Conservation and the social sciences revisited

The concept of a biodiversity crisis emerged in the 1980s to reflect the severe, ongoing losses of plants, animals, and habitats. Conservation biologists, such as Soulé (1985), acknowledged that human activities affect the planet and that the biological sciences would need other approaches, including social sciences, to curb the crisis. Forty years later, the world's premier international conservation society—the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB)—still centers biology in its name and practices in ways that may dissuade some from joining (Winkler-Schor et al., 2024). While the social sciences have gained increasing prominence in the SCB and conservation literature (Selinske et al., 2018; Wallen & Landon, 2020), the need for conservation social science (CSS) insights has grown greater amid additional threats, such as climate change, conflicts over land rights, cultural homogenization, and rapidly advancing technologies (Miller et al., 2023; Sandbrook et al., 2021; World Bank, 2014). Twenty years ago, Mascia et al. (2003) called attention to the slow uptake of CSS contributions and set an agenda for integrating them into SCB, conservation organizations, and academia. Consequently, the SCB's Social Science Working Group (SSWG) was established in 2003. We (the 2022–2023 SSWG Board of Directors) commemorate SSWG's founding by outlining its achievements over the last 2 decades. Work remains to truly honor human contributions to conservation policy and practice. Thus, we emphasize the continued relevance of CSS in bringing about more effective, just, and enduring conservation efforts consistent with the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) 2030 targets and 2050 vision of more inclusive conservation (CBD, 2022; Pascual et al., 2023). The SSWG has developed into a global network and crucial hub for the continued mainstreaming of CSS under the leadership of a 12-person, member-elected, volunteer-run board of directors. The SSWG is SCB's largest working group, with 500–700 members representing over 60 countries, 4500 social media followers, and a 1400-subscriber listserv. Since 2003, SSWG has connected over 1000 people in structured and informal networking opportunities, and, since 2020, it has facilitated over 155 mentor–mentee pairings to support students, early career conservationists, and conservationists from underrepresented identities and geographies (see SSWG Annual Reports in Supporting Information). The SSWG has improved the reach and practice of CSS through regular input, advocacy, training, and leadership. Regarding input and advocacy, SSWG Board members have served as SCB-related conference organizers, reviewed conference abstracts, nominated keynote speakers, and promoted CSS content online. Regarding training, SSWG has facilitated professional development and standards of practice via workshops and short courses at SCB congresses and through online offerings, such as a student and early-career SSWG Twitter Conference and globally accessible webinars. Our members, past and present, have outlined and encouraged standards for evaluating CSS methods (e.g., for data collection and uses [Sandbrook et al., 2021]) and publications (e.g., Teel et al., 2018). Regarding leadership, SSWG alum have served as SCB president, on the society's board of governors, as section or region officers, and as editors for SCB-affiliated journals. Additionally, SSWG alum have risen to leadership roles in academia and international organizations (e.g., the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, World Wide Fund for Nature, Rights and Resources International) and initiated and cultivated CSS programs therein. We regard the first generation of the SSWG as successful at initially defining the CSS field, establishing an interdisciplinary and global epistemic CSS community, legitimizing and mainstreaming the social sciences within SCB, elevating standards for CSS research and practice, and applying CSS insights to conservation practice and policy. The social sciences provide the capacity to understand and honor human livelihoods, cultures, and lived experiences and the interconnections between biodiversity and humans in ways other fields cannot (Miller et al., 2023). The social sciences are uniquely positioned to inform and critique conservation decisions (Sandbrook et al., 2013) and help evaluate personal and professional ethical dilemmas related to those decisions (Brittain et al., 2020; Fair et al., 2022). To that end, we highlight 2 core ways (among many) in which the SSWG and CSS can further contribute: mainstreaming CSS beyond SCB and amplifying marginalized voices with collaborative social science approaches. CSS has gained traction in some geographies and cultures, but it is not universally recognized or supported worldwide, and all disciplines are not equally valued for their theoretical or methodological contributions. Even within institutions in which CSSs have been adopted, the number of hired social scientists remains lower than other conservation professionals, and institutional barriers remain (e.g., underfunding, expertise misassignment, asymmetrical interdisciplinarity [Claus, 2022]). In scholarship, a noticeable emphasis in conservation remains on methodological expediency and consolidation, which exacerbates biases toward quantitative and positivist evidence irrespective of rigor (Rust et al., 2017) or conservation impact (Black et al., 2011). Widespread technological advances, including harvesting of publicly posted information (e.g., social media), raise new ethical dilemmas (see Sandbrook et al., 2021) that CSS could address. A quantitative bias—whether in institutions or scholarship—disadvantages disciplines rooted in interpretative or participatory methods (Moon et al., 2016; Sandbrook et al., 2013) and has often treated Indigenous (and traditional ecological) knowledge as solely quantifiable rather than as embedded in and central to complex cultures. Multiple stipulations in the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework call for engagement of Indigenous peoples and local communities in conservation practices and for greater recognition of their biodiversity protection efforts (CBD, 2022). Methods of CSS can help determine whether conservation outcomes adhere to such goals and targets, as well as to what effect, under what conditions, and for whom the guidelines are effective. Further, not all communities are spatially bounded, and community members are not homogenous in their beliefs (Ohja et al., 2016), underscoring a role for CSS methods and theories uniquely equipped to understand those complexities. In short, a reliance on certain epistemologies or methods, such as deductive and quantitative approaches, may hinder solving the biodiversity crisis as much as relying solely on biological information. More broadly, the continued advocacy for and expectation