The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted by 196 countries at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in 2022, calls for the rapid expansion of equitably governed conservation areas across the globe. Many different tools exist to monitor governance effectiveness and equity, but few allow practitioners and policy-makers working in diverse contexts to learn from each others’ efforts. To address this gap, WWF and more than a dozen partner organizations have developed Elinor—a new, open-access, collaborative tool and data system to monitor the governance and management of any conservation area around the world.
Named in honor of Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, Elinor integrates Ostrom's work on sustainable common-pool resource governance with insights on effective management of protected areas and emerging theories on equity and adaptive governance. Designed to meet the needs of conservationists working across local and global scales, With site-level outputs and easy data sharing and aggregation features, Elinor balances on-the-ground needs with global reporting and learning priorities.
WWF is already using Elinor to monitor our work around the world. In Tanzania, WWF used Elinor to assess governance and management in co-managed areas following new fisheries management plans. The assessment helped the WWF team uncover strengths and areas of growth to support these community-led institutions. Insights from this assessment will be used to inform a regional assessment of governance in the broader Western Indian Ocean region.
As area-based conservation targets influence national agendas around the world, Elinor can play a pivotal role. By enabling more transparent monitoring of governance and management to create long-term benefits for both people and the rest of nature, Elinor helps us understand how different types of area-based conservation measures like protected areas, locally managed areas, and Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECMs) protect the world’s lands and waters.
Read more about Elinor in the journal Conservation Biology.
