A conservation easement is private land, held by a private nonprofit corporation (typically a land trust) or a government agency. Though conservation easements are perceived as a win-win land protection strategy, there are several downfalls in their design—requiring this fairly new real estate law to come under increased scrutiny.
Conservation easements leave the land in private ownership and often achieve the goals of land protection without regulation or adversity, and usually without any government oversight. There is often concern that the terms of the conservation easement will be honored and that the conservation easement holder will have the capacity and resolve to monitor, enforce and defend the restrictions of the conservation easement in perpetuity, as conservation easements promise.
Because conservation easements are privately held property, most states have no public registry for conservation easements, no particular legal structure and no public review, transparency or accountability concerning their design, monitoring, enforcement, defense or stewardship.
This article identifies issues with the current practices for conservation easements and seeks solutions for the future of the conservation easement. Should their be standards enforced by federal or state governments? Should more responsibility be placed on the land owners? How would new regulations affect the use of the land? If conservation easements are to serve future generations as is their promise, they will have to resolve the issues they face.
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No recent happening in land conservation rivals the deployment from coast to coast of conservation easements. Beyond tax and other public subsidies, one of the driving forces favoring this phenomenon is that conservation easements are perceived as a win-win strategy in land protection, by which willing landowners work with private land trusts or government agencies to provide lasting protection for portions of the American landscape. Conservation easements leave land in private ownership, while allowing the easement holder (the land trust or agency) to enforce voluntary, contracted-for, often donated but increasingly paid-for restrictions on future uses of the easement-encumbered property. Conservation easements are often welcomed as achieving the goals of land protection without regulation or adversity, and usually without any government oversight.
At the same time, the rapid increase in the use of conservation easements raises the concern that they may present something of a time bomb that requires preventive action. Most of the laws and conventions concerning conservation easements were created at a time when no one could have foreseen their explosive growth and complexity. These laws and conventions require well-considered approaches to reform, lest we ultimately risk losing the public benefits that we thought conservation easements would secure in the future.
Definitions
A “conservation easement” (in some states referred to as a conservation restriction or similar term) is a set of permanently enforceable rights in real property, held by a private nonprofit corporation (typically a land trust) or a government agency. These rights impose a negative servitude (in other words, a set of promises not to do certain things) on the encumbered land, and they are permanently enforceable by the easement holder. Conservation easements are a relatively recent invention of real estate law and are enabled by statute in virtually every state.
A “land trust” is a loosely defined concept that usually includes at least two basic elements. First, it is a private, nonprofit charitable corporation incorporated under the laws of a state and qualified as tax-exempt and entitled to receive tax-deductible donations under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Second, depending on state law, a land trust’s mission, but not necessarily its exclusive or even primary one, is the conservation of land.
The Public Stake in Conservation Easements
Why should the public, and therefore its government at all levels, care about how conservation easements are created and managed? One reason is that virtually every conservation easement is associated with a significant public subsidy. Although most easements are donated by private landowners to private land trusts, they almost always result in public subsidies in the form of income tax deductions to the easement donors. In many cases a further subsidy comes in the form of reduced real property and estate taxes in the future. Increasingly, conservation easements are being purchased with public money, sometimes on a grand scale involving millions of dollars.
The public should care about how its money is being spent, whether it is being spent for something of long-term public benefit, and whether it is being spent efficiently; that is, the public should be interested in whether it is getting a fair public bang for its buck.
Beyond the public’s financial investment, its interest in conservation easements as a form of charitable trust transcends the interests of the private parties to the transaction. Further, some conservation easements guarantee public access to the property, such as for hiking or scenic enjoyment, giving the public an added stake in the long-term security of the easement. In the case of conservation easements granted by developers as a quid pro quo for regulatory permits, these easements may also comprise a public investment because they are part of the consideration in exchange for the right to proceed with a project that may cause environmental harm. Finally and not least importantly, the public has an abiding concern in the orderly future of legal understandings and the stability of interests in real estate.
In sum, when a conservation easement is created there is a legitimate public interest and concern that the terms of the easement will be honored and that the easement holder will have the capacity and resolve to monitor, enforce and defend the restrictions of the easement in perpetuity, as conservation easements promise. Indeed, the very purpose of state and federal laws that support and subsidize the creation of conservation easements is that the public interest is intended to permanently benefit from them.
Trends and Problems
Rapid growth. The attractiveness of conservation easements is demonstrated by the explosive growth of land trusts established to accept easements. Land trusts have become a big business in America, both for their vast holdings of conservation easements and other properties and for their increasing memberships and finances. Even so, many land trusts have come into existence only during the past 15 years and operate at a local level. While land trust creation continues to increase rapidly, an important policy question is whether the ever-expanding number of small land trusts throughout the nation is something that is good for our (and their) future.
The Land Trust Alliance (LTA), an organization that serves many land trusts nationwide, reported in its national census that between 1998 and 2003 the number of local and regional land trusts increased 26 percent from 1,213 to 1,526; the number of conservation easements held by these land trusts grew from 7,400 to nearly 18,000; and the area covered by these easements expanded from nearly 1.4 million acres to more than 5 million acres (Land Trust Alliance 2004; see Figures 1 and 2). In addition, there are a number of national organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy and the American Farmland Trust, that hold additional thousands of conservation easements. Untold thousands of easements also are held by federal, state and local governments.
Often land trusts and government agencies alike focus on, publicize and celebrate the accumulating numbers of conservation easements in their portfolios, as well as the numbers of acres that they cover, without equivalent regard for the quality of the easements or of the lands they protect. Since conservation easements bring with them long-term and costly responsibilities for the holder in monitoring, stewardship, enforcement and defense, this focus on numbers can be short-term thinking that leads to long-term problems.
