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To be relevant to societal interests and needs, conservation science must explicitly lend itself to solving real-world problems. Failure to evaluate under field conditions how a new technology or method performs or the cost of its implementation can prevent its acceptance by end users. Demonstration, defined here as the translation of scientific understanding into metrics of performance and cost of implementation under real-world conditions, is a logical step in the challenging progression from fundamental research to application. Demonstration reduces scientific uncertainty and validates the hypothesis that a management approach is both effective and financially sustainable. Much like adaptive management, demonstration enables researchers and resource managers to avoid trial-and-error approaches and instead conduct unbiased assessment of management interventions. The participation of end users and regulators in the development and execution of demonstration projects ensures that performance measures are credible and increases the probability that successful innovations will be adopted. Four actions might better connect science to the needs of resource managers via demonstration. First, we recommend that demonstration be conducted as a formal process that documents successes and failures. Second, demonstration should be budgeted as an integral component of government agencies' science programs and executed as a partnership between researchers and managers. Third, public and private funders should increase the opportunities and incentives for academics to engage in demonstration. Fourth, social influences on adoption of new technologies and methods should be further explored. When end users can evaluate explicitly whether a new approach is likely to achieve management objectives, save money, and reduce risk under uncertainty, the professional community successfully has bridged a chasm between research and application.

On 25 September, 2015, world leaders met at the United Nations in New York, where they adopted the Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals and 169 targets set out an agenda for sustainable development for all nations that embraces economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. Now, the agenda moves from agreeing the goals to implementing and ultimately achieving them. Across the goals, 42 targets focus on means of implementation, and the final goal, Goal 17, is entirely devoted to means of implementation. However, these implementation targets are largely silent about interlinkages and interdependencies among goals. This leaves open the possibility of perverse outcomes and unrealised synergies. We demonstrate that there must be greater attention on interlinkages in three areas: across sectors (e.g., finance, agriculture, energy, and transport), across societal actors (local authorities, government agencies, private sector, and civil society), and between and among low, medium and high income countries . Drawing on a global sustainability science and practice perspective, we provide seven recommendations to improve these interlinkages at both global and national levels, in relation to the UN’s categories of means of implementation: finance, technology, capacity building, trade, policy coherence, partnerships, and, finally, data, monitoring and accountability.

Humans derive many tangible and intangible benefits from coastal areas, providing essential components for social and economic development especially of less developed coastal states and island states. At the same time, growing human and environmental pressures in coastal areas have significant impacts on coastal systems, requiring urgent attention in many coastal areas globally. Sustainable development goal (SDG) 14 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (henceforth the 2030 Agenda) aims for conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas, and marine resources, explicitly considering coastal areas in two of its targets (14.2 and 14.5). These promote, as we argue in this article, a strong sustainability concept by addressing protection, conservation, and management of coastal ecosystems and resources. The 2030 Agenda adopts the so-called “three-pillar-model” but does not specify how to balance the economic, social, and environmental dimensions in cases of trade-offs or conflicts. By analysing SDG 14 for the underlying sustainability concept, we derive decisive arguments for a strong sustainability concept and for the integration of constraint functions to avoid depletion of natural capital of coastal areas beyond safe minimum standards. In potential negotiations, targets 14.2 and 14.5 ought to serve as constraints to such depletion. However, such a rule-based framework has challenges and pitfalls which need to be addressed in the implementation and policy process. We discuss these for coastal areas in the context of SDG 14 and provide recommendations for coastal governance and for the process ahead.

To ensure that the best scientific evidence is available to guide conservation action, effective mechanisms for communicating the results of research are necessary. In medicine, an evidence-based approach assists doctors in applying scientific evidence when treating patients. The approach has required the development of new methods for systematically reviewing research, and has led to the establishment of independent organizations to disseminate the conclusions of reviews. (1) Such methods could help bridge gaps between researchers and practitioners of environmental conservation. In medicine, systematic reviews place strong emphasis on reviewing experimental clinical trials that meet strict standards. Although experimental studies are much less common in conservation, many of the components of systematic reviews that reduce the biases when identifying, selecting and appraising relevant studies could still be applied effectively. Other methods already applied in medicine for the review of non-experimental studies will therefore be required in conservation. (2) Using systematic reviews and an evidence-based approach will only be one tool of many to reduce uncertainty when making conservation-related decisions. Nevertheless an evidence-based approach does complement other approaches (for example adaptive management), and could facilitate the use of the best available research in environmental management. (3) In medicine, the Cochrane Collaboration was established as an independent organization to guide the production and dissemination of systematic reviews. It has provided many benefits that could apply to conservation, including a forum for producing and disseminating reviews with emphasis on the requirements of practitioners, and a forum for feedback between researchers and practitioners and improved access to the primary research. Without the Cochrane Collaboration, many of the improvements in research communication that have occurred in medicine over the last decade would not have been possible.

