Performance and IMpact Assessment (PIMA) System

Conservation organizations face the daunting challenge of demonstrating that they are making progress towards achieving their mission and generating social returns on investments made by their supporters--members, trustees, donors, and others. AWF developed its Performance and Impact Assessment (PIMA) system to systematically measure the performance of the African Heartland Program in achieving conservation impact on the wildlife and wild lands of Africa, and livelihood improvement for local people. PIMA, which means "to measure" in the Swahili language, is an essential management tool for AWF that contains a set of carefully selected and regularly implemented performance measures that provides an objective assessment of our performance and impact to date.

PIMA results are compiled annually and summarized in a scorecard that includes a “Statement of Activities,” which tracks the level of effort and investments across several key measures, and a “Statement of Impact,” a cumulative measure of AWF’s effect on wildlife, wild lands, and people, all of which are an important part of achieving our mission.

The Statement of Impact assesses AWF’s conservation impact across its four strategic program areas:

• Land and habitat protection: Measures and tracks the size and conservation status of land units and habitats that have been improved through AWF and partner interventions. AWF monitors land units under varying levels of conservation management, including where effective conservation exists and where conservation management has been initiated. AWF also tracks the number and extent of wildlife movement corridors secured in a Heartland, which are critical to landscape connectivity.
• Species conservation: We systematically collect information to assess the viability of key species, such as the size of wildlife populations relative to historical numbers, reproductive rates, sex ratios, and the landscape context of important species. We estimate landscape context by evaluating connectivity and access to critical habitats, movement routes, and dispersal areas. Generally, data are derived from aerial surveys, wildlife censuses, telemetry, AWF research projects, collaboration with various partners, and other expert sources.
• Threats assessment: Critical threats to conservation targets are monitored annually to gauge the impact of related conservation interventions on the viability of species. We use data from ranger-based monitoring programs and community game scouts, along with information collected by Heartland experts to report on these measures. We also monitor the effectiveness of land and habitat protection programs through the analysis of land cover conversion using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools. The results are then used to identify critical threats and to develop/adapt strategies to mitigate the threats most seriously impacting conservation targets.
• Human livelihoods: We measure direct benefits received by communities from conservation enterprises, including financial returns and jobs created. We also track annual gross revenue generated by conservation enterprises. We are currently developing indicators that will measure ecosystem services for local people linked to conservation interventions, and are developing measures to track the impact of conservation interventions on the livelihoods of communities in conservation areas.
• Capacity building and conservation leadership: Here we measure the number of individuals whose capacity improved as a result of AWF scholarships and formal conservation training. We also track the number of institutions and partners whose capacity to implement conservation strategies in the Heartlands was strengthened through AWF initiatives.

PIMA factors into an ongoing process of learning and result in program adaptations at the strategy, landscape, national, regional, and continental levels; best practices also inform global policy processes. Using the PIMA results, AWF adaptively designs and adjusts its Priority Interventions to ensure landscape-level conservation impact and livelihood improvement are delivered throughout the Heartlands.

To continually improve the PIMA system, AWF engages other conservation organizations and partners through the Conservation Measures Partnership, a partnership of conservation NGOs that seek better ways to design, manage, and measure the impacts of their conservation actions. The AWF Heartland Program integrates a fully adaptive management approach (select site, plan, implement, measure impact, adapt) through our Heartland Conservation Process. PIMA represents an important component of this iterative process and provides AWF an important tool for measuring our impact and adapting our strategies in order to conserve Africa’s most important conservation landscapes.