoor workers with little adaptive capacity from adverse heat exposure, which is expected to increase with climate change. Yet little is still known about whether cooling services can mitigate negative impacts of heat on labor productivity among rural outdoor workers. Through a field experiment in Indonesia, we show that worker productivity was 8.22% lower in deforested relative to forested settings, where wet bulb globe temperatures were, on average, 2.84 °C higher in deforested settings. We demonstrate that productivity losses are driven by behavioral adaptations in the form of increased number of work breaks, and provide evidence that suggests breaks are in part driven by awareness of heat effects on work. Our results indicate that the cooling services from forests have the potential for increasing resilience and adaptive capacity to local warming.

Incentivized debt conversion is a financing mechanism that can assist countries with a heavy debt burden to bolster their long-term domestic investment in nature conservation. The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation-based nongovernmental organization, is adapting debt conversions to support marine conservation efforts by small island developing states and coastal countries. Prioritizing debt conversion opportunities according to their potential return on investment can increase the impact and effectiveness of this finance mechanism. We developed guidance on how to do so with a decision-support approach that relies on a novel threat-based adaptation of cost-effectiveness analysis. We constructed scenarios by varying parameters of the approach, including enabling conditions, expected benefits, and threat classifications. Incorporating both abatable and unabatable threats affected priorities across planning scenarios. Similarly, differences in scenario construction resulted in unique solution sets for top priorities. We show how environmental organizations, private entities, and investment banks can adopt structured prioritization frameworks for making decisions about conservation finance investments, such as debt conversions. Our guidance can accommodate a suite of social, ecological, and economic considerations, making the approach broadly applicable to other conservation finance mechanisms or investment strategies that seek to establish a transparent process for return-on-investment decision-making., (© 2020 Society for Conservation Biology.)

Raising funds is critical for conserving biodiversity and hence so is scrutinizing emerging financial mechanisms that may help achieve this goal. Anecdotal evidence indicates crowdfunding is being used to support activities needed for biodiversity conservation, yet its magnitude and allocation remain largely unknown. To help address this knowledge gap, we conducted a global analysis based on conservation-focused projects extracted from crowdfunding platforms. For each project, we determined the funds raised, date, country of implementation, proponent characteristics, activity type, biodiversity realm, and target taxa. We identified 72 relevant platforms and 577 conservation-focused projects that raised $4,790,634 since 2009. Although proponents were based in 38 countries, projects were delivered across 80 countries, indicating a potential mechanism of resource mobilization. Proponents were affiliated with nongovernmental organizations (35%) or universities (30%) or were freelancers (26%). Most projects were for research (40%), persuasion (31%), and on-the-ground actions (21%). Projects were more focused on species (57.7%) and terrestrial ecosystems (20.3%), and less focused on marine (8.8%) and freshwater ecosystems (3.6%). Projects focused on 208 species, including a disproportionate number of threatened birds and mammals. Crowdfunding for biodiversity conservation is a global phenomenon and there is potential for expansion, despite possible pitfalls (e.g., uncertainty about effectiveness). Opportunities to advance conservation through crowdfunding arise from its capacity to mobilize funds spatially and increase steadily over time, inclusion of overlooked species, adoption by multiple actors, and funding of activities beyond research. Our findings pave the way for further research on key questions, such as campaign success rates, effectiveness of conservation actions, and drivers of crowdfunding adoption. Even though crowdfunding capital raised has been modest relative to other conservation-finance mechanisms, its contribution goes beyond funding research and providing capital. Embraced with due care, crowdfunding could become an important financial mechanism for biodiversity conservation., (© 2018 Society for Conservation Biology.)

