Conservation covenants for ecosystem restoration: adapting an old instrument to a new global conservation challenge?
Conservation covenants are key tools for private land protection, but their focus on preserving existing values limits restoration and climate adaptation. Australia’s Nature Repair Act 2023 must better align with existing covenant laws, with reforms needed to expand their role in ecosystem restoration.
Subject Tags
- Conservation Planning
- Large scale protection
- Policy
Abstract
Conservation covenants are an important legal tool for enabling private land conservation, whose significance to policymakers has recently grown in light of new global commitments to expand areas of land and water protected and restored. Covenants’ traditional focus on conservation of existing natural values rather than restoration of degraded land or active management of environments impacted by climate change pose significant challenges to the flexibility and efficacy of this legal instrument. In Australia, recent national legal reforms to incentivise private land conservation, notably the new Nature Repair Act 2023, will need to consider how it can align with conservation covenanted lands that are regulated by different laws with different criteria and goals. Here we identify some pathways for enabling conservation covenants to play an expanded role in the context of ecosystem restoration and climate adaptation.
Citation
Richardson, B.J., Brugler, S., Fitzsimons, J.A., McCormack, P.C. and Akhtar-Khavari, A., 2024. Conservation covenants for ecosystem restoration: adapting an old instrument to a new global conservation challenge?. Frontiers in Conservation Science, 5, p.1335988. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2024.1335988
TNC Authors
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James A Fitzsimons
Senior Advisor, Global Protection Strategies
The Nature Conservancy
Email: jfitzsimons@tnc.org