Research on interdisciplinary integration and development of natural-social sciences for biodiversity conservation in China

Abstract

Frontier conservation science research emphasizes to overcome the limitations of a single discipline while to transcend the interdisciplinary cross⁃integration of natural and social sciences. Based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature⁃World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN⁃WCPA) framework for assessing management effectiveness of protected areas, this paper systematically reviews the progress of conservation science research in China from three perspectives: formulation, implementation, and evaluation of biodiversity conservation planning. We identified potential fields for interdisciplinary research by comparing the differences in research content, approaches and perspectives between conservation natural science and conservation social science. The findings show that research in conservation natural and social sciences in China is mostly independent of each other and lacks integration and collaboration, and the integrity, systematicity, compatibility, depth and normalization of the few interdisciplinary studies need to be improved. Due to a lack of scientific understanding of the real institution, conservation policy and action recommendations proposed by natural scientists when engaging in social science research tend to be idealistic and may hinder the production of interdisciplinary knowledge in conservation science; due to the limited knowledge of natural science methods and data, policy and action recommendations with subjectivism informed by social scientists are always detached from facts and evidence, which is not conducive to the advancement of conservation science knowledge. This paper attempts to build a framework for interdisciplinary integration of conservation science based on the logic of adaptive management of the protected areas to facilitate the formation of a common discourse on conservation science and achieve the coupled and coordinated development of society and ecology.