Conservation enterprises: Community‐led businesses that contribute to conservation outcomes. A generic theory of change, v 1.0

Over the last 20 years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has supported conservation enterprises in an estimated quarter of its biodiversity programs to create incentives for stakeholders to reduce threats to biodiversity. These enterprises included timber and non‐timber forest products, and ecotourism services, among others. While reviews and guidance materials are available on the conditions needed to establish conservation enterprises, there is less information on what it takes to sustain enterprises and to achieve longer term conservation outcomes. USAID's Conservation Enterprises Learning Group developed a generic theory of change that outlines commonly held assumptions about the path from supporting enterprises to achieving biodiversity conservation. The theory of change provided a framework for cross‐site learning for past and current enterprise strategies supported by USAID. The learning group generated insights to help practitioners improve the design and implementation of this strategy, including using a monitoring and learning framework for practitioners to measure outcomes from their actions over time and share lessons with the conservation community. It is our hope that this framework will be useful for conservation organizations, funders, and researchers who are considering using, supporting, and assessing enterprises so that they can more effectively support conservation.


| INTRODUCTION
Over the past few decades, conservation practitioners have widely implemented conservation enterprises as a means of achieving integrated human well-being and biodiversity outcomes in rural communities globally. Given a concern that livelihood effectiveness for achieving conservation outcomes was unproven, a 2012 International Union for Conservation of Nature resolution called for a critical review of livelihood interventions. In response, USAID and others supported a systematic review of the literature (Roe et al., 2015). The review examined research on a set of alternative livelihood projects, including support for conservation enterprises, but found little reported evidence of conservation outcomes. The authors concluded that all projects involving alternative livelihoods should have a theory of change (TOC) and focus on monitoring and sharing lessons.
Based on this conclusion, in 2015, USAID convened a learning group of staff to develop and explore the assumptions in a TOC about how support for enterprises leads to desired conservation outcomes. The learning group drew on the vast experience of USAID in supporting conservation enterprises as an approach to forest and biodiversity conservation through dedicated biodiversity funding. USAID support for conservation enterprises spans two decades and has included global programs such as the Biodiversity Conservation Network, the Global Conservation Program, Translinks, the Global Sustainable Tourism Alliance, and Sustainable Conservation Approaches in Priority Ecosystems. Increasing the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation programming is a USAID priority that has been supported by assessments of these and many other programs (Anderson & Mehta, 2013;Biodiversity Conservation Network, 1999;EnterpriseWorks/VITA, 2009;Hecht & Mitchell, 2014;Koontz, 2008;Pielemeier & Erdman, 2015;Salafsky et al., 2001;Subedi et al., 2007;Torell & Tobey, 2012;Wildlife Conservation Society, 2012).
The learning group defined conservation enterprises as a strategy that is intended to encourage biodiversity conservation by providing benefits (mainly cash income, but other non-cash benefits as well) to stakeholders who engage in a business for the production and sale of related goods and services. Enterprises range from ecotourism services and beekeeping to handicrafts or timber and non-timber forest products. Supporting conservation enterprises is one strategy that is often nested within a broader suite of interventions to improve biodiversity conservation. Conservation enterprises are a subset of sustainable or alternative livelihood interventions and community-based natural resources management. Enterprises can be either "linked" to intact biodiversity (e.g., ecotourism, non-timber forest products) or "unlinked" to biodiversity (e.g., creating handbags from upcycled plastic bags). They produce goods and services that generate income for stakeholders and are intended to motivate and enable conservation behaviors that contribute to the conservation of biodiversity (ecosystems and species).
The key question addressed by the learning group was not only what specifically defines an enterprise strategy and its TOC, but also under what conditions it is likely to achieve desired conservation outcomes that are sustained over time. While reviews and guidance materials are available on the conditions needed to establish conservation enterprises, there is less information on what results are needed to sustain enterprises and achieve conservation outcomes over the longer term.
Based on the findings from a review of selected literature and case examples, the group proposes a generic TOC and a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) framework with generic intermediate results, conservation outcomes, and measures (USAID, 2020). It is our hope that this framework will be useful for conservation organizations and funders who are considering using or supporting enterprises as well as for researchers who can more systematically assess the effectiveness of this strategy and share their findings.

