A Values-based Approach 1
to Landscape Conservation Design in the US Caribbean
Definitions
CLCC landscape conservation design is a partnership driven adaptive learning process that integrates societal values and multi-sector interests with the best available science to assess spatial and temporal patterns, risks, and opportunities; resulting in spatially explicit products and coordinated strategies that protect biodiversity and ecosystem services, and increase the resilience and sustainability of social ecological systems for future generations.
Objectives: An explicit statement of a desired outcome, typically expressed in subject-verb-object sentence structure. Objectives (even those that are stated in scientific terms) are always a reflection of values, so setting objectives falls in the realm of policy and should be informed by legal and regulatory mandates as well as stakeholder viewpoints.
Strategic objectives: Broadly defined objectives that an organization must achieve to make its strategy succeed. Strategic objectives are generally externally focused and include objectives like, “maximize resource-user trust,” “provide leadership in island resource management,”and “enhance identity as steward of island resources.”
Process objectives:Objectives that concern how the decision is made rather than what decision is chosen. Strategic objectives reflect concerns regarding agency/stakeholder missions, mandates, or images and include objectives like, “increase inter-agency cooperation” and “increase decision making transparency.”
Fundamental objectives: The end objectives used to describe the consequences that essentially define the basic reasons for being interested in the decision.
Means objectives: Objectives that are important only for their influence on the achievement of the fundamental objective(s).
Competing objectives: The fundamental objective requires satisfaction of 2 means objectives, but there are insufficient resources to fulfill both. This is the most common type of objective from an agency perspective because funds are rarely sufficient to do all the management actions that an agency desires.
Conflicting objectives: Similar to the previous, but fulfillment of 1 objective is in direct conflict with the other. For example, Bull trout reintroduction in the Clackamas River Basin in Oregon. Bull trout are a listed species but are known to eat juvenile coho salmon which are also listed. Thus the reintroduction of bull trout could prevent the recovery of Coho.
Linked objectives: One object must be fulfilled before a second objective can be fulfilled. The second objective is linked to the first. For example, a species restoration plan calls for reintroductions to a depopulated area. However, for the reintroduction to succeed habitat must first be restored to a suitable state.
Hidden objectives: These are fundamental objectives that are clearly important to the decision maker or stakeholder, but are not “on the table”. Hidden objectives often can be revealed by asking the question “If all the fundamental objectives are satisfied, has the problem been solved?” If the answer is “no” then there are almost certainly hidden objectives that need to be revealed.
Stranded objectives:Fundamental objectives that have no connection to means objectives or decisions, and thereby no means of fulfillment. Analysis at this stage sometimes will reveal that the scope of the problem has been too narrowly defined. For example, it may be that the means for fulfilling a fundamental objective lie beyond the control or purview of the team in charge of the decision.
Stranded alternatives: Alternatives that have no connection to means or fundamental objectives thereby making it unclear what the decision-maker ultimately wants to achieve by implementing the alternative.