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Studies of Conservation Incentives

Photo: Mike O'Malley

The appropriate role of incentives in the conservation landscape has been the subject of much analysis and dialogue in recent years. Issues such as scale, equity, access, funding, and efficacy all provide fruitful areas for discussion and debate.

Here we present resources for those who wish to learn more about the theory and practice of conservation incentives.

This is an evolving list—an opportunity to share resources and increase our collective knowledge about conservation incentives, especially as pertaining to Washington State.

Please contact us with submissions and suggestions of additional studies, particularly those about specific regions or sectors (e.g., development, forestry, agriculture).

Washington and the Pacific Northwest

Studies are listed alphabetically by title.

Buying, Selling, and Trading Biodiversity in Washington: A bazaar for biodiversity

Market-based conservation tools are the subject of this paper (1.6 MB pdf), written for Defenders of Wildlife by Bartholomew (Mac) Martin. It covers background information on market-based strategies and discusses their potential and the challenges they face in Washington State. The author recommends the creation of ecoregional districts for biodiversity markets.

Conservation Incentives in Washington State: Trends, gaps, and opportunities

This report was prepared for the Washington Biodiversity Council in June, 2005. The report had four goals:

1. To identify creative incentive programs not listed in the 2003 report, Washington Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Report: Making the Connections (19MB, pdf)
2. To provide data about award distribution in several of the larger financial assistance programs
3. To summarize key findings about trends in spending, types of programs available, and ability of programs to meet demand
4. To outline possible next steps for the Biodiversity Council to consider.

Listening to Landowners: Conservation case studies from Oregon's Willamette Valley

Listening to Landowners was prepared by Paige Fischer in 2005 for Defenders of Wildlife and the Willamette Basin Conservation Project. In interviews, landowners shared their goals and motivations for conservation, their positive and negative experiences with assistance programs, and their suggestions for how to change and improve programs.

Northwestern Lights: Regional leadership in environmental markets

The Ecosystem Marketplace, a program of the Katoomba Group, published this collection (1.6 MB, pdf) in 2006. It contains reporting, market analysis, and different perspectives on environmental markets in the Pacific Northwest.

Review of Effectiveness for Habitat Conservation: Washington program assessment

As part of its Biodiversity Partnership initiative, Defenders of Wildlife developed a set of 10 evaluation criteria for conservation incentive programs. Using these criteria, they described and evaluated several of Washington's programs in this 2005 review.

Riparian Restoration: A collection of landowners' perspectives

This booklet, published by the Washington State Department of Ecology in 2004, shares the perspectives of eleven eastern Washington landowners who installed one or more riparian restoration projects. The landowners explain why they installed projects, where they went for technical and financial help, how specific problems were solved, and the benefits they have observed as a result.

Ruckelshaus Center Agriculture Pilot Projects Report

The Agriculture Pilot Projects Report, available at the website of the William D. Ruckelshaus Center (formerly the WSU-UW Policy Consensus Center), contains analysis of incentive programs in the context of developing pilots for innovative programs in Washington State agriculture.

National and International Perspectives

Studies are listed alphabetically by title.

Banking on Conservation: Species and wetland mitigation banking

The Ecosystem Marketplace, a project of the Katoomba Group, published this collection (2.1 MB pdf) of papers in 2006. It includes reporting, market analysis, personal perspectives, and discussions of the future. The stories emphasize a practical view of wetland and species mitigation banking.

Biodiversity Partnership

The Biodiversity Partnership website, sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife, is dedicated to promoting and supporting regional and statewide strategies to conserve biodiversity. The Biodiversity Partnership is one of the foremost sources for analysis of incentives. They have produced a number of reports; several are listed here.

The Center for Conservation Incentives

Environmental Defense initiated the Center for Conservation Incentives (CCI) to develop and expand landowner incentives. The Center is a group of scientists, lawyers, and economists working with private landowners to conserve natural resources. Their focus is on working farms, ranches, non-industrial forestlands, and other private lands. CCI’s website offers success stories, analysis of the importance of private lands for conservation, and articles on incentive programs and issues nationwide.

Conservation Incentive Programs: Improving effectiveness for habitat and for landowners

The National Habitat Conservation Incentives Workshop, held in June 2004 in Washington, D.C., was developed to recognize the significant role that private lands and landowners play in the conservation of habitat, at-risk species, and biodiversity. The workshop convened over 20 diverse experts representing state and federal agencies, conservation, agriculture, forestry, development, and landowners to evaluate habitat conservation incentive programs. The topics, discussions, and recommendations are summarized in this white paper from the Biodiversity Partnership.