| METHODS
The learning group used the basic methods for the development of generic TOC for conservation strategies described in Salafsky et al., 2021. The group reviewed selected literature on a range of enterprises to develop a generic TOC that depicts how we assume the enterprise strategy leads to biodiversity conservation (Boshoven, 2017;USAID, 2015aUSAID, , 2015b (Figure 1) (see CMP, 2020 for a discussion of these tools). The group then used this TOC as the framework to synthesize existing resource and guidance documents on the conditions that support conservation outcomes along the TOC (Baker & Boshoven, 2017;Boshoven, 2017). In 2018, we gathered evidence from case studies of long-standing conservation enterprise approaches at six sites to understand how achievement of these results or others influenced the sustainability of intermediate results and ultimate outcomes along the TOC over time (Boshoven et al., 2018). At all sites, the original organization supported by USAID is still supporting the conservation enterprise strategy and was willing to participate in the retrospective. The selection of six sites was based on conservation enterprise strategies that have endured for approximately two decades and that received USAID funding at some point in time and ongoing support from implementing organizations. In 2019, the learning group reviewed an additional 12 case studies of enterprise strategies supported by USAID within the last few years to understand their alignment with the TOC and the results that influence the achievement of desired conservation outcomes (Boshoven et al., 2019).
The approach to vetting the assumptions in the group's TOC against the case studies was limited to a small sample size. The case studies did not include comparison sites where enterprises did not last or where implementing partners did not provide continuous support for a conservation enterprise approach. In addition, our key informant interviews took place with stakeholders involved in implementing the conservation enterprise strategies, rather than neutral observers, thus potentially leading to biased assessments. Implementing partner or third-party assessments and research were used when possible to corroborate interview findings.
Our hope is that this initial MEL framework can be used to inform the collection of more standardized data across conservation enterprises being implemented in different locations and conditions. These data can then inform ongoing systematic assessments of enterprise strategies and, ultimately, revisions to this TOC as our collective knowledge improves.

| CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
In Figure 1 and the following text, we describe our generic TOC and measurable goals and objectives.

| Generic theory of change for conservation enterprises
The learning group found that, across all cases, the implementing organizations' assumptions about how the conservation enterprise strategy leads to biodiversity conservation are in alignment with the learning group's generic TOC: support for conservation enterprises leads to their establishment and sustainability over time; enterprises provide benefits to stakeholders; enterprise benefits motivate and enable stakeholders to change their attitudes and behaviors toward conservation; stakeholders' behaviors contribute to a reduction in threats to biodiversity; reducing threats improves the conservation status of biodiversity focal interests. Using these assumptions in the TOC as the framework led to deeper insights about the specific conditions under which the enterprise strategy is more likely to result in conservation outcomes.

| Measurable objectives and goals
Based on the findings from the literature review and case studies regarding the conditions to sustain enterprises and conservation outcomes, we propose a set of "generic" objectives and goals for a conservation enterprise strategy (USAID, 2020). These provide a framework for developing actual SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, time bound) objectives and goals for a real-world project in a standard fashion. In particular, these generic objectives provide conceptual thresholds for the intermediate results that need to be attained for an enterprise strategy to reach its ultimate goals. For each objective, we also provide possible data collection methods. Specific data collection designs and methods (e.g., units of measurement, baselines, sampling) will depend on the specific information needs of the team in the context of the strategy and the time and resources available.
• Objective 1. Within the timeframe of providing support, the enterprises are sustainable businesses with desired levels of targeted stakeholder participation.
Measures: Measures may include the extent to which each enterprise: has supportive policies (including resource rights for enterprise development); has strong governance, ownership, and management systems in place; is a viable business model (e.g., strong markets and profit potential); and has business partnerships in place to support enterprise sustainability over time.
These types of objectives could be measured through surveys or key informant interviews with enterprise stakeholders, including government officials and others responsible for supporting enterprises. • Objective 2. Within the timeframe of enterprise establishment, the enterprises generate the expected benefits for stakeholders. Measures: Benefits could be described by: sources of benefits; types of benefits, both monetary and nonmonetary; amount; frequency; timing; and distribution of benefits among enterprise participants. These types of objectives could be measured through a survey of livelihood benefits from different sources, including the enterprises, that are accrued to each targeted stakeholder group over time. • Objective 3. Within the timeframe of the enterprise providing the needed benefits, stakeholders demonstrate the desired changes in attitudes and behaviors toward conservation.
Measures: Expected practices of stakeholders may be defined in plans/agreements with the government or product certification programs and include not only sustainable resource use, but also excluding others from unsustainable use and advocating for ongoing conservation. These types of objectives could be measured through key informant interviews with implementing partners and/or government officials. They could also be measured with surveys regarding attitudes and field observation of practices of targeted stakeholders engaged in the enterprises to understand the extent to which they change their attitudes and behaviors over time. • Objective 4. Within the timeframe of the stakeholders demonstrating a change in behaviors, these behaviors contribute to the achievement of desired threat reductions to, or restoration of, the biodiversity at the site.
Measures: Measures may include the extent to which the scale of enterprise participation is sufficient to contribute to threat reduction and the extent to which other strategies such as law enforcement and awareness building also contribute to threat reduction. These types of objectives could be measured through compiling and analyzing enforcement records by government agencies or others responsible for the site on the change in incidents of threats over time. • Goal. Within the timeframe of reductions in threats or restoration, there is the desired change in the status of biodiversity.
Measures: Measures may include a change in the status of ecosystems and species at the sites where enterprise participants have been engaged in conservation as compared to other sites. Measures may also include a change in the provision of ecosystem services. These goals could be measured through field surveys, analysis of remote sensing data, or other methods to detect change over time.

| DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
In the following text and in Table 1, we discuss some of the major findings for conditions that support intermediate results and conservation outcomes along the TOC, with illustrative examples from our review of USAID case studies.

| Enterprises are established and sustained
In all cases, implementing organizations supporting enterprises have focused as much on ensuring the conditions for enterprise sustainability as on ensuring conservation sustainability. Key conditions for enterprise sustainability include establishing legally recognized community organizations with rights over the natural resources needed for products and services, as well as strong governance and business management, particularly in cases where stakeholders compete for high-value enterprise benefits. For example, Nagkakaisang Tribu ng Palawan (NATRIPAL) on Palawan Island in the Philippines supports indigenous communities to gain the rights through ancestral domain claims to sustainably harvest and sell wild honey, rattan, and almaciga resin from their community management forest. Other conditions include strong business alliances and partnerships to support ongoing capacity and market linkages for the enterprise groups. Over the past two decades, Asia Network for Sustainable Agriculture and Bioresources has assisted communities to establish over a thousand enterprises and to work together as an alliance to change policy and form business partnerships to add value and market their products.

| Benefits are realized by stakeholders
The case studies showed that, typically, only a small proportion of community members receive direct cash benefits in the form of wages from enterprise employment or dividend payments. A larger proportion of community members receive benefits in the form of improved community services, such as infrastructure, education, and healthcare, which are provided using enterprise revenue. In some cases, the distribution of benefits initially reinforced existing social disparities, and developing and instituting a benefit distribution mechanism that is perceived as fair was important in reducing disparities. In T A B L E 1 Summary of conditions under which a conservation enterprise strategy is more likely to be effective based on a review of USAID-supported approaches

Intermediate result: Enterprises are established and sustained
Conditions that support the result: • Stakeholders engaged in the enterprises are those who can influence the reduction of threats to biodiversity at the site.
• Stakeholders have secure rights to resources (land or resource tenure), and other supportive policies for enterprise development are in place. • Strong enterprise governance, ownership, and management capacity and systems are in place, including that the enterprises: are aligned with needs and aspirations of different stakeholders (e.g., differences in gender-related preferences) have ownership and management structures (e.g., individual, group) that • encourage participation • have strong local leadership • comply with any government requirements • have stakeholders who have needed financial management skills and technical skills to produce goods and provide services (e.g., compliance with product certification standards) • The enterprises are a viable business model, including that the enterprises have: a strong market demand for goods and/or services and stakeholders have access to those markets profit potential (e.g., adds value to products) stakeholders with access to needed credit and/or capital a sustainable source of inputs necessary to produce enterprise goods and services access to equipment necessary to develop, process, and/or distribute enterprise goods and services the necessary infrastructure in place to meet production and transportation needs a plan for potential external disturbances (e.g., natural disasters, changes in markets) • The enterprises have supportive business alliances/partnerships with value chain actors (e.g., to assist with ongoing capacity needs, aggregation, value addition, and linkages to markets). Actions to support the result: • Support the various conditions described above for enterprise establishment and sustainability, including secure rights, enterprise governance, ownership, and management capacity, viable business models, and business alliances and partnerships. Future learning questions: • Are there other conditions for sustainable enterprises?
• Are some conditions more important than others for sustaining the enterprises? • How can initial implementing organizations bring in longer term trusted business partners to support the conditions over time (e.g., beyond the initial three-to-five-year project cycle)? • How can the implementing organization better understand and manage expectations of the value proposition for stakeholders to continue to participate in the enterprise over time?

