Integrative Science to Achieve Long-Term Impact in Conservation: The Use of Participatory Mapping to Improve Trans-disciplinarity

摘要

Biodiversity conservation is a major global issue (Sutherland et al., 2017). Conservation biology aims to identify and mitigate biodiversity loss through ecologically-centered planning (Salzer and Salafsky, 2006). Early conservation biology researchers recommended multi-disciplinary approaches to improve conservation (Soule, 1985), prompting inclusion of various disciplines to improve integrative approaches. A multitude of collaborations among social sciences and ecology resulted, combining theory and pragmatism in participatory approaches and action-research (Bennett et al., 2017).Environmental degradation is inherently about the way people value and act in an environment. While understanding and integrating social values (defined here as the values of a particular community or the cultural values and norms of society at large) is acknowledged as important in conservation (Norton, 2005; Jacobs et al., 2016), concepts are often poorly defined, operationalized or tested (Dennis et al., 2005; Liu et al., 2007). Poor assessment of social values limits achievements for effective conservation outcomes (Brennan, 2004). Recent re-conceptualizations of the relationships between social and ecological values have resulted in efforts to formalize and institutionalize integrated approaches (Chan et al., 2016; Teel et al., 2018). There is a need to better integrate local and indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge in the value frameworks and to include multiple value sets including biodiversity and ecosystem services and functions (Díaz et al., 2015).The analysis of landscape values shows that people designate values through a range of frames (Plieninger et al., 2015; Luginbühl et al., 2016; Ernoul et al., 2018). The socio-political dimensions of management policy may be different from the ecological needs and management of species (Mathevet and Mauchamp, 2005). A science-engaged agenda that acknowledges social and cultural context of landscape management provides a scaffolding for effective planning (Turner et al., 2016). Conservation planning that integrates socio-cultural and ecological values identifies contingent social value-frameworks lighting pathways to potential solutions (Endter-Wada et al., 1998). Considering the way people value nature and their existing relationships with nature improves acceptance and implementation in conservation planning (Chan et al., 2016; Mathevet et al., 2018). Strategic sampling for participation that accounts for socio-geographic scale and value-frames within the social catchment (Wardell-Johnson, 2005) of the conservation plan identifies the range of voices and values upon which effective conservation depends (Ernoul and Wardell-Johnson, 2013). Thus effective conservation planning depends on a clear understanding of why, how, and when to elicit social value information in order to integrate socio-cultural values in the spatial dimensions at the landscape scale (Vimal and Mathevet, 2011).Participatory mapping of social values has been used in cultural geography (Ramirez-Gomez et al., 2016), conservation sciences (Ernoul et al., 2018), and landscape ecology (Brown, 2013) to incorporate human dimensions in landscape planning, modeling, and decision-support systems (Le Page et al., 2013). Participatory mapping provides a spatial platform to integrate knowledge about complex landscape situations (e.g., climate change, urban sprawl, tourism development, regional planning, landscape management etc.) (Alhamwi et al., 2017), thus identifying a range of values within a landscape and revealing context in representations. This platform integrating socio-ecological values is highly sensitive to norms and values of the people involved, potentially representing specific interests in the political and social descriptions of environmental issues and actions. The map is not a basic tool, but rather defines boundaries presenting different ideals, ideologies, and practices within a landscape (Wardell-Johnson, 2005). Mapping includes a diversity of technical artifacts, processes, interfaces, and interpretations. The map as a boundary-object is central in the role of elicitation, collection, representation, management, and coordination of distributed knowledge (Star and Griesemer, 1989). Maps serve as intermediate-objects in the material sense (in the sense of Vinck, 1999) mediating between different visions and knowledge contributing to normative representation of positions about the environment. Maps play a part in contextualizing knowledge in the representation of “truth” and “facts.”A key challenge is to integrate the plurality of value-frames using social science techniques in order to re-frame decision-making processes and institutional structures (Ernoul and Wardell-Johnson, 2015; Estévez et al., 2015). This article proposes 3 basic principles derived from Mathevet and Marty (2015) that can be used to create a deliberative and procedural consultative processes coupling democracy with sc