What are Standards, Best Practices and Frameworks?
• Standards are the conditions and principles that, if met, ensure effective implementation of the activity they apply to (e.g., for protected area management, projects should identify and engage stakeholders). • Best Practices are optimal ways to achieve standards during project design, implementation, and monitoring (e.g., how to develop a protected area management plan with community participation). • Framework is the system or set of guidelines and practices (e.g., CI’s Strategy Handbook, entitled Conservation Earth’s Living Heritage: A Proposed Framework for Designing Biodiversity Conservation Strategies, or the Ecotourism Planning Handbook, entitled Linking Communities, Tourism & Conservation: A Tourism Assessment Process). Why does CI need to have Standards, Best Practices and Frameworks? Because the organization has tremendously grown in numbers of people and sites, the culture of informal exchange cannot sustain itself if only based on the sheer volume of informal interactions
