Topic III: Process Lessons

1. Introduction BCN's primary goals involve promoting site-specific conservation and testing the BCN core hypothesis. A key feature of the BCN program, however, is that in working towards these goals, we have begun to accumulate experience and knowledge about the process of conservation. Wherever possible, we want to try to capture and disseminate this experience and knowledge to other groups engaged in similar efforts. Ultimately, we hope to both enable others to benefit from our successes and failures and to stimulate others to share their experience and knowledge with us.

2. Analytical Design

BCN's process lessons will cover a wide range of subjects in which BCN has accumulated expertise. A preliminary of some of these subjects is presented in Table 3-1.

Table 3-1. Preliminary List of Process Analyses

Topic	Products
Hypothesis testing grants programs	BCN Working Paper
Project based monitoring	Measures of Success book
How to teach project based monitoring	Measures of Success training guide
History of BCN/BSP monitoring efforts	Chapter in BSP book
Social science methods and techniques	Studying the Social Dimensions of Community-Based Conservation book
Setting up community-based conservation enterprises
Measuring conservation success	BSP Working Paper
Designing and monitoring marine projects
Community-based marine monitoring systems
Improving field-based administration capacity
Adaptive management as a tool for conservation and development projects
BSP/TNC Adaptive Management Primer
Analyzing complex conservation projects	BCN Analytical Framework

3. Data Needs and Analytical Tools

Each of these analytical pieces will require its own data set. For each piece, however, we will generally try to document the process that we used, evaluate the plusses and minuses of this approach, and then make recommendations for future applications and modifications. These data will largely be collected from BCN documents and key informant interviews. In general, these analyses will not rely on quantitative data sets, but will instead draw on qualitative sources.

4. Potential Audiences and Outputs

Important audiences for these analyses include field-based practitioners and project managers and USAID staff. Potential outputs for each analysis are listed in the second column of Table 3-1. Wherever possible, we will try to design and write these outputs in a way that makes them accessible to conservation practitioners.

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