Do conservation covenants consider the delivery of ecosystem services?

Abstract

Privately protected areas promote the conservation of biodiversity and have also been shown to conserve valuable ecosystem services. Legally binding instruments like conservation covenants are important mechanisms to protect the natural environment on private land. However, the extent to which conservation covenants either explicitly require or allow for the delivery of ecosystem services, and the specific ways through which they achieve this, are largely unexplored. We undertook a content analysis of clauses in individual covenant documents, overarching legislative, and policy frameworks to examine this issue. We use a qualitative coding framework to assess how clauses consider the supply and the flow of ecosystem services to covenantors and society. We found that the requirements of conservation covenants did not widely consider the management ecosystem services. When covenant clauses focused on ecosystem services, they primarily considered the flow of ecosystem services between areas of supply to areas of demand. Clauses primarily considered these ecosystem services flows to the covenantor, with only a small number of clauses explicitly considering to ecosystem services flows to society more broadly. Finally, we found that regulating services, like erosion prevention, were often positively associated with conservation covenants, whereas cultural and provisioning services, like nature-based recreation, were often negatively associated with conservation covenants. Understanding how conservation covenants consider the delivery of ecosystem services is important if privately protected areas are to both conserve biodiversity and promote ecosystem services co-benefits.