The dataset is a spreadsheet containing Q methodological data, from 37 respondents from the conservation sector, reflecting the perspectives of professional conservationists on poverty. The collection of these Q methodological data, including information about the respondents and further technical details of the Q methodological design are described in Fisher, J. A., H. Dhungana, J. Duffy, J. He, M. Inturias, I. Lehmann, A. Martin, D. M. Mwayafu, I. Rodriguez and H. Schneider. (2020) "Conservationists’ perspectives on poverty: an empirical study." People and Nature. The spreadsheet contains the Q methodology statement number (row 1), statement text (row 2), then the ranking in the Q methodology grid from each respondent (between -4 and +4) in rows 3-39 inclusive. An ‘international’ dataset comprised 12 respondents who work for organisations headquartered in North America and Europe, with at least some initiatives in the global south. These are labelled ‘INT1-12’. We also sampled a number of respondents from national level conservation organisations in Bolivia (respondent label ‘BOL’), China (respondent label ‘CHI’), Nepal (respondent label ‘NEP’), and Uganda (respondent label ‘UGA’). This proposal outlines research asking a fundamental question: why should ecosystem services be used for poverty alleviation? It is a fundamental question because, in the presence of ecological and social trade-offs, ecosystem services (ES) do not automatically benefit poor people, but have been demonstrated to accrue to better-off and more powerful actors (Ronnback et al., 2007; Daw et al., 2011). It is also a timely question, not only because many environmental interventions continue to take place in settings characterised by entrenched poverty but also because demand for ES from non-poor and spatially distant actors is predicted to rise in coming decades (Meyfroidt et al., 2013). It is a particularly timely question for the conservation community, with whom we will work, because of active debates about the 'new conservation' and the ethical principles underpinning conservation practice (Lalasz et al., 2011; Soule, 2013). While a growing body of ESPA research now exists, none has comprehensively considered the ethical foundations of the ESPA proposition. This proposal is designed to address this gap and influence the terms of debate on environmental management in this decade and beyond, by harnessing contemporary debates in conservation. It comprises three bodies of work addressing the question of why ES should be used for poverty alleviation (PA): 1) Through empirical work, we seek to understand how conservation practitioners in the global north and south rationalise whether and why ES should be governed for PA; 2) Through novel theoretical work, we identify theories in political philosophy and environmental ethics underpinning the proposition that ES should be governed for the poor; 3) in a Think Tank event with practitioners, we co-produce knowledge about the ethical underpinnings of governing ES for PA. The transnational conservation sector provides an appropriate focus for this research because conservation is a deeply ethical undertaking, having concerns for the common good, non-human nature and the prospects of future generations at its core. The strength of disagreement in debates about the 'new conservation' signifies the underlying ethical concerns and the importance attributed to decisions over trade-offs. From an ethical perspective, the most critical trade-offs can be characterised as: a) human wellbeing vs. non-human nature, b) current vs. future generations and c) the poor vs. the greater good of all humans. It is around these trade-offs that both the empirical and the theoretical work will be situated. We focus upon conservation NGOs for two reasons. Firstly, they form the vanguard of international thinking about conservation (Adams, 2004), and their influence is significant because of their transnational reach. Secondly, our previous work indicates that ES concepts have important implications in the conservation sector, in particular allowing some conservation organisations to renew rationales for prioritising poorer people as beneficiaries of conservation (Fisher and Brown, submitted). These indications, combined with fresh debates about the 'new conservation', may signify the emergence of a hybrid conservation ethic combining concern for humans and ecosystems, related somehow to the concept of ES. Therefore, it is timely to investigate these phenomena empirically in the conservation sector. We hypothesise that turning attention to ethical concerns might serve to resolve ES trade-offs, through the identification of an explicit and defensible case, from practitioners and supported by theory, of why the poorest should take priority. Making this case has the potential to be transformational, as the reality is that in many instances, the poor and poorest cannot maintain access to ES, particularly when governance changes. Hence, the research we propose has the potential to provide a step-change in how poverty and the governance of ES are conceptualised, and in turn, how related trade-offs may be resolved.

