Managing for Results: Lessons from USAID's Investments in Large Landscape Conservation in Central Africa

Large landscape conservation is a powerful tool for implementing results-based adaptive management programs to achieve conservation and development goals across jurisdictions, ecosystem types, and institutions. By defining a common currency – performance indicators – adaptive management programs can more effectively define, quantify and express the multiple benefits of large landscape conservation. This enables programs to set clear goals, assess progress, and communicate program results to regulators, taxpayers, and donors.

USAID has asked three organizations (Environmental Incentives, Foundations of Success, and ICF International) to strengthen the design and implementation of its large landscape conservation program in the Congo Basin, a region larger than Belgium that provides food, medicine, building materials and shelter for over 80 million people. It also serves as a major carbon sink and supports some of Africa’s most intact and iconic wildlife populations. Managing for results here is complicated by the region’s highly complex governance, sociopolitical, and ecological systems.

We will describe the process our team used to develop and apply a set of best practices to the Congo Basin using USAID’s Program Cycle as well as the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. This enables USAID and its implementing partners to (1) identify conservation targets; (2) articulate a set of results that will improve the status of those targets; (3) develop indicators to measure progress in achieving those results; and (4) establish learning activities to improve implementation and outcomes. Finally, USAID will be able to report results, adjust course, and more efficiently and effectively achieve programmatic goals.