The project focused on the Río Cruces Wetland in Chile’s Los Ríos Region, a Nature Sanctuary covering more than 6,000 hectares and recognized as the country’s first Ramsar Site. Black-necked swans, spot-flanked gallinules, Southern lapwings, Austral thrushes and dozens of other species are associated with the wetland, which is visited by both resident birds and species that migrate during the year. The landscape has changed substantially over time.

The 1960 earthquake, pollution of the Cruces River, the decline of river navigation and urban expansion are among the events that altered both the ecosystem and the relationship between surrounding communities and their territory. Researchers from IEB, the University of Concepción and other organizations worked with residents of ten rural communities between 2019 and 2023. The project was an observational study and a knowledge co-production process in which local residents helped generate, interpret and share information.

Six residents from different communities were trained as biocultural monitors and took shared responsibility for coordinating activities with families, schools and other local residents. The change from a conventional researcher-led approach was prompted partly by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the research team said the participatory structure became a methodological strength. The central question was which birds could serve as indicators of biocultural memory and landscape transformation, while also documenting places and events that formed part of the wetland’s collective memory.

Participants recognized 87 species, or 73% of the bird species recorded by the Nature Sanctuary. The research team interpreted this result as evidence of substantial local knowledge about biodiversity. Community members also used birds to identify less visible changes, including species that had disappeared from particular areas and others that had become more frequent in specific parts of the sanctuary.

The findings were based on local observations and memory within this community setting, rather than on a controlled comparison between different monitoring systems. One especially clear spatial result was the location of the 27 sites identified as having particular biocultural significance. Ninety-three percent were outside the sanctuary’s boundaries.

These places were associated with experiences through which local knowledge, biodiversity and everyday life intersected. The project recovered memories of traditional navigation along the Cruces River, which had been important for decades as a route for moving people and goods to local markets and Valdivia’s River Market. Boats also created opportunities to gather, exchange goods and knowledge, and socialize.

As roads and bridges were constructed, river travel gradually became less prominent, transforming relationships between communities and the territory. Other memories associated with the mapped sites included gathering mushrooms and medicinal plants, making handicrafts and preparing beverages. To recover place-based accounts, researchers and participants traveled by boat and walked through locations selected during the mapping process.

In describing the significance of birds, Cristóbal Pizarro, an IEB researcher and director of the Laboratory for Anthropocene Studies, said that birds allow people to recall events of profound significance. He pointed to the environmental disaster caused by pollution of the Cruces River, noting that the migration and mass die-off of black-necked swans had a deep impact on communities surrounding the area. The study also documented those who sustain local knowledge of the wetland.

Around 54 people and families participated, and researchers identified 19 individuals with particularly extensive knowledge of biodiversity and transformations in the territory. Those participants ranged in age from 20 to 85, and most were women. Their participation was closely connected to their role in caring for the territory and preserving knowledge that forms part of community memory.

Pizarro described the relationship between experienced knowledge holders and younger residents returning to the territory as part of a broader effort to strengthen intergenerational connections and recover knowledge that may otherwise be lost. Returning the information to participants was an important part of the process. The team created the documentary Voices of a Territory, which features participants’ testimonies and experiences, and presented it at the Gran Diálogo de la Memoria, or Great Memory Dialogue.

The gathering brought together residents from different communities, researchers, authorities and other stakeholders connected to the wetland, allowing recovered stories to circulate among the people whose experiences they documented. The project also produced the Manifesto for Dialogue on the Biocultural Memory of the Río Cruces Wetland Nature Sanctuary. Its seven principles address conserving and restoring the wetland and its biocultural heritage, strengthening local communities and passing knowledge to future generations.

Other initiatives also emerged from the work, including an annual Bird Festival that has drawn strong participation from local communities. The findings offer a case study of how a participatory observational method can connect biodiversity observations with community histories in a landscape affected by crisis. The results are specific to Río Cruces, where the project depended on sustained engagement, locally trained monitors and relationships with ten surrounding communities; they should not be treated as a general estimate for other wetlands.

Nevertheless, the authors say the approach could be adapted to other territories, including places affected by floods, droughts or situations where access is difficult. By documenting how residents used birds to identify ecological change while recording memories of navigation, pollution, cultural practices and daily encounters with nature, the study demonstrates how knowledge co-production can inform community monitoring and landscape conservation beyond a protected area’s legal perimeter.