There is global concern about tropical forest degradation, in part, because of the associated loss of biodiversity. Communities and indigenous people play a fundamental role in tropical forest management and are often efficient at preventing forest degradation. However, monitoring changes in biodiversity due to degradation, especially at a scale appropriate to local tropical forest management, is plagued by difficulties, including the need for expert training, inconsistencies across observers, and lack of baseline or reference data. We used a new biodiversity remote-sensing technology, the recording of soundscapes, to test whether the acoustic saturation of a tropical forest in Papua New Guinea decreases as land-use intensity by the communities that manage the forest increases. We sampled soundscapes continuously for 24 hours at 34 sites in different land-use zones of 3 communities. Land-use zones where forest cover was fully retained had significantly higher soundscape saturation during peak acoustic activity times (i.e., dawn and dusk chorus) compared with land-use types with fragmented forest cover. We conclude that, in Papua New Guinea, the relatively simple measure of soundscape saturation may provide a cheap, objective, reproducible, and effective tool for monitoring tropical forest deviation from an intact state, particularly if it is used to detect the presence of intact dawn and dusk choruses., (© 2017 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.)

Conservation scientists increasingly recognize that incorporating human values into conservation planning increases the chances for success by garnering broader project acceptance. However, methods for defining quantitative targets for the spatial representation of human well-being priorities are less developed. In this study we employ an approach for identifying regionally important human values and establishing specific spatial targets for their representation based on stakeholder outreach. Our primary objective was to develop a spatially-explicit conservation plan that identifies the most efficient locations for conservation actions to meet ecological goals while sustaining or enhancing human well-being values within the coastal and nearshore areas of the western Lake Erie basin (WLEB). We conducted an optimization analysis using 26 features representing ecological and human well-being priorities (13 of each), and included seven cost layers. The influence that including human well-being had on project results was tested by running five scenarios and setting targets for human well-being at different levels in each scenario. The most important areas for conservation to achieve multiple goals are clustered along the coast, reflecting a concentration of existing or potentially restorable coastal wetlands, coastal landbird stopover habitat and terrestrial biodiversity, as well as important recreational activities. Inland important areas tended to cluster around trails and high quality inland landbird stopover habitat. Most concentrated areas of importance also are centered on lands that are already conserved, reflecting the lower costs and higher benefits of enlarging these conserved areas rather than conserving isolated, dispersed areas. Including human well-being features in the analysis only influenced the solution at the highest target levels.

Cumulative pressures from global climate and ocean change combined with multiple regional and local-scale stressors pose fundamental challenges to coral reef managers worldwide. Understanding how cumulative stressors affect coral reef vulnerability is critical for successful reef conservation now and in the future. In this review, we present the case that strategically managing for increased ecological resilience (capacity for stress resistance and recovery) can reduce coral reef vulnerability (risk of net decline) up to a point. Specifically, we propose an operational framework for identifying effective management levers to enhance resilience and support management decisions that reduce reef vulnerability. Building on a system understanding of biological and ecological processes that drive resilience of coral reefs in different environmental and socio-economic settings, we present an Adaptive Resilience-Based management (ARBM) framework and suggest a set of guidelines for how and where resilience can be enhanced via management interventions. We argue that press-type stressors (pollution, sedimentation, overfishing, ocean warming and acidification) are key threats to coral reef resilience by affecting processes underpinning resistance and recovery, while pulse-type (acute) stressors (e.g. storms, bleaching events, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks) increase the demand for resilience. We apply the framework to a set of example problems for Caribbean and Indo-Pacific reefs. A combined strategy of active risk reduction and resilience support is needed, informed by key management objectives, knowledge of reef ecosystem processes and consideration of environmental and social drivers. As climate change and ocean acidification erode the resilience and increase the vulnerability of coral reefs globally, successful adaptive management of coral reefs will become increasingly difficult. Given limited resources, on-the-ground solutions are likely to focus increasingly on actions that support resilience at finer spatial scales, and that are tightly linked to ecosystem goods and services., (© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

