Measuring success

Once the high-level objectives have been set, it is also important to define how the success or failure of the planning is measured. Planning can be considered a failure if it does not address the defined objectives (i.e. validation [see Section 6.3] fails). After explicitly defining the objectives and assessing the different types of information needed in prioritization, it may become obvious that the analysis cannot be implemented with any confidence of success, e.g. because of a lack of suitable data. Even if this is the case, however, undertaking the planning project might not be a complete failure because of the co-learning aspect described in Section 2.1.

How do you then assess whether you are getting it right? The prioritization analysis itself and the results it produces should be checked and validated at several stages of the project. While you are building the analysis, it pays off to do regular checks on the data and the intermediate results to catch any potential technical problems (i.e. doing continuous verification [see Section 6.3]). More generally, it is a good idea to involve experts in checking the results early on as they usually can quickly pinpoint problems and peculiarities in the results. Finally, on-the-ground validation can be done by comparing the results to independent validation data sets to assess whether the high-priority sites indeed contain valuable conservation features. However, exactly how the validation should be done is not always obvious, especially for the more complicated analysis types. For example, if a Zonation analysis includes multiple types of connectivity and e.g. projected land-use changes or even climate change, it may be difficult to validate the results based on a snapshot of the current conditions.

Finally, we note that there are several different levels at which the success of a planning project can be measured. An informative prioritization analysis is only one step in the overall iterative process that constitutes conservation planning. A technically successful conservation prioritization assessment, produced e.g. with Zonation, does not automatically lead to improved implementation and more effective conservation.