Intermediate result: Benefits are realized by stakeholders
Conditions that support the result: • Cash and non-cash benefits from participation in the enterprises are valued by stakeholders more than those accrued without participation in the enterprises. Actions to support the result: • Understand and support the value proposition for different stakeholder groups to participate in the enterprises.
• Manage expectations of enterprise participants regarding benefits. Future learning questions: • How can implementing organizations better understand the benefits needed to motivate and enable conservation behaviors among enterprise stakeholders? • What conservation plans or agreements are effective at clarifying expected conservation behaviors?

Intermediate result: Stakeholders' change attitudes and behaviors
Conditions that support the result: • The desired conservation behaviors of enterprise stakeholders are clearly mandated in plans or agreements with government or product certification programs and understood by stakeholders. • Enterprise benefits are sufficient to motivate and enable the expected behaviors toward conservation, including reporting others if applicable. • Enterprise participants perceive that benefit distribution among stakeholders is fair.
• Community awareness and law enforcement sufficiently support the expected behaviors toward conservation. Actions to support the result: • Understand the type, amount, frequency, and distribution of benefits that will motivate and enable the expected attitudes and behaviors toward conservation.
(Continues) some cases, an improvement in resource management to support the enterprises also improves provision of resources needed for subsistence, such as fuelwood, fodder, and timber. In many cases, aside from motivating support for conservation, community organizations also consider conservation enterprise benefits valuable from a development standpoint because they improve the wellbeing of their members. For example, the National Trust for Nature Conservation supports Community Forest User Groups in the buffer zone around Chitwan National Park in Nepal to provide ecotourism services in their community managed forests. The majority of members benefit through improved community services, such as biogas facilities and cookstoves to each household to reduce fuelwood consumption. As such, enterprise benefits are directly linked to both improving the well-being of households and reducing the need for fuelwood collection from the forest.

| Stakeholders change attitudes and behaviors
Because communities are diverse, incentivizing changes in attitudes and behaviors toward conservation was not straightforward at the case study sites. In some cases, enterprise benefits reinforced existing attitudes and behaviors or helped to recuperate lost traditions of sustainable resource use (e.g., traditional harvesting). Different stakeholders are motivated by different benefits, which need not always be financial. In some cases, positive behavior change appears to be less the result of direct income substitution and more the result of general positive attitudes created by enterprise benefits, the perception that the distribution of benefits was fair, and an understanding that benefits are linked directly or conceptually to a conservation program. The Kalahan Educational Foundation, for example, supports the Ikalahan tribe in Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines, by operating a processing facility to produce jams from native fruits to encourage protection of their community managed forest. Cash benefits from collecting and processing fruit go to only about 20 women, but these women are among those in the community most in need of better income opportunities. Implementing organizations have learned that it is important to think "backward" starting with the ultimate outcomes along the TOC-from the desired biodiversity conservation outcomes, to the type and level of threat reduction required, to the type and level of behavior change needed-to fully understand the type and level of enterprise benefits that need to be realized by different stakeholder groups to affect desired changes. In most cases, enterprise benefits both: (1) rely on participants conserving or sustainably harvesting the resources that serve as inputs to the enterprise, and (2) are conditional, requiring participants to help enforce and comply with explicit rules and regulations regarding resource use and conservation. In Uganda, for example, the International Gorilla Conservation Program has supported communities around Bwindi and Mgahinga national parks to provide ecotourism services that encourage gorilla and other wildlife conservation. Communities that benefit from enterprises and park-revenue sharing programs are expected to report wildlife conflict and incidents of retaliation to park authorities.
T A B L E 1 (Continued) • Facilitate conservation plans and agreements between enterprise beneficiaries and government or product certification programs that clearly mandate expected conservation behaviors.

