Do we wish to continue to just study people? Or are we willing to work with people to achieve conservation?

Human dimensions as an applied and research field has been around for approximately 50 years; are we in a mid-life crisis? Or perhaps worse, are we continuing to do what we believe we should do, abandoning solving conservation... [ view full abstract ]

Human dimensions as an applied and research field has been around for approximately 50 years; are we in a mid-life crisis? Or perhaps worse, are we continuing to do what we believe we should do, abandoning solving conservation problems to instead build an academic discipline and individual careers? Yes, are we in a rut? In many ways does our current field resemble the same characteristics of traditional biological disciplines that we criticized so vehemently, and many of us still do, as doing “great” research studying things, in our case people, but not addressing the needs of decision-makers nor the current conservation challenges? Have we become comfortable with our current practices and thus not willing to challenge what we are doing and more importantly embrace instead what we should be doing? In planning there are three stages: normative stage – what ought to be done, strategic stage – what could be done, and the operational stage – what will be done. In too many studies our field is doing research, sometimes thinking of alternatives, but rarely asking what ought to be done. It is time to build an HD ethic requiring that we always work with people, share results with our respondents, seek to solve problems, ensure we are listening effectively and thus achieving honest and useful answers. Let’s start today!