Fish & Wildlife Benefits of Farm Bill Conservation Programs: 2000-2005 Update

This review was published by The Wildlife Society, in cooperation with USDA's National Resources Conservation Service and the Farm Service Agency. It looks at Farm Bill conservation programs and how they have produced numerous and substantial conservation benefits. Benefits accrue directly from targeted practices as well as through indirect benefits such as reductions of sediment in streams and inadvertent establishment of habitat. Many benefits to wildlife have been documented, especially those associated with the Conservation Reserve Program. Many other benefits are suspected, but have not been documented.

Food for Thought

Environmental Defense and partners produced this 2001 report (1.2 MB pdf). It shows that America's most pressing environmental problems cannot be solved unless farm spending is refocused to give farmers and ranchers incentives to help the environment.

Habitat in Agricultural Landscapes: How much is enough? A state of the science literature review

The goal of this 2006 paper by Kristin Blann is to provide a comprehensive synthesis of current understanding about conservation of fish and wildlife habitat and biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. The report, sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife, aims to establish a framework for setting conservation goals, policy, and future research priorities.

Incentives for Biodiversity Conservation: An ecological and economic assessment

This 2006 report (1.8 MB pdf) assesses the incentive mechanisms for private landowners to conserve U.S. biodiversity. Its focus is on rural lands and its audience is those working to amend the 2007 Farm Bill.

Much of the report outlines major incentive mechanisms and assesses key incentive tools. For each incentive mechanism, there is a description, an assessment of its ecological effectiveness and economic efficiency, and recommendations for improving its biodiversity conservation. Frank Casey, Sara Vickerman, Cheryl Hummon, and Bruce Taylor wrote this report for Defenders of Wildlife.

Making Environmental Markets Work: Lessons from early experience with sulfur, carbon, wetlands, and other related markets

Ricardo Bayon prepared Making Environmental Markets Work (214 KB pdf) for the Katoomba Group Meeting in Locarno, Switzerland, Fall 2003. It defines markets as regular gatherings of people for the purpose of buying and selling goods or services. Such markets are distinguished from public payments to private landowners for ecosystem services, or private deals between a few buyers and sellers. It then provides a brief overview of several existing and proposed environmental markets and attempts to draw some lessons and conclusions.

The paper argues that although markets can help maintain, provide, and distribute environmental goods and services, they require government will, government power, and established legal institutions to do so effectively. Forest Trends was also a sponsor.

Markets for Ecosystem Services: Applying the concepts

In this paper (232 KB pdf), the authors explore issues related to ecosystem services markets, including definition and measurement of ecosystem services and development of mechanisms to facilitate trade and integration of these instruments into natural resource management. They examine pilot markets for ecosystem services in three case study catchments. Stuart Whitten, James Salzman, Dave Shelton, and Wendy Proctor produced this paper for the Ecosystem Services Project in 2003.

Progress on the Back Forty: An analysis of three incentive based approaches to endangered species conservation on private land

Environmental Defense gives background and evaluation of conservation leasing, safe harbor agreements, and conservation banking in this 2000 paper (820 KB pdf) .

Species at Risk: Using economic incentives to shelter endangered species on private lands

This book, edited by Jason F. Shogren, was published by University of Texas Press in 2005. Lawyers, economists, political scientists, historians, and zoologists assess the challenges and opportunities for using economic incentives as compensation for protecting at-risk species on private property.

The papers examine current programs to see how well they are working and offer ideas for how these programs could be more successful. They seek to better understand how economic incentive schemes can be made both more cost-effective and more socially acceptable, while respecting a wide range of views regarding opportunity costs, legal standing, biological effectiveness, moral appropriateness, and social context.

State Government Incentives for Habitat Conservation: A status report

Defenders of Wildlife published this report in March 2002. It provides information about conservation incentives offered by state governments to private landowners. It contains a breakdown of the different types of state government incentives, examples of successful programs, and recommendations. Increased funding, improved data collection, centralized information, and coordinated planning are needed to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of these programs.

Status and Trends in Federal Resource Conservation Incentive Programs: 1996-2001.

This 2004 report by Lisa Hummon and Frank Casey is designed to serve three purposes: 1) to provide a retrospective view of federal conservation incentive programs that impacted wildlife habitat in the United States; 2) to provide conservation practitioners, policy makers, and landowners with a deeper understanding of past implementation of federal incentive programs; 3) to provide contact information for various federal programs. Published by Defenders of Wildlife.

Voluntary Conservation Tools and Programs

Voluntary Conservation Tools and Programs outlines ten elements of an effective voluntary conservation program and various types of voluntary conservation tools. It examines how existing programs might be adapted to better meet conservation goals, new opportunities for voluntary tools, and a sample outline for how states might present them. Prepared by Cheryl Hummon and Bobby Cochran for Defenders of Wildlife in 2005.