Conservation agreements as a tool to generate direct incentives for biodiversity conservation

Abstract

Many environmental issues can be attributed to misaligned distribution of the costs and benefits of conservation. For instance, biodiversity represents value for the global community, but biodiversity protection imposes various costs on local communities that depend on forests, marine areas, and other habitats of conservation importance in developing countries. Correcting this misalignment requires presenting these local communities with appropriate incentives. Conservation agreements—negotiated transactions in which conservation investors finance direct social benefits in return for conservation actions by communities—are one tool for doing so. This direct incentive approach departs from Integrated Conservation and Development (ICDP) approaches by explicitly linking benefits to verified conservation performance by resource owners/users, thus requiring effective performance monitoring protocols. In doing so, conservation agreements parallel the logic of easements and related mechanisms used in developed countries, but adapt that logic to property rights and governance challenges that characterize developing country contexts. This paper will present the conservation agreement model using examples of agreements supported by Conservation International's Conservation Stewards Program (CSP), and drawing on a recent portfolio-wide assessment of these experiences. Elements to be considered include conservation outcomes as well as socio-economic impacts and financial and institutional sustainability. Individual agreements in the CSP portfolio vary widely with respect to conservation objectives, including efforts to protect individual species, improve natural resource management, prevent carbon emissions from deforestation, and reinforce protected areas; the paper will argue that the conservation agreement model readily lends itself to tailoring for particular conservation aims as well as community development priorities. The paper will conclude by summarizing the strengths and limitations of the conservation agreement model and identifying key considerations for scaling up the approach to advance conservation and poverty alleviation at regional and national levels.