An opportunity represents an advantageous combination of circumstances that allows goals to be achieved. We reviewed the nature of opportunity and how it manifests in different subsystems (e.g., biophysical, social, political, economic) as conceptualized in other bodies of literature, including behavior, adoption, entrepreneur, public policy, and resilience literature. We then developed a multidisciplinary conceptualization of conservation opportunity. We identified 3 types of conservation opportunity: potential, actors remove barriers to problem solving by identifying the capabilities within the system that can be manipulated to create support for conservation action; traction, actors identify windows of opportunity that arise from exogenous shocks, events, or changes that remove barriers to solving problems; and existing, everything is in place for conservation action (i.e., no barriers exist) and an actor takes advantage of the existing circumstances to solve problems. Different leverage points characterize each type of opportunity. Thus, unique stages of opportunity identification or creation and exploitation exist: characterizing the system and defining problems; identifying potential solutions; assessing the feasibility of solutions; identifying or creating opportunities; and taking advantage of opportunities. These stages can be undertaken independently or as part of a situational analysis and typically comprise the first stage, but they can also be conducted iteratively throughout a conservation planning process. Four types of entrepreneur can be identified (business, policy, social, and conservation), each possessing attributes that enable them to identify or create opportunities and take advantage of them. We examined how different types of conservation opportunity manifest in a social-ecological system (the Great Barrier Reef) and how they can be taken advantage of. Our multidisciplinary conceptualization of conservation opportunity strengthens and legitimizes the concept., (© 2014 Society for Conservation Biology.)

A vast number of prioritization schemes have been developed to help conservation navigate tough decisions about the allocation of finite resources. However, the application of quantitative approaches to setting priorities in conservation frequently includes mistakes that can undermine their authors' intention to be more rigorous and scientific in the way priorities are established and resources allocated. Drawing on well-established principles of decision science, we highlight 6 mistakes commonly associated with setting priorities for conservation: not acknowledging conservation plans are prioritizations; trying to solve an ill-defined problem; not prioritizing actions; arbitrariness; hidden value judgments; and not acknowledging risk of failure. We explain these mistakes and offer a path to help conservation planners avoid making the same mistakes in future prioritizations., (© 2013 Society for Conservation Biology.)

The outcomes of systematic conservation planning (process of assessing, implementing, and managing conservation areas) are rarely reported or measured formally. A lack of consistent or rigorous evaluation in conservation planning has fueled debate about the extent to which conservation assessment (identification, design, and prioritization of potential conservation areas) ultimately influences actions on the ground. We interviewed staff members of a nongovernmental organization, who were involved in 5 ecoregional assessments across North and South America and the Asia-Pacific region. We conducted 17 semistructured interviews with open and closed questions about the perceived purpose, outputs, and outcomes of the ecoregional assessments in which respondents were involved. Using qualitative data collected from those interviews, we investigated the types and frequency of benefits perceived to have emerged from the ecoregional assessments and explored factors that might facilitate or constrain the flow of benefits. Some benefits reflected the intended purpose of ecoregional assessments. Other benefits included improvements in social interactions, attitudes, and institutional knowledge. Our results suggest the latter types of benefits enable ultimate benefits of assessments, such as guiding investments by institutional partners. Our results also showed a clear divergence between the respondents' expectations and perceived outcomes of implementation of conservation actions arising from ecoregional assessments. Our findings suggest the need for both a broader perspective on the contribution of assessments to planning goals and further evaluation of conservation assessments., (©2012 Society for Conservation Biology.)

Pelagic ecosystems support a significant and vital component of the ocean's productivity and biodiversity. They are also heavily exploited and, as a result, are the focus of numerous spatial planning initiatives. Over the past decade, there has been increasing enthusiasm for protected areas as a tool for pelagic conservation, however, few have been implemented. Here we demonstrate an approach to plan protected areas that address the physical and biological dynamics typical of the pelagic realm. Specifically, we provide an example of an approach to planning protected areas that integrates pelagic and benthic conservation in the southern Benguela and Agulhas Bank ecosystems off South Africa. Our aim was to represent species of importance to fisheries and species of conservation concern within protected areas. In addition to representation, we ensured that protected areas were designed to consider pelagic dynamics, characterized from time-series data on key oceanographic processes, together with data on the abundance of small pelagic fishes. We found that, to have the highest likelihood of reaching conservation targets, protected area selection should be based on time-specific data rather than data averaged across time. More generally, we argue that innovative methods are needed to conserve ephemeral and dynamic pelagic biodiversity.

