Responses 2 Flashcards
What is important to consider for responses?
Outcome:
- What are the objective(s)
- What are the ambition(s)
Threat:
- Why is a response needed
Context:
- Who are the actors
- What is the context
- Conservation interventions usually have multiple objectives with different ambitions
Identifying a baseline
Look at:
-Absence of threats
- Physical condition
- Species composition
- Structural diversity
- Ecosystem function
- External exchanges
A baseline is important for understanding impacts.
Impact evaluations
Assess the degree to which changes in outcomes can be attributed to an intervention rather than to other factors.
It’s (trying to) asses the causal effect of a specific policy, program, or intervention vis-a-vis a credible counterfactual scenario
It’s hard!!!
- Often rival explanations
Theory of change (ToC)
A structures framework that outlines how and why a desired change is expected to happen in a particular context.
It maps out the logical sequence of steps needed to achieve a long-term goal, identifying key inputs/interventions, activities, outputs and outcomes.
- Development of an outcomes framework
- The identification of assumptions
- Elaboration of a set of indicators
- Elaboration of a set of activites
How do we measure impact?
Randomized control trial (RCT)
Counterfactual approaches (eliminating other factors)
Instrumental variables
Studying the actual mechanism
Randomized control trial (RCT)
You have a “patient” that you expose to randomization
You then get a treatment group and a control group.
The treatment group will be “treated” with the intervention and the control group will be used for comparison
Counterfactual approaches
Seeks to identify a set of ‘control’ and ‘treatment’ units that are similar in all other features than the treatment (i.e. as if as random)
Focus on factors that affects both
1) how the outcome is “behaving”
2) the treatment assignment process
Often used/necessary when experiments are not possible/ethical
Challenges for impact evaluations
Multiple outcomes and scales
Spatial spillovers
Confounding factors
Randomization’s limits
Small initiatives
Lack of baseline measurements
Post hoc assessments
Lack of time
Shifting focus
Resistance from implementers
Summary
We need clear and SMART objectives and goals that integrates context and ambitions
Assessing impacts of conservation is hard because we work in the real world
When designing and assessing conservation interventions we need to develop a theory-of-change
Assessing impacts require accounting for the treatment assignment process and context.
