Benjamin Cooke

Social context and the role of collaborative policy making for private land conservation

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of conservation programmes designed to encourage private landholders to protect and enhance biodiversity on their land. This paper reviews research emphasising the role of social context in shaping private land conservation (PLC) outcomes. We examine the potential for a collaborative policy-making process incorporating design and implementation of PLC programmes to reduce conflict between conservation agencies and landholders and increase community consensus around PLC issues. Collaborative partnerships nested at the sub-watershed governance level may represent the most appropriate geographic scale for engaging community interest, whilst linking PLC efforts to higher-level institutional frameworks.

Dwelling in the biosphere: exploring an embodied human–environment connection in resilience thinking

Resilience has emerged as a prominent paradigm for interpreting and shaping human–environment connections in the context of global environmental change. Resilience emphasizes dynamic spatial and temporal change in social–ecological systems where humans are inextricably interwoven with the environment. While influential, resilience thinking has been critiqued for an under-theorized framing of socio-cultural dynamics. In this paper, we examine how the resilience concepts of planetary boundaries and reconnecting to the biosphere frame human–environment connection in terms of mental representations and biophysical realities. We argue that focusing solely on mental reconnection limits further integration between the social and the ecological, thus countering a foundational commitment in resilience thinking to social–ecological interconnectedness. To address this susceptibility we use Tim Ingold’s ‘dwelling perspective’ to outline an embodied form of human–environment (re)connection. Through dwelling, connections are not solely produced in the mind, but through the ongoing interactivity of mind, body and environment through time. Using this perspective, we position the biosphere as an assemblage that is constantly in the making through the active cohabitation of humans and nonhumans. To illustrate insights that may emerge from this perspective we bring an embodied connection to earth stewardship, given its growing popularity for forging local to global sustainability transformations.

Locating financial incentives among diverse motivations for long-term private land conservation

A variety of policy instruments are used to promote the conservation of biodiversity on private land. These instruments are often employed in unison to encourage land stewardship beneficial for biodiversity across a broad range of program types, but questions remain about which instruments are the appropriate tools when seeking long-term change to land-management practice. Drawing on three case studies, two in Australia and one in South Africa, spanning various program types—a biodiverse carbon planting scheme, a covenanting program, and a voluntary stewardship program—we investigate the importance of financial incentives and other mechanisms from the landholder’s perspective. From participant interviews we find that landholders have preconceived notions of stewardship ethics. Motivations to enroll into a private land conservation program are not necessarily what drives ongoing participation, and continued delivery of multiple mechanisms will likely ensure long-term landholder engagement. Financial incentives are beneficial in lowering uptake costs to landholders but building landholder capacity, management assistance, linking participants to a network of conservation landholders, and recognition of conservation efforts may be more successful in fostering long-term biodiversity stewardship. Furthermore, we argue that diverse, multiple instrument approaches are needed to provide the flexibility required for dynamic, adaptive policy responses. We raise a number of key considerations for conservation organizations regarding the appropriate mix of financial and nonfinancial components of their programs to address long-term conservation objectives.

Integrating diverse social and ecological motivations to achieve landscape restoration

Landscape-scale restoration requires stakeholder collaboration and recognition of diverse social and ecological motivations to achieve multiple benefits. Yet few landscape restoration projects have set and achieved shared social and ecological goals. Mechanisms to integrate social and ecological motivations will differ in different landscapes. We provide examples from urban, agricultural, and mined landscapes to highlight how integration can achieve multiple benefits and help incentivize restoration. Better communication of ecological and especially social benefits of restoration could increase motivation. Social and economic incentives from carbon markets are evident in agricultural landscapes, biodiversity offset schemes are unlikely to motivate restoration without proof-of-concept, and framing restoration in terms of ecosystem services shows promise. Synthesis and applications. When setting restoration goals, it is important to recognize the diverse motivations that influence them. In doing so, and by evaluating both social and ecological benefits, we can better achieve desired restoration outcomes. Customizing incentives to cater for diverse stakeholder motivations could therefore encourage restoration projects.

Plant-human commoning: navigating enclosure, neoliberal conservation and plant mobility in exurban landscapes

Conservation on private land in exurban landscapes is habitually framed around the private property parcel. Neoliberal conservation programs that position private property as exclusive territory for conservation action are compounding the property-centric focus of exurban conservation practices. This framing conflicts with an understanding of ecologies as socionatures that are geographically dispersed and temporally contingent, as well as the implications of landscape-scale species migration driven by climate change. Here we explore whether the agency and mobility of plants across property boundaries offer an avenue for more meaningful alternatives to exurban conservation that are not bounded by the territory of private property. The conservation practices of exurban landholders in Victoria, Australia, were explored through qualitative interviews and property walks. The mobility of plants in the form of spreading, seeding, and suckering through fence lines reflects a form of more-than-human territorial enactment that can bring attention to shared and relational ecologies, while unsettling the notion of control over conservation practice that accompanies property ownership. We explore the potential of the recent reengagement with commoning—in the form of plant–human commoning practices—to position plants as active collaborators in commoning, rather than as the objects of human commoning. Although attentive to the challenges of multispecies coalitions in conservation, we suggest that plant–human commoning could offer new possibilities for conservation that is grounded in the affordances of plants, as a counter to neoliberal governance and the individualization and privatization of exurban landscapes.