of rigorous and inclusive research design, theory, and sampling can help the work of CSS practitioners and researchers be more effective (Moon et al., 2019). Because journals and professional societies shape the standards of acceptable and reproducible science (Steneck, 2003), SSWG and CSS scholars can further set expectations and standards of cultural inclusivity and disciplinary rigor through publications, reviews, and editorial positions (Martin, 2020; Teel et al., 2018). As an illustration, past SSWG Board members (Sandbrook et al., 2021) outlined principles for ethical uses of technology for conservation monitoring with social and biological data, which include respecting people's rights and vulnerabilities. The SSWG and the CSS profession can help inculcate such principles (in addition to evaluating their effectiveness at meeting goals) into curricula—within and outside academia—that trains conservation practitioners beyond one–off conference workshops (Detoeuf et al., 2025; Thomas-Walters et al., 2024). These efforts, among others, are necessary to ensure that the CSSs are truly mainstreamed beyond SCB. The SSWG's greatest asset has been dedicated members who volunteer their time, creativity, and intellect to support SSWG and expand the CSS profession. For their efforts, we are tremendously thankful. Yet, not all conservationists have the freedom to volunteer personally or professionally (Parboteeah et al., 2004). Relying on volunteers to power SSWG and SCB for decades can leave some voices and perspectives unheard. For people in many places worldwide, engaging in conservation work and advocacy at all, much less voluntarily, may lead to negative psychological outcomes, direct harassment, imprisonment, and physical harm or death (Editorial, 2022; Hines, 2022; Pienkowski et al., 2023). In short, SCB's mission and SSWG's work are unlikely to be achieved without directly addressing the safety and well-being of people, including conservation scholars and practitioners who are marginalized within SCB, SSWG, CSS, and the conservation profession broadly. To that end, as an illustrative first step, we recommend developing an assessment of who has and has not been served by past and current SCB-related programmatic offerings. Some SCB members may be motivated by a desire to address the biodiversity crisis or by traditional functions of volunteering with a professional society (Table 1), thereby receiving additional benefits, such as finding career opportunities through SCB-related networks and developing leadership skills. Refocusing on inclusive activities may expand the reach of SSWG and SCB to audiences not currently served, but it will require assessing what works and for whom and improving offerings for those overlooked by past and present efforts. Second, the 2020 SCB restructure (https://conbio.org/about-scb/scb-transition), which moves away from a centralized model, seeks to respect different forms of engagement and to redistribute power within SCB. This shift accepts that SCB global programs, working groups, and task forces often have discursive legitimacy (e.g., power in the form of coalescing and leading networks [Dietsch et al., 2021]) that can inform SCB governance. The restructure also acknowledges that leadership styles can bias certain persons, disciplines, geographies, and biotic taxa (Black et al., 2011; Englefield et al., 2019) if not uprooted (Di Marco et al., 2017), whereas other styles may improve organizational decision-making (Page et al., 2017). As SCB moves into this new networked model, we recommend SCB embrace the CSS literature around leadership and develop CSS monitoring and evaluation processes to assess which models and styles of leadership work and for whom. Third, honoring the discursive legitimacy of conservation practitioners and scholars through awards and fellowships can help reinforce inclusion and long-term engagement of members. Segarra et al. (2020) recommend ways to match motivations to award mechanisms during the recruitment and evaluation of nominees and when supporting those awarded. To date, SSWG has sought to improve efforts to recruit and evaluate CSS across SCB offerings, including in selection of conference abstracts, evaluation of student awards, and development of an early career award focused solely on CSS. An expansion of such efforts to include and evaluate CSS within SCB's broader reward structure, including regional awards and the Smith Fellows Program (a US-based Fellowship program that provides a stipend, travel funds, and professional training), is needed. Additionally, an award could be developed to recognize conservation impact across disciplines and geographies, such as an honorary (e.g., 3–5 years) SCB membership that lessens the financial burden of engagement. The SSWG and SCB should commit to using established social science methods for systematic evaluations of program outcomes and award processes. Finally, CSS can be used to center the voices of any group that is often marginalized, whether by race or ethnicity, nationality or citizenship, abilities, or other characteristics. We stress that evaluation of such efforts is needed; however, evaluation is not inherently objective and may reproduce injustices by prioritizing certain framings (e.g., carbon neutrality, forest protection via exclusion), peoples (e.g., resource-rich nations or institutions, village leaders), and ideas (Massarella et al., 2020). The future of conservation, thus, depends not only on the inclusion of social sciences (e.g., a single social scientist on a multidisciplinary project or employed by an institution) but also on the recognition that a plurality of theories, methods, and perspectives is needed to bring about effective and just solutions to ongoing and emergent challenges (Pascual et al., 2023). In revisiting the call for an inclusive conservation society and reflecting on SSWG's first 20 years, we sought to advance previous calls to apply social science insights in conservation. For a generation now, SSWG has built a community of professionals working to mainstream CSS in its parent professional society and applying those insights across conservation contexts. More work is needed to fully honor the disciplinary contributions of the social sciences to conservation and to support CSS use worldwide while respecting the rights and needs of different groups of people. An inclusive professional society that effectively employs principles and practices from various sciences and traditions can better address the biodiversity crisis and emergent conservation challenges that arise from rapidly changing conditions. The current SSWG Board of Directors acknowledges and sincerely thanks all past board members, working group volunteers, and individuals who have supported the mission and work of SSWG. We thank E. Gregg for her thoughts on the manuscript and the thoughtful contributions and critiques of reviewers and editor C. Anderson.