Financing long term conservation action

About the report

This report examines issues associated with developing a long term financing arrangement for conservation stewardship. Conservation stewardship reflects a market based approach that can reward private landholders for maintaining environmental values on their property, while promoting a culture of environmental improvement and service delivery.

Long term stewardship agreements between the Commonwealth and private landholders can be a powerful means of ensuring that the community valuation of environmental assets enters into private land use decisions.

There is a strong case for developing funding arrangements that encourage sustained effort by landholders to maintain environmental services valued by the community, underpinned by clear contractual arrangements and where appropriate by caveats on title to protect environmental assets in the event of change in ownership of the land interest. Because of the long time scales necessary to achieve meaningful environment improvement, and to avoid risks of exploitation by landholders a framework that allows a stream of payments extending over 15 to 20 years, conditional on sustained landholder environmental action is envisaged.

Please note that Appendix A – Contacts and Discussions has not been included for reasons of privacy.