Subject of Research: Biocultural memory, wetland birds and community conservation in Chile’s Río Cruces Wetland

Article Title: Research explores the valuable connection between birds, memory, and territory in Chile

Article References: Research explores the valuable connection between birds, memory, and territory in Chile. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Río Cruces Wetland, Chile, wetland birds, biocultural memory, community monitoring, knowledge co-production, participatory research, environmental history, wetland conservation, Ecology and Society, Research, explores

The research, led by Clara Léonie Diebold of the University of Bern together with Peter Messerli, Paul Clément Harimalala, Sarah-Lan Mathez-Stiefel, and Julie Gwendolin Zaehringer, examines four conservation and development initiatives in Madagascar. These are the kinds of hybrid projects that have become ubiquitous across the Global South: interventions that promise to safeguard biological diversity while simultaneously improving local livelihoods, often funded by international organizations and implemented by NGOs working with communities. On paper, such projects almost universally pledge to be participatory and inclusive. What actually happens inside their decision-making machinery, however, has remained surprisingly opaque.

To pierce that opacity, the team constructed a novel analytical lens that combines three complementary frameworks. The first concerns participation itself, distinguishing between forms of engagement that genuinely share decision-making power and those that merely consult. The second distinguishes knowledge sources, separating local knowledge held by community members, scientific knowledge produced by researchers, and practitioner knowledge accumulated by project staff. The third distinguishes knowledge types: systems knowledge, which describes how a socio-ecological system works; target knowledge, which defines what goals and values the intervention should pursue; and transformation knowledge, which specifies how change can actually be achieved on the ground. By applying this triple framework across the full trajectories of the four initiatives, the researchers could trace how participation and knowledge inclusion evolved over time, rather than snapping a single static portrait.

The first major finding is a reason for cautious optimism. Across the four initiatives, local participation and the inclusion of diverse knowledge sources generally increased as the projects unfolded. Early phases, often dominated by external experts drafting plans, gave way to later stages in which community members were consulted, workshops were held, and local ecological insights were folded into project design. This trajectory suggests that the conservation sector’s decades-long critique of top-down fortress conservation has genuinely filtered into practice, at least in the Malagasy initiatives studied. Projects are, on the whole, opening their doors wider than they once did.

But the second finding cuts against any easy celebration. Even as participation broadened, it frequently remained consultative in character. In practical terms, this means local actors were asked for their views, their observations, and their traditional ecological knowledge, yet the consequential decisions about budgets, zoning, rules, and priorities continued to be made elsewhere. The researchers describe this as a risk of knowledge extraction: projects harvest valuable local information without granting communities genuine influence over what is done with it. A farmer may know precisely where the forest regenerates fastest and why households clear particular plots, but if that knowledge simply informs a plan drafted in an office in the capital or abroad, participation becomes a form of data collection rather than shared governance.

Underlying this pattern, the study finds, are deliberate choices made by project managers and funders. The degree to which local actors were involved and multiple knowledge sources were combined did not happen by accident; it depended on decisions taken by those holding the purse strings and the implementation mandate. This insight highlights two intertwined realities. On one side sit power asymmetries, the structural inequalities between internationally funded organizations and rural communities that no amount of goodwill automatically dissolves. On the other side sits agency: project leaders are not helpless cogs in a system. They can choose to design genuinely co-productive processes, and the study suggests many have room to do so. The same tools that can extract knowledge can, in different hands, distribute power.

The analysis of knowledge types produced perhaps the most technically striking result. When initiatives failed to integrate systems, target, and transformation knowledge, the consequences were not abstract; they materialized as significant setbacks in the projects’ trajectories. An initiative might possess excellent systems knowledge, a rigorous understanding of deforestation dynamics, for example, yet stumble because target knowledge was thin: the goals of conservation actors and local livelihood aspirations were never explicitly reconciled. Another might share clear objectives but lack transformation knowledge, the practical know-how about governance, incentives, and implementation that turns intention into durable change. The framework thus functions as a diagnostic instrument, allowing practitioners to identify precisely which kind of knowledge is missing before that gap derails an intervention.