The gross under-resourcing of conservation endeavours has placed an increasing emphasis on spending accountability. Increased accountability has led to monitoring forming a central element of conservation programs. Although there is little doubt that information obtained from monitoring can improve management of biodiversity, the cost (in time and/or money) of gaining this knowledge is rarely considered when making decisions about allocation of resources to monitoring. We present a simple framework allowing managers and policy advisors to make decisions about when to invest in monitoring to improve management., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Coral reefs have exceptional biodiversity, support the livelihoods of millions of people, and are threatened by multiple human activities on land (e.g. farming) and in the sea (e.g. overfishing). Most conservation efforts occur at local scales and, when effective, can increase the resilience of coral reefs to global threats such as climate change (e.g. warming water and ocean acidification). Limited resources for conservation require that we efficiently prioritize where and how to best sustain coral reef ecosystems., Methodology/principal Findings: Here we develop the first prioritization approach that can guide regional-scale conservation investments in land- and sea-based conservation actions that cost-effectively mitigate threats to coral reefs, and apply it to the Coral Triangle, an area of significant global attention and funding. Using information on threats to marine ecosystems, effectiveness of management actions at abating threats, and the management and opportunity costs of actions, we calculate the rate of return on investment in two conservation actions in sixteen ecoregions. We discover that marine conservation almost always trumps terrestrial conservation within any ecoregion, but terrestrial conservation in one ecoregion can be a better investment than marine conservation in another. We show how these results could be used to allocate a limited budget for conservation and compare them to priorities based on individual criteria., Conclusions/significance: Previous prioritization approaches do not consider both land and sea-based threats or the socioeconomic costs of conserving coral reefs. A simple and transparent approach like ours is essential to support effective coral reef conservation decisions in a large and diverse region like the Coral Triangle, but can be applied at any scale and to other marine ecosystems.

Marine Protected Areas are usually static, permanently closed areas. There are, however, both social and ecological reasons to adopt dynamic closures, where reserves move through time. Using a general theoretical framework, we investigate whether dynamic closures can improve the mean biomass of herbivorous fishes on reef systems, thereby enhancing resilience to undesirable phase-shifts. At current levels of reservation (10-30%), moving protection between all reefs in a system is unlikely to improve herbivore biomass, but can lead to a more even distribution of biomass. However, if protected areas are rotated among an appropriate subset of the entire reef system (e.g. rotating 10 protected areas between only 20 reefs in a 100 reef system), dynamic closures always lead to increased mean herbivore biomass. The management strategy that will achieve the highest mean herbivore biomass depends on both the trajectories and rates of population recovery and decline. Given the current large-scale threats to coral reefs, the ability of dynamic marine protected areas to achieve conservation goals deserves more attention.

Fewer protected areas exist in the pelagic ocean than any other ecosystem on Earth. Although there is increasing support for marine protected areas (MPAs) as a tool for pelagic conservation, there have also been numerous criticisms of the ecological, logistical and economic feasibility of place-based management in the dynamic pelagic environment. Here we argue that recent advances across conservation, oceanography and fisheries science provide the evidence, tools and information to address these criticisms and confirm MPAs as defensible and feasible instruments for pelagic conservation. Debate over the efficacy of protected areas relative to other conservation measures cannot be resolved without further implementation of MPAs in the pelagic ocean.

Conservation efforts and emergency medicine face comparable problems: how to use scarce resources wisely to conserve valuable assets. In both fields, the process of prioritising actions is known as triage. Although often used implicitly by conservation managers, scientists and policymakers, triage has been misinterpreted as the process of simply deciding which assets (e.g. species, habitats) will not receive investment. As a consequence, triage is sometimes associated with a defeatist conservation ethic. However, triage is no more than the efficient allocation of conservation resources and we risk wasting scarce resources if we do not follow its basic principles.

