R for Conservation and Development Projects

If you want to go a step further and get into the nuts and bolts of data science with Program R, a free and versatile statistical programming environment, you may like to check out the book: R for Conservation and Development Projects: A Primer for Practitioners which came out in 2021 (written by Nathan Whitmore).

This book is aimed at conservation and development practitioners who need to learn and use R in a part-time professional context. It gives people with a non-technical background a set of skills to graph, map, and model in R. It also provides background on data integration in project management and covers fundamental statistical concepts. The book aims to demystify Program R and give practitioners the confidence to use it.


Key Features:

  • Viewing data science as part of a greater knowledge and decision making system
  • Foundation sections on inference, evidence, and data integration
  • Plain English explanations of R functions
  • Relatable examples which are typical of activities undertaken by conservation and development organisations in the developing world
  • Worked examples showing how data analysis can be incorporated into project reports




The book is available at all major book distributors (kindle, ebook, paper back, and hardback versions) including:


Conservation Standards

The Conservation Standards: A portal for conservation projects which gives detailed and comprehensive advice for designing, measuring, and implementing conservation programmes.


Tools4dev

Tools4dev.org: A website providing many resources for building the skill set of international development and aid professionals.


What works

Whatworks.org.nz: A website which describes in simple terms different project design frameworks and approaches (including some examples of qualitative approaches).


Organisational knowledge

The following paper looks at institutional knowledge loss with regard to humanitarian agencies and outlines ways these issues could be remedied.

Alastair Stark (2020) Institutional Amnesia and Humanitarian Disaster Management Working Paper 005. An overview of the loss of institutional knowledge and how it affects humanitarian agencies