Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

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Develop a project plan that includes goals, objectives,
and activities.
Develop a monitoring plan.
Implement project and monitoring plans.
Analyze data and communicate results.
Project teams that want to use adaptive management need
to be explicit about who is on their team, where or on what
they intend to work, and what is happening at their project
site (see box 4.15). This information lays the groundwork for
developing good goals and objectives, choosing the right
strategies, and developing a sound monitoring and evaluation
plan. Adaptive management requires that teams implement
their action plans and monitoring plans, analyze the
extent to which they are achieving their goals and objectives,
and adapt based on what they learn. Thus, adaptive management
is a continuous process that involves going through the
project management cycle (or parts of it) multiple times.
Box 4.15
Conceptual Models: A Tool for Portraying a Site’s Context and Determining Strategies
A conceptual model is a visual tool for depicting the context
within which a project is operating and, in particular,
the major forces that are influencing what the project
is trying to achieve. A conceptual model is a diagram
that uses a series of boxes and arrows to succinctly represent
a set of causal relationships among factors that
are believed to impact one or more targets (what one is
ultimately trying to affect). Conceptual models are useful
planning tools for project teams because they can
help the teams determine what actions are needed to
influence the factors at their site and what factors they
should be monitoring to determine if those factors are
changing with project implementation [Margoluis and
Salafsky 1998; Morgan and Foundations of Success
2005 (see note in reference section)].
The following conceptual model schematic is
adapted from a real-world conservation project at a
watershed site:
Media campaign
Improve
land-use
planning
Lobby gov’t on
development policies
Objective
Gov’t policies
favorable to
urban development
Failure of rural
economy
Traditions and
consumer
preferences
Limited gov’t
capacity for land
use planning
Need to generate
income
Rapid
urbanization
Population
growth
Objective
Demand for
caviar
Cheap land
Objective
Inadequate zoning
regulations
High price
for caviar
Need for
electricity
Demand for
second homes
Global warming
Dams
Objective
Harvesting for
caviar
Objective
Pollution from
domestic sewage
Objective
Clearing for new
home construction
Reforestation
with native species
Scope:
Blue River
watershed
Goal
Sturgeon
Goal
Blue River and
tributaries
Riparian
forest
Goal
Forest
corridors
Key:
Strategy
Indirect threat or
opportunity
Direct threat
Target
In this example, the team chose the strategy of
“Improve land-use planning” because it would influence
multiple factors at their site. The conceptual
Source: Foundations of Success 2005.
model helped the team be strategic about the activities
they chose and those they omitted.
NOTE 4.3: USING ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT TO IMPROVE PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION 145