Taken together, these findings elevate knowledge co-production from a fashionable buzzword to an operational necessity. Co-production, in the sense used here, means iterative processes in which scientists, practitioners, and community members jointly generate understanding, define goals, and design pathways of change, rather than exchanging information across a one-way pipeline. The authors argue that such processes must explicitly address power relations, engage plural worldviews, and deliberately weave together all three knowledge types. That is a demanding prescription. It requires funders to budget time and money for sustained engagement, managers to cede some control, and researchers to treat local knowledge as a partner rather than a resource. But the Malagasy evidence suggests the alternative, consultation without influence and integration without intention, carries real costs in project effectiveness and legitimacy.

The broader resonance of the study extends well beyond Madagascar’s forests and hillsides. Conservation and development initiatives now span the planet, from community forestry in the Himalayas to marine protected areas in the Pacific, and nearly all face the same governance dilemma: how to reconcile global biodiversity priorities with local rights, needs, and knowledge systems. International frameworks, including recent global biodiversity targets, increasingly recognize the importance of indigenous and local knowledge, yet recognition on paper does not automatically translate into influence in practice. By providing a concrete, replicable analytical lens, the study gives both researchers and practitioners a way to audit their own projects: Who participates, in what capacity? Which knowledge sources enter the room? Are systems, target, and transformation knowledge all present and connected?

For a field often polarized between those who prioritize nature protection and those who prioritize poverty alleviation, the study’s message is refreshingly constructive. The question, it suggests, is not which knowledge matters in the abstract, but how different knowledges can be brought together deliberately and equitably in each specific place and project. Where that happens, conservation and development initiatives stand a far better chance of achieving their twin promises. Where it does not, even well-funded, scientifically sophisticated interventions risk repeating an old failure mode: protecting landscapes while marginalizing the people who know them best, and who must live with the consequences of every decision made on their behalf.

Subject of Research: Participation and knowledge integration in decision-making within conservation and development initiatives in Madagascar

Article Title: Which knowledge matters? Decision-making in conservation and development initiatives

Article References: Diebold, C. L., Messerli, P., Harimalala, P. C., Mathez-Stiefel, S.-L., & Zaehringer, J. G. (2026). Which knowledge matters? Decision-making in conservation and development initiatives. PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 5(5), e0000248. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000248

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pstr.0000248

Keywords: conservation, development, Madagascar, knowledge co-production, participation, governance, local knowledge, scientific knowledge, power asymmetries, biodiversity, sustainability, decision-making

The research team, drawn from the Department of Ecology and the Ramon Margalef Multidisciplinary Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Alicante, approached the problem with a literature-review methodology designed to trace ideas across two very different kinds of text. First, they identified when various ecological concepts first appeared in the peer-reviewed scientific record. Then they tracked when those same concepts were incorporated into the major United Nations environmental conventions, the international agreements that set the agenda for global environmental action. By comparing the timelines of scientific emergence and political adoption, the researchers were able to calculate a measurable transfer delay for each concept, and to ask what factors made that delay longer or shorter.

The headline result is the seven-year average, but the more interesting findings lie in the variation around that average. Concepts that had been available in the scientific literature for a longer time tended to experience shorter delays before political incorporation, suggesting that ideas gain traction partly through sheer accumulation of evidence, citation, and institutional familiarity. A concept that has been discussed, refined, and replicated across hundreds of studies becomes harder for policymakers to ignore than a fresh but thinly supported finding. The researchers also found that the speed of incorporation depends heavily on the alignment between scientific and political agendas. When an ecological concept happens to match a priority already on the diplomatic calendar, it moves into policy far more quickly than when it arrives without an institutional champion or an existing negotiating framework.

This last point carries a pointed implication. For decades, a common assumption in both science and policy circles has been that generating robust evidence is sufficient on its own to drive decision-making, that good data will eventually speak for themselves. The Alicante team’s results directly challenge that assumption. Evidence, on its own, does not automatically translate into policy decisions. The pathway from a journal article to a convention text runs through agenda-setting, diplomatic negotiation, translation into legal language, and political will, and each of those steps can stall, redirect, or dilute the original scientific message. A seven-year average delay, with wide variation depending on political alignment, means that the scientific community cannot simply publish and wait. The timing and framing of evidence matter as much as its quality.

