Recipe for success: A network perspective of partnership in nature conservation

Successful conservation initiatives require collaboration between stakeholders across a range of organisational foci and expertise. In Romania, the EU LIFE Nature programme is the most important financing instrument for nature conservation, and projects commonly involve partnerships between public authorities, NGOs, enterprises, and research institutions. To understand strengths and gaps in conservation partnerships for LIFE Nature projects implemented in Romania, we applied a Social Network Analysis approach to 85 partner organisations across 35 projects. We complemented this approach with a questionnaire directed to project managers to identify the criteria for selecting partners, and the role of partners in the project. The network included mostly public authorities (50%), yet the Romanian Ornithological Society (NGO) and the University of Bucharest were the most influent organisations in the network. Public authorities, park authorities, and enterprises were often selected as partners because of their financial contributions and local connections. In contrast, research institutions and NGOs were selected as partners because of their technical expertise and policy influence at the national level. Furthermore, research institutions, parks authorities and NGOs were involved in proposal writing, preparatory and management activities, while public authorities had no predefined roles in LIFE projects. The analysis also showed that the Romanian conservation system is polycentric, with influence shared between research organisations, NGOs, and public authorities. Interviews with project managers revealed that Romania submits relatively fewer projects compared to Western EU countries because public agencies have low technical and logistic capacity. We recommend a national level strategy for increasing project submission rates and quality of proposals that addresses the need for strengthening ties between core organisations and public authorities, especially at the local level. These findings are likely to be applicable to other EU member states that are currently struggling to get funding for conservation projects, ultimately moving the EU closer to achieving the European Union Biodiversity Strategy 2020 targets.