There is growing recognition that public lands cannot be managed as islands; rather, land management must address the ecological, social, and temporal complexity that often spans jurisdictions and traditional planning horizons. Collaborative decision making and adaptive management (CAM) have been promoted as methods to reconcile competing societal demands and respond to complex ecosystem dynamics. We detail the experiences of land managers and stakeholders in using CAM at Las Cienegas National Conservation Area (LCNCA), a highly valued site under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The CAM process at Las Cienegas is marked by strong stakeholder engagement, with four core elements: (1) shared watershed goals with measurable resource objectives; (2) relevant and reliable scientific information; (3) mechanisms to incorporate new information into decision making; and (4) shared learning to improve both the process and management actions. The combination of stakeholder engagement and adaptive management has led to agreement on contentious issues, more innovative solutions, and more effective land management. However, the region is now experiencing rapid changes outside managers’ control, including climate change, human population growth, and reduced federal budgets, with large but unpredictable impacts on natural resources. Although the CAM experience provides a strong foundation for making the difficult and contentious management decisions that such changes are likely to require, neither collaboration nor adaptive management provides a sufficient structure for addressing the externalities that drive uncontrollable and unpredictable change. As a result, LCNCA is exploring two specific modifications to CAM that may better address emerging challenges, including: (1) creating nested resource objectives to distinguish between those objectives that may be crucial to maintaining ecological resilience from those that may hinder a flexible response to climate change, and (2) incorporating scenario planning into CAM to explore how climate change may interact with other drivers and alter options for the future, to identify robust management actions, and to prioritize ecological monitoring efforts. The experiences at LCNCA demonstrate how collaboration and adaptive management can be used to improve social and environmental outcomes and, with modifications, may help address the full range of complexity and change that threatens to overwhelm even the best efforts to sustain public lands.

This article discusses the current negotiations for an Implementing Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. It discusses, in particular, the issue of the relationship of the new agreement with existing and future relevant regional instruments and bodies and the need for cooperation and coordination amongst them, the guiding principles of the new agreement, and the question of implementation and enforcement of the new agreement. These issues and the choices that delegations will make respectively highlight the controversy on the underpinning tenet of the agreement, ie between the ‘freedom of the high seas’ and the common heritage of mankind. The article concludes with a pessimistic prognosis that, in general, the agreement will fall short of the expectations that many States and international community have had at the early days of the negotiation.

The Regional Coordinating Unit of the Convention for Co-operation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment for West and Central Africa (the Abidjan Convention) has under its wings several multilateral environmental agreements including those addressing shipping pollution. Shipping, potentially, has negative impacts on marine fauna and flora and air quality, with implications for public health. The Regional Coordinating Unit seeks to strengthen implementation of the Abidjan Convention by party-states through co-operation with state actors using various pathways based on its internal resources and competencies but the Unit is also starting to explore engagement with potential non-state actors. The ability of the Unit to exert influence on implementation is constrained by domestic politico-administrative institutions. This paper seeks to understand the influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit on the implementation of the Abidjan Convention in the field of shipping pollution. It uses three theoretical perspectives for the analysis: the influence of international environmental bureaucracies, domestic regulatory-politics and transnational governance. The paper shows how these theories are complementary because the influence of international bureaucracies such as the Regional Coordinating Unit cannot be adequately understood through factors internal to their organisation alone but needs to be analysed in relation also to external factors, both domestic politico-institutional ones in states that international bureaucracies work with, and the role of relevant non-state actors in the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. It is concluded that, although influence cannot be measured directly, it is likely that Regional Coordinating Unit’s influence through its autonomy-centred efforts are quiet strong but negatively constrained by the traditional state-centric responsibility for implementation of international legal instruments where domestic regulatory-politics lack sufficient political will and support from and engagement with non-state actors.

The climate is changing, and the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region is vulnerable to the consequences. Many of the region's countries are facing warmer temperatures, a changing hydrology, and more extremes, droughts, floods, heat waves, windstorms, and forest fires. This book presents an overview of what adaptation to climate change might mean for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It starts with a discussion of emerging best-practice adaptation planning around the world and a review of the latest climate projections. It then discusses possible actions to improve resilience organized around impacts on health, natural resources (water, biodiversity, and the coastal environment), the 'unbuilt' environment (agriculture and forestry), and the built environment (infrastructure and housing). The last chapter concludes with a discussion of two areas in great need of strengthening given the changing climate: disaster preparedness and hydro-meteorological services. This book has four key messages: a) contrary to popular perception, Eastern Europe and Central Asia face significant threats from climate change, with a number of the most serious risks already in evidence; b) vulnerability over the next 10 to 20 years is likely to be dominated by socioeconomic factors and legacy issues; c) even countries and sectors that stand to benefit from climate change are poorly positioned to do so; and d) the next decade offers a window of opportunity for ECA countries to make their development more resilient to climate change while reaping numerous co-benefits.

Economists for many decades have advocated using market incentives to correct for undesirable externalities from production and consumption. One method is a market in permits (licenses) to pollute. Under this scheme, regulators would limit total emissions for a pollutant in a region and allow a market to allocate emissions among sources. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is adopting this scheme. Current regulatory practice is to set a standard for each source. The EPA provides tradable permits, the main purpose of which is to convey to polluters appropriate price signals. The agency's new trading methods are not true marketable emissions permits because they place important conditions on the admissibility of trades and long-term validity of the revised standards. Consideration is given to the feasibility of implementing a market which avoids source-by-source review, achieves competitive equilibrium, and has low transaction costs.