Respondents for the Q methodology aspect of this study were selected purposively to represent the broadest range of perspectives from international and national contexts on the issues of conservation and poverty in the global south. The total number of respondents engaged for this work is 37. An ‘international’ dataset comprised 12 respondents who work for organisations headquartered in North America and Europe, with at least some initiatives in the global south. This included all mainstream, prominent, conservation organisations, and further, smaller organisations representing a diversity of approaches, for instance, focused particularly on charismatic or endangered species, or conservation with development. The sampling strategy also sought to include the perspectives of a number of respondents from national level conservation organisations, to investigate aspects of debates about conservation and poverty in national settings. These country case studies were selected to be illustrative of widely differing geographies in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the countries chosen were Bolivia, China, Nepal, and Uganda. As case studies, these were not selected to be representative (Flyvbjerg, 2006), for instance at a continental scale, but instead to illustrate the character of debates manifest at national scale in diverse countries. Respondents numbers from the country case study datasets comprise: Bolivia (5 respondents), China (7 respondents), Nepal (7 respondents), Uganda (6 respondents). A standardised Q methodology protocol was used throughout the research to ensure internal validity. Within organisations, we typically sought a Q methodology response from the respondent with the role most closely associated with local people. Respondents were asked to represent their own views, rather than to represent an organisation, to avoid ambiguity and because of respondents’ understandable reluctance to claim to represent sometimes large and complex organisations. The sample contains 26 male and 13 female respondents. Data were collected over the course of a year, starting in April 2016. All respondents gave informed consent to participate in the study, and we maintain anonymity of respondents throughout. A Q study starts by defining statements reflecting the range of perspectives on a topic and in relation to the research questions. Stephenson (1952; 223) argued that the Q set (of statements chosen for a study) should be designed ‘to suit the particular requirements of an investigation’, and Watts and Stenner (2012) note that a balanced Q set is representative without core ideas missing. We used statements from primary empirical material (international sample interviews) and from a document analysis of secondary material released by sampled conservation organisations, which we had previously coded for qualitative analysis. We also incorporated statements that we developed to ascertain responses to specific ethical principles. This combination of primary and secondary material is acceptable within Q methodology (Sandbrook et al. 2010; Watts and Stenner, 2012). Adhering to the aims of representativeness and balance in statement design, we selected 32 statements from an initial list of 126, reducing the number by eliminating statements of lower relevance, or redundant statements whose meaning was more effectively conveyed by retained statements. Some statements were altered slightly for clarity or to reverse their meaning, to improve balance (Watts and Stenner, 2012). This Q set was then piloted with 8 respondents, after which some small changes for clarity were made. The grid used is displayed in Figure 1, and respondents were asked to sort statements from ‘most like I think’ to ‘least like I think’. The grid is in the form: 2; 2; 4; 5; 6; 5; 4; 2; 2. The internet software, htmlQ (https://github.com/aproxima/htmlq), was used to administer the Q survey with international respondents. Respondents in Bolivia, China, Nepal and Uganda were engaged with a paper version of the same Q exercise immediately after their interview. As regards the ‘forced versus free’ distinction, we encouraged respondents to follow the grid as closely as possible. Rather than as a requirement of statistical analysis, this encourages respondents to prioritise statements and place those most salient to them at the extremes (McKeown and Thomas, 1998; Watts and Stenner, 2012). The interviews were conducted in English with international, Ugandan and Nepalese respondents. However, the Bolivian and Chinese respondents were engaged in Spanish and Mandarin respectively. For the Bolivian and Chinese studies, Q statements were available in these languages as well as English (printed on the reverse of the cards), to aid understanding. Statement translations were undertaken by the bilingual leaders of country case studies, and checked using back translation to ensure validity.