FAQs

The main purpose of Elinor is to track attributes critical to the success of area-based conservation over time,and share this information with decision makers and conservation supporters working at local, national or international scales.

The tool was specifically designed knowing many conservation practitioners (1) are familiar with and use an adopted version of the METT in their work and (2) face budget and time constraints for conservation monitoring and evaluation, and may need flexible approaches for collecting standardized data.

Because of this, this low-cost and simple assessment has been developed collaboratively with members of the conservation community, building off of the scoring system of the METT and questions from existing protocols (see reference list), and covers a range of management and governance issue considered important to success.

For project and site managers, information from the assessment can help:

• Communicate with key stakeholders what issues of equitable management and governance are important to pay attention to
• Identify what actions might be most suitable for an area under protection or management to help improve its management and governance status
• Identify where a more in-depth assessment of management, governance, equity, or climate is needed

For regional and international decision-makers, the assessment data can help:

• Provide a broad overview of perceived status and trends in management and governance
• Prompt conversations on equitable management and governance at national and international scales to inspire change in policy and practice
• Identify areas requiring more in-depth research

The Elinor assessment was initially designed to meet the needs of conservationists working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) but can be used by any individual working to support a managed area. The assessment can be completed in one of two ways:

1. As a field-based focus group. This is the way that many governance assessments are traditionally completed; leveraging diverse perceptions from key stakeholders involved in the management and governance of a particular area. On the ElinorData.org website, you will find a full field protocol that can be used to guide ethical data collection with stakeholders. This guidance offers insights on how to ethically lead a group, obtain the right permissions for using the data, and to probe for diverse perspectives; especially of those who may have been traditionally marginalized. This is the preferred pathway, as it allows diverse voices to contribute to the assessment, providing a more holistic perspective on the status of management and governance in an area. See the Elinor assessment tool and protocol for guidance on how to lead a focus group.
2. As a desk based assessment. This pathway is for those who have limited time or resources for carrying out a participatory focus group. This option allows for some data to be generated on the managed area, which can provide an often adequate and helpful assessment on the current status and trends in the area, and can help users identify any critical knowledge gaps that would require further research and investment.

When inputting data into the ElinorData system, users can indicate which pathway they took to generate the data in the assessment so any future users of the data can consider who’s perspectives were represented in the data.

Data ethics, rights, and privacy is a central component of the Elinor tool and data system. The Elinor assessment tool and protocol document offers guidance on how to discuss data privacy and ethics with focus group participants, for those who gather data on Elinor via a focus group discussion. The Elinor Terms of Services and Collaboration Principles outline in detail how data is stored and used on the platform.

For data made publicly available, users will eventually be able to ‘opt in’ to notifications that tell users where and when their assessment data is being downloaded to help users understand what their assessment data is being used for.

Elinor builds directly off the years of experience project teams have using the METT assessment and other tools designed to measure environmental governance. The Elinor assessment was designed to mirror the METT as closely as possible, and pulls questions directly from the METT and uses the same scale. Refer to this crosswalk between the METT, SAGE and Elinor to help users understand the similarities and differences between the different tools.

If you use the METT currently, if you obtain informed consent from participants in your METT assessment, you can enter the data gathered from the METT into the Elinor database. Pay careful attention to the data privacy settings and ensure you have the rights to enter the data in the ElinorData system.

Click here to view a comparison of governance and management assessment tools

This tool focuses on compiling basic information about areas under management or protection, and assessing the status of nine attributes important for area-based conservation and management:

1. Resource boundaries
2. Monitoring and enforcement
3. Capacity for adaptive management
4. Operational capacity
5. Inclusive and equitable management
6. Clearly defined rights and decision making
7. Clear and congruent regulations
8. Transparency and accountability
9. Perceived outcomes

The data system will also allow tool users to append relevant documents like management plans and geospatial files to facilitate knowledge management and sharing across spatial scales and access decision-friendly visualizations of site-level data and aggregate data.

