New Evidence for Nature and People Data Portal
Hunt for Treasure: New Portal Organizes Scientific Literature to Inform Conservation Decisions
The SNAPP Evidence-Based Conservation working group launched a new online tool that will help policymakers and practitioners easily access and synthesize evidence from thousands of available datasets on human well-being and natural ecosystems to make better conservation decisions. The Evidence for Nature and People Data Portal was demonstrated at the North American Congress for Conservation Biology (NACCB), a society committed to advancing the science and practice of conserving Earth’s biodiversity.
The working group identified a significant barrier to people and organizations aiming to solve the world’s conservation problems: how to distill critical information from the mountains of existing data. Making good decisions requires evidence about past experiences of what works and what doesn’t, but there currently exists no easy way to comb through the literature and utilize the relevant datasets.
The SNAPP working group solves this issue by making this relevant data readily accessible and explorable. In order to increase the use of existing scientific evidence for conservation decision making, the interactive data portal allows users to filter, explore and visualize desired information using a policy-relevant framework. While this type of portal exists for a variety of physical, biological and ecological data, until now no similar database or data portal has existed for the linkages between conservation and human well-being information.
“The world is faced with environmental crises ranging from pollution, to overfishing, to climate change. The actions that we take to address these issues will have long-lasting and widespread effects, which if negative, will do more harm than good. Making decisions based on evidence for what works and what doesn’t work is absolutely critical if we want to achieve successful conservation.”
- Samantha Cheng, SNAPP post-doctoral research fellow at NCEAS
The new Data Portal will be demonstrated at NACCB on Monday, July 18, 2016 at 3:30 p.m. CDT in Ballroom C.
The Evidence for Nature and People Data Portal can be accessed at www.natureandpeoplevidence.org.
SNAPP Evidence-Based Conservation working group