Change is afoot and, as Professor of Conservation Biology, Bill Sutherland is excited about it.
Funding for the environment is on the rise, with governments and businesses becoming increasingly aware of the need to act, and quickly, to protect our natural world so that it can protect us.
But there’s a problem: even with the best of intentions, many conservation projects fail.
The UK Government has recently committed to spending at least £3 billion to protect and restore nature and biodiversity, and change farming practices through environmental land management schemes. It also hopes to leverage up to £90 billion of private investment by 2030, to facilitate the Net Zero Strategy for a more sustainable future. And the Bezos Earth Fund has pledged to spend $10 billion by the end of the decade.
Sutherland says there’s a very real chance that much of this money – potentially billions of pounds – could be wasted because conservation projects are not based on activities that have been proven to work, but on "frequently biased" beliefs – which are often wrong.
A review of decades of expensive tree planting programmes in northern India showed they hadn’t been effective. Many mangrove restoration schemes have failed due to planting in the wrong place, or lack of community engagement. Unsuccessful conservation projects are not just a waste of time – they’re a waste of money, and a failure to protect the plants and animals that are becoming increasingly threatened across the globe.
“There’s been no feedback mechanism in conservation. In medicine, cases are reviewed and if they didn’t go well, doctors try to work out why, and are held accountable – the field has been transformed by using evidence of what works.”
Professor Bill Sutherland
Drawing on the analogy, Sutherland is spearheading a revolution in the way conservation projects are planned. His hope is that all future decision-making in conservation will be based on the best available evidence, just as it is in medicine. And that this will result in better outcomes for the nature we’re trying to protect.