The Elinor database and web platform will provide simple visuals at a site, regional, and international level that show trends over time, aggregated by the nine attributes listed above. More robust analysis can be carried out on the data collected using the social science theories and frameworks that underpin the questions in this tool - namely Elinor Ostrom’s theory of common pool resource governance, equity in resource governance (e.g. Bennett and Satterfield 2018), and resilience thinking. Depending on the data privacy settings chosen by users, data from across regions will be available for public use.

No! This tool was designed to complement in-depth, field-based data collection. If you currently collect data using field-based surveys or focus groups, you can use the data you already collect to inform the answers to the questions asked in Elinor - just make sure you have the rights and permissions to do so. Conversely, information gathered using this tool can help you understand what topics require more in-depth field-based surveys.

The Elinor tool and data system was designed to streamline the data entry, storage, and visualization process. By doing so, users gain three key advantages:

1. The data collection, entry and visualization process becomes streamlined. For users working across multiple sites, all data can be stored and organized in the same way, and outputted into forms that are useful for communicating results to key audiences.
Users are connected to a global community of conservationists striving to improve management and governance. Management and governance has long been an important topic in conservation, but gathering and sharing data on this subject has been difficult. One of the main barriers to data sharing is the time and energy that is often required to formalize and clean data for others to use: Elinor automates this, and allows users to selectively share data with individual users or the general public with a click of a button!

ElinorData.org uses Amazon Web Services to store the data.

No one tool does every job. It’s important to remember that:

1. This tool does not gather in-depth data. This tool does not replace the need for working with communities on an in-depth assessment of the issues identified by the tool.
This tool is agnostic to local laws and regulations. This tool was developed to track indicators commonly recognized as being important for management and governance of coastal managed and conserved areas. It does not measure specific changes in laws and regulations, which may have great impacts on conservation activities in any given place.

This depends on your context. In this tool, we refer to the boundary of the area to be assessed as the management area (MA). A management area refers to a site/location to which management actions are directed. A management area (MA) can be one protected area, or one conserved area (see glossary for definitions), or a broader area that encompasses several protected areas/conserved areas.

Therefore, the user of this tool may decide to conduct this assessment on:

1. An individual protected area or conserved area. For example, this could be an assessment of an area managed by a Beach Management Unit (BMU). Alternatively, it could be an assessment of a single Protected Area.
2. A broader sea/landscape with multiple conserved areas and protected areas and consider these as one management area, answering the questions with all of these areas in mind. For example, a Biosphere Reserve with multiple protected areas or conserved areas.

Refer to Part 1 of the Elinor assessment tool and protocol for guidance on how to conduct sampling.

Elinor includes 35 indicators across 10 core attributes of governance and management. Scores are calculated for each indicator, each attribute, and each managed area in total. Each indicator is assigned a score between 0 and 3 (with 0 being the least desirable and 4 being most desirable) on a scale that is customized for each indicator. For example, the scale for awareness of boundaries, records whether boundaries are known by most (3), some (2), a few (1) or none (0) of the relevant groups, while clearly defined boundaries, meanwhile, record whether boundaries are well demarcated (3), demarcated with some deficiencies (2), demarcated with major deficiencies (1), or not demarcated at all (0). Attribute scores, meanwhile, are calculated using a points percentage (i.e., total number of points received/total number of points possible) of indicators associated with each attribute, which is adjusted to a score out of 10 for easy interpretation. Finally, the total score for the managed area is calculated as a percentage of all attribute points received out of all attributes possible. Indicator, attribute and MA scores are assigned an action-oriented assessment category (Plan, Build, Strengthen, Maintain) to enable action-oriented interpretation. Note that the scores given by Elinor should not alone be used to determine the strengths or needs of the area's governance and management. It may be that a lower score on some attribute or indicator is sufficient for one site, but not another. The scores should be interpreted alongside the qualitative explanations entered into Elinor in order for decision-makers to choose the appropriate next steps.