Project Vision and BackgroundThe Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CLCC) is developing shared conservation priorities to guide their individual and collective conservation actions. The long term goal is a shared vision of land and seascapes of the future where cultural and natural resources most important to the greatest number of people are sustained and strengthened. Our approach to reach that shared vision is through the collective development and implementation of landscape conservation design (LCD; Campellone et al. 2014 ) The CLCC will use a multi-stakeholder structured decision-making (SDM) process to determine values associated with specific resources – or fundamental objectives, and associated means objectives that will guide LCD development and implementation. This effort will complement many existing conservation efforts in the region. One outcome of the LCD effort will be spatially-explicit, mapped information including resources, drivers, impacts, vulnerabilities and scenarios. This information will be incorporated in a web-based Caribbean Atlas for Management and Planning Options (el CAMPO). It will serve as a scenario building and decision making tool for managers, planners, researchers, decision-makers, and the public. The Atlas will improve the development and implementation of design plans, enhance knowledge transfer, education, and communication of conservation values and information.We are seeking letters of interest from individuals or teams to provide Structured Decision-Making (SDM) expertise to work with the CLCC staff and 20 member steering committee members to identify draft fundamental objectives, facilitate a workshop to refine these objectives, and draft a document that integrates these objectives in the strategic science plan of the CLCC.. This spring and summer the CLCC steering committee is committed to collectively identify conservation values (i.e. fundamental objectives in SDM language), characterize the degree of agreement or conflict among values and prioritize our science strategy based on the outcomes of this process. The objective is to articulate the “why” behind the reasons for doing conservation as a foundation for making this large-scale partnership-driven conservation organization work. We intend to use a structured decision-making approach (e.g., SDM) to clarify and specify the overarching goals (fundamental objectives) and then to identify specific resources (means objectives in SDM language) that can be used to develop conservation design. Resources are broadly defined and include wildlife populations, habitats, ecological services, socio-economic indicators, and cultural resources.
We are requesting facilitation services that include technical expertise and training for the CLCC Steering Committee (SC) and staff to enhance our ability to develop and implement values-based LCD. The CLCC SC is made up of organizational representatives who are able to direct resources toward LCD development and implementation. They know best which objectives and management actions their respective organizations will be able to support given their mission, capacities, opportunities, and annual work plans. The outcomes of this process should provide clear fundamental and means objectives on which the CLCC staff and steering committee can act. The consultant will work in close collaboration with decision analysis experts from the USGS Southeast Climate Science Center (SE CSC) who will co-facilitate the work. The SE CSC experts utilize the PrOACT (Problem, Objectives, Actions, Consequences, Trade-offs) SDM approach. The PrOACT process will provide a common structure and milestones that will guide our LCD from the big thematic aspects through to the specific details of the end results, namely spatially-explicit targets, predicted outcomes and expected benefits.Letters of interest should address three specific tasks:1. Identifying Draft Fundamental Objectives.
Provide expertise in large landscape conservation design and the PrOACT process of structured decision making, to use a combination of existing CLCC resources (e.g. literature and databases) and steering committee interviews to develop a draft statement of Shared Conservation Values (essentially identifying our cooperative’s fundamental objectives and, as appropriate, initial means objectives). Desired skills needed from the contractor are described in Attachment 1.
The CLCC has recently identified a suite of shared conservation objectives derived from a document analysis and a facilitated multi-criteria analysis during a large stakeholder workshop to develop the CLCC Shared Priorities (a mission-alignment document). The intent of this effort was to find the commonalities among conservation interests within the geography (US Caribbean). While we achieved said objective, this document, by the nature of its intent, falls short of comprehensively identifying both shared and conflicting values, or fundamental objectives, the “whys” that are necessary to move forward with a LCD. It is expected that the contractor, a SDM specialist with additional expertise in large landscape conservation design, will work with staff to develop a short “CLCC Values Assessment Report”. The contractor should use existing resources (i.e. the Shared Priorities document, public workshop reports, charter, web site information, ecosystem governance knowledge base, Caribbean conservation organization compendiums, and related CLCC resources) along with SC interviews to develop the values assessment. This short report needs to be completed in time to facilitate task 2.
- Co-facilitate a workshop to refine the list of fundamental and means objectives.
Co-facilitate (along with SE CSC professionals) a 4 day workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico, “Implementing a values-based approach to LCD in the US Caribbean” to (a) provide training and context for CLCC SC members, introduce PrOACT, (b) finalize the CLCC fundamental Shared Conservation Values (objectives) and develop a list of prioritized means objectives (resources, broadly/loosely defined), and (c) help facilitate a clear understanding of how we will use PrOACT to guide our LCD among CLCC SC and staff members. It is likely that the 4 day workshop will be divided into two 2-day sessions, in consecutive weeks. The workshop will be scheduled between late April and the end of June, 2015 based on the availability of staff from the SE CSC, CLCC Steering Committee members, CLCC staff, and the selected contractor (expected to meet the needs, within reason, of the other workshop partipants).
- Drafting a strategic Science Plan.
The selected person or team will 1) draft the workshop proceedings and outcomes for integration in the CLCC science strategic plan, and 2) develop a logical framework to move forward in the PrOACT process.
