Introduction

The Biodiversity Conservation Network (BCN) was established to fulfill two main programmatic goals:

1. Support enterprise-oriented approaches to biodiversity conservation at a number of sites across the Asia/Pacific region, and

2. Evaluate the effectiveness of these enterprise-oriented approaches to community-based conservation of biodiversity and provide lessons and results to BCN's clients and audiences (see Table 1).

To achieve these goals, BCN brings together organizations in Asia, the Pacific, and the United States in active partnerships with local and indigenous communities. The program provides grants for projects that encourage the development of enterprises that are dependent on sustained conservation of local biodiversity. A key feature of the program is that projects supported by the BCN must monitor the social, economic, and biological impacts of their interventions. These data will be analyzed by BCN project partners and staff to both document the impact of these interventions and evaluate the effectiveness of these enterprise-oriented approaches to conservation.

Table 1. BCN's Clients and Audiences

BCN's SPECIFIC CLIENTS	BROADER AUDIENCE
1. Communities and local groups implementing projects	Field-based practitioners
2. National and international groups implementing projects; BSP consortium	Office-based project managers
3. USAID and US-AEP Missions and offices; US Congress	Donors
4. Politicians and government workers in countries where BCN works	Policy makers
5. Researchers working with BCN-funded sites	Researchers
6. US taxpayers	General public

Scope and Purpose of this Document

As illustrated in Figure 1, BCN has always viewed data collection and analysis (Module D) as one of the key components of its overall program. Furthermore, we have long recognized that analyzing data is not the endpoint of the learning process. Instead, it is necessary to communicate findings to the appropriate audiences who can learn from the results and use them to take action (Module E).

Note: The above diagram focuses exclusively on BCN's staff's activities. The communities and groups implementing the projects in the BCN portfoloio are concurrently addressing the similar issues as they design and implement their projects.

This document lays out the major analyses that the BCN plans to undertake over the next year and the communication products that will result from them. These analyses and communication products can be grouped into three main topics:

Topic I: Documenting BCN's Conservation Success
This topic is linked to BCN's first programmatic goal of promoting biodiversity conservation at a number of sites across the Asia/Pacific Region. Analytical efforts in this area are focused on demonstrating the impact of BCN-funded programs in achieving this goal. Audiences for this topic include BCN-funded projects, USAID Missions and Bureaus, United States Congress and taxpayers, and the broader conservation and development community.

Topic II: Evaluating the BCN Hypothesis
This topic is linked to BCN's second programmatic goal of researching under what conditions enterprise-oriented approaches can lead to biodiversity conservation. Analytical efforts in this area involve determining what factors determine whether an enterprise-based strategy will help promote conservation. Audiences for this topic include all of BCN's clients.

Topic III: Process Lessons
This topic involves analyzing and summarizing the experience BCN has gained in implementing conservation-linked enterprises. This experience includes everything from implementing businesses on the ground to implementing a ěhypothesis testingî grants program that simultaneously functions as both an intermediary donor and a research organization. Audiences for this topic will vary depending on the specific subject, but will include BCN's partners, members of the conservation and development community, and USAID Missions and Bureaus and other donors.

For each of these topics, in the following sections we introduce the basic concepts behind the analysis, discuss our planned analytical design, data needs and analytical tools, and anticipated outputs, and present a workplan for moving forward with the analytical work. As outlined in Table 2, for each topic, we will employ a range of different quantitative and qualitative analytical tools to evaluate the data. By considering each topic from a variety of perspectives, we will be able to triangulate and thus, hopefully develop a more enhanced understanding of the subtleties inherent in the topic.

Table 2. Different Analytical Tools to be Employed for Different Types of Analyses

	Type I Documenting Impact	Type II Testing the BCN Hypothesis	Type III Process Lessons
Quantitative Analyses
Indexes	X	X
Descriptive Statistics	X	X
Graphical Analyses	X	X
Bivariate Comparisons		X
Multivariate Comparisons		X
Qualitative Analyses
Site Impact Assessments	X	X
Case Studies		X	X
Thematic Studies		X

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