What are the goals of conservation leasing and ownership?

Conservation leasing and ownership can achieve three goals:

1. Protect and restore specific lands and resources.
2. Get seats at negotiation tables.
3. Establish integrated networks to conserve marine biodiversity.

Wall-to-wall conservation leasing and ownership projects along every ocean coast in the world is not a realistic or desirable goal. However, acquiring the ability to protect and restore specific ocean and coastal lands and resources through leasing and ownership often gets conservation organizations seats at negotiation tables when agencies are determining the laws, rules, policies, and plans that may degrade or conserve ocean and coastal lands and resources at much larger scales. Lastly, while marine protected areas are an important mechanism for conservation, the role of privately managed ocean and coastal sites in conjunction with government laws and regulations has not been fully appreciated.

Bluepoints boundary. Photo courtesy The Nature Conservancy, Long Island New York.

Protecting and Restoring Ocean and Coastal Lands and Resources

The Nature Conservancy has protected more than 102 million acres (41 million hectares) internationally and more than 15 million acres (6 million hectares) in the United States. The protection and management of these lands are accomplished through a variety of means, many of which include the acquisition of fee-title and less-than fee-title interests, primarily in uplands. Added to these figures are the thousands of land trusts and other conservation organizations that have acquired fee-title and less-than fee-title interests in uplands for conservation purposes. If private conservation organizations can protect and manage important biological resources on uplands through fee-title and less-than fee-title acquisition, why should they not be able to do so for lands and resources lying within ocean and coastal waters?

While leasing and ownership cannot be applied in all places under all circumstances, it is a strategy in which private entities can acquire proprietary rights to specific ocean and coastal sites and resources. These proprietary rights can usually be enforced through civil or criminal codes and defended in the courts. The proprietary rights can also give private conservation organizations the ability to take the lead at sites to identify and undertake restoration, management, and protection activities.

Getting Seats at Negotiation Tables

Many local, state, and federal agencies have multiple and often conflicting mandates for managing ocean and coastal lands and resources. When agencies assess, discuss, develop, and implement new or existing laws, rules, policies, and plans affecting ocean and coastal lands and resources they often reach out to direct users of the lands and resources for input. While some agencies have procedural guidance concerning programmatic outreach, adjacent landowners and lessees in and around the affected areas are more often than not targeted for input.

When private conservation groups acquire proprietary interests through leasing or ownership of ocean and coastal lands and resources, they are no longer relegated to educational, watchdog, policy, or research roles. As landowners and lessees, private conservation groups have proprietary rights to defend and represent when agencies contemplate decisions through planning and policy development that may affect those rights. In addition, by acquiring interests in ocean and coastal lands and resources for conservation purposes, private conservation groups begin to change the management paradigm from the historical focus of commercial and extractive use to a more balanced approach that includes conservation. In this manner, conservation for biodiversity and environmental services becomes a legitimized use of ocean and coastal lands and resources that can compete with other uses.

By acquiring proprietary seats at negotiation tables, conservation groups can collaborate with local communities and management agencies to legitimize conservation and balance uses of ocean and coastal lands and resources at-scale through several means:

• Conservation Action Planning
• Ecosystem-based Management
• Improved Governance
• Land-Sea Integrated Ecoregional Assessments
• Large-scale Restoration
• Resilient MPAs
• Zoning

Establishing Integrated Networks to Conserve Marine Biodiversity

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) improve and protect many aspects of marine biodiversity. As such, MPAs receive much attention as one of the primary strategies to conserve ocean and coastal resources. Traditionally, MPAs were viewed more or less in isolation of other marine conservation strategies. However, strategies such as private leasing and ownership in addition to public laws and regulations should be assessed to determine how they can complement MPAs. Together, MPAs and privately leased or owned sites can protect important places while public laws and regulations can tie them together. Comprehensive assessments are needed to determine how MPAs, private conservation leasing and ownership, and public laws and regulations can work together as integrated networks to fill the gaps in ocean and coastal protection.

For more information on marine protected areas, see the World Commission on Protected Areas Marine Program, the U.S. National Marine Protected Areas Center, and The Nature Conservancy’s work on MPAs and resilience.