The study does not stop at the science-policy interface. Its second major contribution is to examine what happens after environmental commitments are made, addressing what the authors describe as the disconnect between policy formulation and actual implementation. Using biodiversity as a case study, the researchers analysed how effectively conservation measures translate into real-world outcomes at different scales. The data demonstrate a clear pattern: the effectiveness of conservation measures increases as the scale of implementation narrows. Measures applied at local or regional levels proved more effective than equivalent commitments pursued at a global scale.

That scale finding is one of the most practically consequential results of the paper. International environmental conventions, from biodiversity frameworks to climate agreements, necessarily operate through broad, universally worded targets. Such targets are essential for coordinating action among nearly two hundred countries and for signalling collective ambition. But the study’s evidence indicates that establishing broad international targets is necessary yet insufficient. Success depends on whether those targets can be translated into concrete measures, adequate resources, and actions tailored to the specific ecological, social, and economic conditions of individual territories. A global goal to halt habitat loss, for example, only becomes real when a particular watershed, forest, or coastal zone is managed with the funding, monitoring, and local knowledge needed to make conservation stick on the ground.

The implications for how environmental governance is designed are significant. If effectiveness concentrates at local and regional scales, then international agreements function best not as direct instruments of change but as frameworks that channel ambition, finance, and accountability downward toward the levels where implementation actually occurs. This reframing puts pressure on the often-overlooked middle layer of governance: national agencies, regional authorities, and local managers who must convert convention text into land-use decisions, protected-area management, restoration projects, and enforcement. It also suggests that evaluations of international environmental policy should focus less on the ambition of the targets themselves and more on the machinery of delivery beneath them, including whether resources and decision-making authority genuinely reach the territorial level.

To narrow both gaps, the study proposes moving toward knowledge co-production models. In such models, scientists, policymakers, resource managers, and other stakeholders participate from the initial stages of defining both problems and solutions, rather than science being produced in isolation and handed over afterward. Co-production is not a new idea in sustainability science, but the Alicante findings give it quantitative backing. If political alignment is a key determinant of how quickly evidence is adopted, then involving policymakers in shaping research questions from the outset is a direct strategy for shortening the transfer delay. Evidence produced in response to questions that decision-makers are already asking is far more likely to be used quickly than evidence produced on the scientists’ own timetable and offered up afterward.

The timing of the study gives its message particular urgency. The researchers emphasise that in a context of accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss, the challenge lies not only in generating robust scientific knowledge but in delivering it more rapidly to decision-makers so that it can drive effective action. Ecological systems respond to delays in nonlinear ways. A seven-year lag in incorporating a concept such as, for instance, a newly understood tipping point or an improved method for assessing ecosystem condition, means that policies formulated today may be calibrated to conditions that no longer exist by the time they take effect. Compressing that lag, even by a few years, could materially improve the alignment between environmental policy and the state of the natural systems it is meant to protect.

The research was carried out within the framework of the CEAM-University of Alicante Joint Research Unit, which coordinates scientific collaboration between the Mediterranean Centre for Environmental Studies and the university’s Department of Ecology, an institutional arrangement that itself embodies the kind of sustained science-policy proximity the paper advocates. Methodologically, the work is a literature review, but one with an unusually policy-facing design: rather than synthesising ecological findings for other scientists, it treats the scientific literature and the corpus of international conventions as two trackable streams and measures the flow between them. In doing so, it converts a long-standing complaint, that policy lags behind science, into a measurable quantity with identifiable drivers. The seven-year figure is likely to become a benchmark in its own right, a number against which future efforts to accelerate the uptake of environmental evidence can be judged, and a reminder that the hardest distance in environmental science is often not the one between hypothesis and proof, but the one between proof and action.

Subject of Research: Quantifying the delay between ecological science and international environmental policy and implementation

Article Title: Environmental science takes an average of seven years to influence international policy, study finds

Article References: Environmental science takes an average of seven years to influence international policy, study finds. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: environmental policy, science-policy gap, biodiversity, United Nations conventions, ecology, knowledge co-production, conservation effectiveness, University of Alicante, CEAM, Cell Reports Sustainability, evidence-based policy, environmental governance