Start-Up Guidance for USAID Biodiversity Activities: Process Overview describes the main steps to initiate a new biodiversity or integrated activity, including a theory of change workshop. This short guide explains the core tasks and provides important tips and considerations for each step. https://biodiversitylinks.org/projects/completed-projects/measuring-impact/resources/start-up-guidance-for-usaid-biodiversity-activities-2013-process-overview/view

The Pause and Reflect Toolkit provides facilitators with a centralized collection of resources, enabling them to find everything they need to lead and support a pause and reflect process. These resources range from instructions for facilitating stoplight diagrams to addressing common facilitation challenges. Download toolkit below. The “Pause & Reflect Toolkit” is also available in Spanish.

The “Good Practices for Pause and Reflect in the Activity Cycle” presents a framework for group-based activity-level pause and reflect processes to inform activity learning and annual work planning. The guide offers pause and reflect practices to help teams digest what happened during the previous year of implementation and make informed decisions that they can operationalize during annual planning processes to support adaptive management. Download guide below.   The “Good Practices Guide for Pause and Reflect” is also available in Spanish.  

For over 20 years, organizations worldwide have been using and collaboratively developing a common language and set of guidelines and tools to address diverse conservation problems through the Conservation Standards (CS). In parallel, many organizations have been developing corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks aimed at developing a common language and set of guidelines and tools to help companies and financial institutions make changes needed for an equitable, nature and climate-friendly future. In fact, companies looking for standards for nature protection may now face the potential issue of there being too many choices. This project aimed to create alignment…

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is an expanding field of study focused on how the conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of ecosystems can address socio-environmental problems, such as invasive species and climate change. This 2022 report, prepared by TierraMar under CMP’s Collaborative Learning Initiative, summarizes key papers on NbS, case studies, and interviews with NbS practitioners. Based on analyses of these, the report presents guidance on how NbS and the Conservation Standards can be aligned for more effective conservation outcomes. You may also want to check out the CMP NbS Initiative’s Workspace, which features many additional resources.

In April 2016, a two day workshop to introduce the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation to the Aleutian and Bering Sea Islands Landscape Conservation Cooperative (ABSI) was run by Ian Dutton, Principal of Nautilus, an early facilitator of the Conservation Measures Partnership and a long-time OS trainer. Landscape Conservation Cooperatives were founded in 2009 in an effort to network strategic goals and share information, identifying science gaps and formulating best practices without duplicating efforts. ABSI’s specific mission is to: “Promote coordination, dissemination, and development of applied science to inform conservation of natural and cultural resources in the face…