Applying Design Thinking in Co-creating Marine Conservation with Communities

The close links between coastal communities and ecosystems presents huge challenges, but also great opportunities, for conservation. The conservation community has increasingly embraced interdisciplinarity to integrate these... [ view full abstract ]

The close links between coastal communities and ecosystems presents huge challenges, but also great opportunities, for conservation. The conservation community has increasingly embraced interdisciplinarity to integrate these links into conservation planning. The rights of communities have also been increasingly recognized, including language in the Aichi Target for not only effective, but equitable, management of protected areas. However, critical gaps remain in how communities are included in the conservation process, including: meaningful participation in conservation research and planning, conflict sensitivity and resolution, anticipating and evaluating social impacts of conservation, and general “soft elements” in interacting with stakeholders.

Design Thinking is an inherently transdisciplinary, systems-thinking, participatory approach can fill these gaps and promote collaborative, creative conservation solutions. Originally applied to the design of products, Design Thinking has increasingly been applied to develop solutions for communities. Its core values of empathy, mindfulness, creativity, optimism, collaboration, and experimentation promote sharing of perceptions, values, and ideas across stakeholders. In Myanmar, partnerships between a Design Thinking organization, Point B Design + Training, and various marine conservation groups demonstrate the potential for Design Thinking to produce valuable research, promote active stakeholder participation, and improve project implementation and evaluation. Key outcomes thus far include: descriptions of social tensions and perceptions in project communities that would likely impact project effectiveness; productive facilitation of multi-stakeholder planning workshops; and development of participatory project evaluation. Further integration of Design Thinking in marine conservation holds much potential for improving how conservation projects identify and optimize opportunities for working with communities for conservation.