To reach its objectives and overall goal, this project centers on a case study of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s investment in biodiversity conservation. It examines the allocation and impacts of MacArthur’s conservation funding since its first conservation-related grant was given in 1979 through 2018. Our research design includes analysis across the entire biodiversity grants portfolio of the Foundation together with in-depth comparative research in the three diverse country contexts of Peru, Madagascar, and Bhutan. This project uses an array of data sources and research methods including participatory workshops, focus group interviews, Q methodology, topic modeling and other text analysis approaches, and spatial analysis. It situates MacArthur investment within the broader universe of conservation funding as it seeks to build generalizable knowledge.
This research has been approved by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research (protocol # 20308).