Tag Archives: nature

Supporting the long-term stewardship of privately protected areas

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Thousands of rural landholders across Australia have entered into permanent conservation agreements to protect Australia’s unique flora and fauna. By turning their properties into privately protected areas (PPA), landholders are providing stewardship of our natural heritage that benefits society. But how can we as a society better support these landholders? Lab members Matthew Selinske, Mat Hardy, and Ascelin Gordon provide some answers to this question in a recently published policy brief Supporting the long-term stewardship of privately protected areas.

PPAs are an increasingly popular approach in global conservation efforts, and Australia has one of the largest PPA networks in the world. Recently, the IUCN PPA Specialist Group met in Germany to develop best practice guidelines, which will serve as a guide to how PPAs are implemented in the future. There are several key elements to PPAs – identifying land with conservation value, protecting it, and then looking after it with appropriate stewardship. Landholders enroll in PPA programs for varying reasons, but beyond the initial sign up, supporting them is important for ensuring ongoing stewardship. PPA landholders are diverse and the landscapes in which PPAs sit are dynamic. Properties change ownership over time, and as the needs of landholders change, stewardship of PPAs is best supported through multiple policy mechanisms. The concept of intergenerational stewardship is critical to the long-term effectiveness to PPA programs, and can assist in meeting the challenges facing PPAs.

This policy brief explores the key drivers of landowner participation in PPA programs (i.e. covenants, easements, servitudes and other long-term agreements with individuals or groups of landowners) and the program mechanisms that maintain successive generations of landowners to be engaged and committed to long-term stewardship. It also considers the challenges faced by PPA programs in developing and maintaining strong collaborative arrangements between the stakeholders involved in these programs.

Also, keep an eye out for the September issue of Decision Point where the ICSRG lab discusses PPA stewardship in greater detail.

Citation:

Selinske, M., Hardy, M., Gordon, A., & Knight, A. (2017, August 17). Policy brief for Privately Protected Areas Futures 2017: Supporting the long-term stewardship of privately protected areas. Retrieved from osf.io/znsdq

 

Transforming urban gardeners into land stewards

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by Laura Mumaw

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The American conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote about the importance of practicing a ‘land ethic’, adopting personal responsibility for the health of the land – the soils, waters, plants and animals of a place – for the good of the community. Private land stewardship, caring for native flora and fauna on one’s property, has long been promoted in rural settings as a valuable contribution to conservation. By contrast in cities, conservation activities and research have focused on public land. Indeed, it has been suggested that urban landowners are unlikely to demonstrate the levels of land stewardship found rurally for lack of opportunity or the stronger place meanings and sense of place found in the country.

I interviewed 16 members of a municipal wildlife gardening program (Knox Gardens for Wildlife) in Melbourne Australia to understand how participation affected their reported gardening purpose and practice, and attachments to place and nature. Using inductive analysis and a definition of land stewardship derived from Aldo Leopold that includes purposes as well as activities, I developed a model for the development of urban land stewardship (below). It includes an initiation phase that introduces participants to stewardship and their potential to contribute, followed by a development phase where connections to place deepen; stewardship knowledge, competences and activities strengthen; and commitment to stewardship increases.

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A model for the development of urban private land stewardship

Results show that urban wildlife gardening programs can foster residential land stewardship through learning by doing. Visible community involvement and endorsement of one’s contribution are key, and connections to nature, place and community occur as part of the process.

You can read the article here or feel free to email me at laura.mumaw@rmit.edu.au for a copy.

Citation:  Mumaw L. (Online, 26 May 2017) Transforming urban gardeners into land stewards. Journal of Environmental Psychology. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.05.003

Why politics and context matter in conservation policy

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By Florence Damiens

Politics and context matter for conservation policy. That is why our research group, in collaboration with Brian Coffey and Lauren Rickards from RMIT University’s Centre for Urban Research, has just published a collective reply to Peter Kareiva and Emma Fuller’s article in Global Policy.

In brief, we argue that Kareiva’s and Fuller’s proposal does not sufficiently consider the core challenges faced by biodiversity conservation researchers and practitioners in this time of dramatic change, for people and nature. Conservation issues are context-dependent: ecological, economic, social, ethical and political. Embracing and responding to this complexity is a necessity when conceiving potential solutions for the future of conservation, humans and the biosphere.

While some of the approaches the authors promote may work in particular situations, we believe their proposal risks unintended and detrimental social and ecological consequences by presenting them as global solutions to complex problems that are context-dependent. In particular, their proposal does not address some of the key causes of biodiversity loss, i.e. over-exploitation of natural resources, intensive agricultural activity, urban development, and pollution. These causes are accepted as fait accompli and their mitigation as potential conservation strategies is not considered. New technologies and ‘managing for evolution’ are presented as guiding principles for any context, which is problematic. Moreover, the questions around what should be conserved, the processes by which biodiversity is valued, and who has the legitimacy to value it are not addressed. Lastly, we argue that a one-size-fits-all utilitarian approach and a neoliberal governance model, as proposed by Kareiva and Fuller, risks poor involvement or opposition from communities and societies and may undermine their traditional structures and relationships with nature.

See our full reply here: Damiens et al. (Online, 13 March 2017)

If you can’t access the paper using this link please send me an e-mail (florence.damiens@rmit.edu.au) and I will send you the pdf directly – thanks!