ABSTRACT. A variety of policy instruments are used to promote the conservation of biodiversity on private land. These instruments are often employed in unison to encourage land stewardship beneficial for biodiversity across a broad range of program types, but questions remain about which instruments are the appropriate tools when seeking long-term change to land-management practice. Drawing on three case studies, two in Australia and one in South Africa, spanning various program types-a biodiverse carbon planting scheme, a covenanting program, and a voluntary stewardship program-we investigate the importance of financial incentives and other mechanisms from the landholder's perspective. From participant interviews we find that landholders have preconceived notions of stewardship ethics. Motivations to enroll into a private land conservation program are not necessarily what drives ongoing participation, and continued delivery of multiple mechanisms will likely ensure long-term landholder engagement. Financial incentives are beneficial in lowering uptake costs to landholders but building landholder capacity, management assistance, linking participants to a network of conservation landholders, and recognition of conservation efforts may be more successful in fostering long-term biodiversity stewardship. Furthermore, we argue that diverse, multiple instrument approaches are needed to provide the flexibility required for dynamic, adaptive policy responses. We raise a number of key considerations for conservation organizations regarding the appropriate mix of financial and nonfinancial components of their programs to address long-term conservation objectives.
There is a growing recognition of the contribution that privately-owned land makes to conservation efforts, and governments are increasingly counting privately protected areas (PPAs) towards their international conservation commitments. The public availability of spatial data on countries' conservation estates is important for broad-scale conservation planning and monitoring and for evaluating progress towards targets. Yet there has been limited consideration of how PPA data is reported to national and international protected area databases, particularly whether such reporting is transparent and fair (i.e., equitable) to the landholders involved. Here we consider PPA reporting procedures from three countries with high numbers of PPAs-Australia, South Africa, and the United States-illustrating the diversity within and between countries regarding what data is reported and the transparency with which it is reported. Noting a potential tension between landholder preferences for privacy and security of their property information and the benefit of sharing this information for broader conservation efforts, we identify the need to consider equity in PPA reporting processes. Unpacking potential considerations and tensions into distributional, procedural, and recognitional dimensions of equity, we propose a series of broad principles to foster transparent and fair reporting. Our approach for navigating the complexity and context-dependency of equity considerations will help strengthen PPA reporting and facilitate the transparent integration of PPAs into broader conservation efforts.
Recent decades have seen a proliferation of conservation programmes designed to encourage private landholders to protect and enhance biodiversity on their land. This paper reviews research emphasising the role of social context in shaping private land conservation (PLC) outcomes. We examine the potential for a collaborative policy-making process incorporating design and implementation of PLC programmes to reduce conflict between conservation agencies and landholders and increase community consensus around PLC issues. Collaborative partnerships nested at the sub-watershed governance level may represent the most appropriate geographic scale for engaging community interest, whilst linking PLC efforts to higher-level institutional frameworks.
The changing socio-ecological dynamics in rural landscapes associated with amenity migration in post-industrial nations such as Australia has implications for environmental management.The number of non-farming landholders now occupying regions once valued primarily for agriculture has increased rapidly in the past decade, with property turnover rates in some rural Australian regions as high as 50 percent. Given amenity migrants can shape rural ecologies through land management practice, it is vital that we understand how these management practices are informed. As such, we ask: how do amenity migrants learn to be environmental stewards of their land? We focus specifically on how the tangible interaction between landholder and landscape through experiential learning contributes to the emergence of environmental stewardship. We adopt a conceptual premise that recognises the agency of the biophysical landscape in the experiential learning process. To explore how amenity migrants learn about stewardship we undertook a qualitative case study in the hinterland regions of Melbourne, Australia. We found that initial struggles to implement land management informed by prior urban lifestyles saw landholders turn to experiential learning to fill a void of understanding about ecological processes and management practice. Over time, these experiences distilled into durable dispositions for environmental stewardship that directed either a passive (hands-off) or active (hands-on) approach to land management. Understanding how amenity migrants learn to be environmental stewards has implications for the location and timing of environmental policy engagements with new rural landholders.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.