It is thought that recovery of marine habitats from uncontrollable disturbance may be faster in marine reserves than in unprotected habitats. But which marine habitats should be protected, those areas at greatest risk or those at least risk? We first defined this problem mathematically for 2 alternate conservation objectives. We then analytically solved this problem for both objectives and determined under which conditions each of the different protection strategies was optimal. If the conservation objective was to maximize the chance of having at least 1 healthy site, then the best strategy was protection of the site at lowest risk. On the other hand, if the goal was to maximize the expected number of healthy sites, the optimal strategy was more complex. If protected sites were likely to spend a significant amount of time in a degraded state, then it was best to protect low-risk sites. Alternatively, if most areas were generally healthy then, counterintuitively, it was best to protect sites at higher risk. We applied these strategies to a situation of cyclone disturbance of coral reefs on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. With regard to the risk of cyclone disturbance, the optimal reef to protect differed dramatically, depending on the expected speed of reef recovery of both protected and unprotected reefs. An adequate consideration of risk is fundamental to all conservation actions and can indicate surprising routes to conservation success.

Land acquisition is a common approach to biodiversity conservation but is typically subject to property availability on the public market. Consequently, conservation plans are often unable to be implemented as intended. When properties come on the market, conservation agencies must make a choice: purchase immediately, often without a detailed knowledge of its biodiversity value; survey the parcel and accept the risk that it may be removed from the market during this process; or not purchase and hope a better parcel comes on the market at a later date. We describe both an optimal method, using stochastic dynamic programming, and a simple rule of thumb for making such decisions. The solutions to this problem illustrate how optimal conservation is necessarily dynamic and requires explicit consideration of both the time period allowed for implementation and the availability of properties.

Large-scale catastrophic events, although rare, lie generally beyond the control of local management and can prevent marine reserves from achieving biodiversity outcomes. We formulate a new conservation planning problem that aims to minimize the probability of missing conservation targets as a result of catastrophic events. To illustrate this approach we formulate and solve the problem of minimizing the impact of large-scale coral bleaching events on a reserve system for the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. We show that by considering the threat of catastrophic events as part of the reserve design problem it is possible to substantially improve the likely persistence of conservation features within reserve networks for a negligible increase in cost. In the case of the Great Barrier Reef, a 2% increase in overall reserve cost was enough to improve the long-run performance of our reserve network by >60%. Our results also demonstrate that simply aiming to protect the reefs at lowest risk of catastrophic bleaching does not necessarily lead to the best conservation outcomes, and enormous gains in overall persistence can be made by removing the requirement to represent all bioregions in the reserve network. We provide an explicit and well-defined method that allows the probability of catastrophic disturbances to be included in the site selection problem without creating additional conservation targets or imposing arbitrary presence/absence thresholds on existing data. This research has implications for reserve design in a changing climate.

Sustainability challenges for nature and people are complex and interconnected, such that effective solutions require approaches and a common theory of change that bridge disparate disciplines and sectors. Causal chains offer promising approaches to achieving an integrated understanding of how actions affect ecosystems, the goods and services they provide, and ultimately, human well-being. Although causal chains and their variants are common tools across disciplines, their use remains highly inconsistent, limiting their ability to support and create a shared evidence base for joint actions. In this article, we present the foundational concepts and guidance of causal chains linking disciplines and sectors that do not often intersect to elucidate the effects of actions on ecosystems and society. We further discuss considerations for establishing and implementing causal chains, including nonlinearity, trade-offs and synergies, heterogeneity, scale, and confounding factors. Finally, we highlight the science, practice, and policy implications of causal chains to address real-world linked human-nature challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human factors more than ecology dictate conservation opportunity and the subsequent success of implementation. This is particularly true in places such as the Solomon Islands where most terrestrial and coastal marine areas remain in community ownership. However, factors such as community support are not reliably predictable, nor easy to map, and therefore challenging to incorporate into systematic conservation plans. Here, we describe how the Lauru Land Conference of Tribal Communities and The Nature Conservancy have worked with the communities of Choiseul Province, Solomon Islands, to develop a conservation planning process that reconciles community-driven conservation opportunities, with a systematic and representation-based approach to prioritization. We suggest how sophisticated prioritization software can be used collaboratively in a community setting, to dynamically assess and guide conservation opportunities as they arise; a process of informed opportunism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]