Future learning questions:
• Under what conditions should enterprise stakeholders be expected to help monitor and report unsustainable or illegal activities that are induced by others?
Intermediate result: Direct threats to biodiversity are reduced (or restoration) Conditions that support the result: • Community awareness and law enforcement sufficiently support a reduction in threats to biodiversity that are induced by others who are not participating and benefiting directly from the enterprises. • The scale of behavior change as a result of enterprise participation is sufficient relative to the scale of those involved in inducing threats to biodiversity at the site. Actions to support the result: • Support other conservation strategies that build community awareness and capacity for law enforcement.
• Conduct long-term monitoring of outcomes, including the threats to and status of biodiversity at the site and the provision of ecosystem services.

Future learning questions:
• Under what conditions should enterprise stakeholders not be expected to help enforce unsustainable or illegal activities that are induced by others?
Abbreviation: USAID, United States Agency for International Development.
4.4 | Threats to biodiversity are reduced (or restoration) In most cases, the enterprise strategy was focused on engaging those community members directly engaged in threat-inducing activities (e.g., illegal or overharvesting of natural resources), but in some cases, it was also targeted at those who could exclude others from threatinducing activities (e.g., reporting outsiders). At all case study sites, the enterprise strategy is only one of several conservation strategies, including awareness-building, securing land tenure and resource rights, law enforcement, formal education, and human-wildlife conflict mitigation. Implementing organizations noted that these different strategies would not succeed alone, but instead all work together to reduce threats and achieve and sustain conservation outcomes. In the case of the Kalahan Educational Foundation, it first established its own secondary school, the Kalahan Academy, where students take a course in local ecology. Motivation to restore and protect the community forest is a result of building trust and goodwill through support for education and livelihoods and instilling a culture of conservation among community members over time.
For enterprises operating over the longer term, implementing organization and enterprise stakeholders report that the status of biodiversity has improved. For some sites, this is corroborated by other assessments, but monitoring the status of biodiversity is beyond the capacity of the smaller organizations. In many cases, improved conservation of natural resources improves ecosystem services and livelihoods, which in turn motivates continued commitment to conservation in a virtuous cycle. The Rainforest Alliance works with other partners supporting communities living in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala to sustainably harvest timber and non-timber forest products as part of their concessions. A Rainforest Alliance assessment found that the deforestation rate is lower in community concession areas than in areas managed as national parks by the government. The communities hope that this finding will encourage the government to renew and expand their concession agreements.

| Actions to support conservation enterprises
Through the assessment, we found that actions that support the establishment and sustainability of enterprises over time under this strategy, as well as conservation outcomes, take longer than the typical 3-to 5-year donor funding cycle to implement and require the implementing partner's role to evolve over time. At all sites, organizations implementing this strategy have expanded from providing community organizations with technical assistance for establishing their enterprises to supporting the formation of business partnerships and alliances to ensure sustainability of the enterprises over time. Business partnerships are important to gain access to larger markets and technical support, while alliances among groups of community organizations at the regional or national level provide a collective voice to advocate for community rights and supportive policies. Fostering local leadership capacity as part of this strategy, including the ability to manage leadership transitions over time, is critical to achieving and sustaining every intermediate result and ultimate conservation outcomes in the TOC. Long-term monitoring of intermediate results, including a reduction in threats, and the status of biodiversity, are important to understanding the effectiveness of the enterprise approach.

| CONCLUSIONS
Support for conservation enterprises is a common strategy used in combination with other conservation strategies globally. The TOC developed by the USAID Conservation Enterprise Learning Group (Figure 1) describes the relevant desired results involved in a conservation enterprise strategy, as well as generic objectives and goals that can be tailored to other areas and used to assess progress (see also USAID, 2020). Based on our review of the literature and findings from an assessment of this strategy supported by USAID at many sites, Table 1 provides a summary of the conditions under which an enterprise strategy appears to be more likely to be effective. It is our hope that if practitioners implementing or funding a conservation enterprise strategy use this framework to collect and publicly share lessons about their specific experiences, we will be able to collectively refine this TOC to represent our enhanced understanding. discussed and contributed ideas, reviewed and vetted the theory of change and the analysis, and collaborated in reviewing feedback and editing various drafts of this manuscript.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
All data used to generate this paper are presented in the paper or the supplemental materials.