Lack of uniformity. The terms of conservation easements are infinitely variable. Calling something a conservation easement tells one nothing about what protections it affords or even what legal boilerplate it includes. Many conservation easement advocates extol the virtues of this flexibility, since it allows the landowner and easement holder to tailor each easement to their mutual interests.
However, this increasing variability of conservation easements inevitably will result in more problems over time for both easement holders and future successions of landowners in understanding, undertaking, monitoring, defending and upholding all of the legal rights and responsibilities of each easement. Heightening this effect is the fact that many conservation easements are increasingly negotiated, nuanced and complex agreements, leaving even legal experts challenged in easement preparation, interpretation, oversight and enforcement.
Valuation issues. The valuation problem for conservation easements arises in two forms: the opportunity for excessive claims of income, estate and property tax deductions or reductions; and uncertainty as to the societal and cost-benefit calculus of each easement. The valuation of donated conservation easements has become a major cause for alarm by the Internal Revenue Service, which says that it will be applying an increasingly watchful eye on the deductions taken for these donations. However, part of the problem may be that the IRS has not been precise enough in stating how conservation easement appraisals should be undertaken.
Even if the IRS adopts a more rigorous approach to easement appraisal in the future, it will never be in a good position to determine whether each easement, for which a charitable deduction is taken, is worthy in terms of conferring a public benefit commensurate with the public subsidy. That task must be undertaken by others, starting with the land trust or other easement holder and embracing some degree of broader public participation.
Lack of legal standards. While conservation easements are intended to be permanent servitudes on privately held property, most states have no public registry for conservation easements, no particular legal structure and no public review, transparency or accountability with respect to their design, monitoring, enforcement, defense or stewardship. Accordingly, there may be a growing disconnect, or perhaps it is a correlation, between the massive deployment of these new interests in real estate, their nearly infinite variability and the multitude of new-born land trusts that hold them on the one hand, and the largely undisciplined laws and conventions that govern them on the other.
In sum, potential legal and other reforms should be considered to respond to many diverse issues related to conservation easements.
This state of affairs, already evident in many thousands of conservation easements, cannot serve future generations well. Under the present laws and conventions, how can we expect holders of these easements and succeeding generations of landowners to understand, no less attend to, the often subtle differences in their terms and to comply with, uphold, defend and enforce conservation easements forever?
Although the nearly exponential trends in the deployment of conservation easements may be heartening to many in the land conservation community, they also pose equivalent challenges that require critical examination and consideration of reform. The evident solution is to create standards for conservation easements and their holders that are more uniform, explicit, publicly transparent and rigorous. Doing so would be in the long-term best interests of those in the conservation easement community and the public at large.
Potential Solutions
Among the general approaches to reform are changes to federal tax laws; greater state oversight of conservation easements and their holders; increased self-regulation by the land trust community; consolidation and networking of land trusts; and greater supervision of conservation easements and their holders by funding sources. The purpose of advancing these reform ideas is to create more predictability and stability in the design and long-term management of conservation easements, so there can be a greater degree of assurance that these new inventions of real estate law will deliver on the promises that they make to future generations.
The most universal approach to reform would be to create more rigorous IRS standards for conservation easements, their appraisals and their holders, so there is greater assurance that their public subsidy will result in conservation easements that are permanently monitored and enforced. A second and complementary approach would be for the National Conference of Commissioners, which gave birth to the Uniform Conservation Easement Act in 1981, to reconvene and consider the issues that went unresolved in its earlier work. A third approach would be for each state to consider amendments to its conservation easement enabling act that respond to these issues. Finally, the Land Trust Alliance is already making efforts to inform and encourage its members to take affirmative but voluntary action to resolve many of these concerns.
Even while considering needed change, these reforms should not impose unreasonable transaction costs on conservation easements. The goal is to select reforms that are efficient in making a difference. At the same time, it is important to consider the tremendous and increasing public subsidies of conservation easements, their opportunity costs and potential effects on government regulatory and land acquisition programs. This scrutiny is not a condemnation of conservation easements, but rather is aimed at articulating issues and possible reforms that can make easements deliver their promises.
Conclusions
This should be an uneasy time for those in the conservation easement community. Because of alleged abuses widely reported by the media, both Congress and the IRS are investigating easement practices by their donors and holders. Congressional proposals are emerging to substantially reduce tax incentives for donations of conservation easements. The time is right to explore potentially useful reforms of all kinds in order to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The principal source of many issues with conservation easements is the laws and conventions that govern these interests in real estate, which were created at a time when no one could have anticipated the explosive growth of easements and land trusts. While national organizations like the Land Trust Alliance have shown outstanding leadership in devising and promoting standards, practices and other assistance for land trusts, these standards are purely voluntary, and land trusts have no legal obligation to follow them. Moreover, in some cases the worst problems with respect to long-term management of conservation easements involve understaffed or inattentive government holders.
How dire is the future of conservation easements? Just as conservation easements are intended to endure, each of the problems reported here will have its day, and some already have. When evaluating the effectiveness of conservation easements under the prevailing legal structure, perhaps the best answer is that the jury will be out for 100 years, but one should be sufficiently concerned about a possibly adverse verdict to consider these issues and ways to resolve them.
If conservation easements are to serve future generations as is their promise, they will have to live up to three essential principles.
With these principles in mind, there are many approaches to resolving the issues presented by conservation easements. However, to fashion the solutions one must first acknowledge the problems. If ever we are to take action to assure the future of conservation easements, the time to do so may never be better, nor easier, than now.
Jeff Pidot is a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute, on leave from his work as chief of the Natural Resources Division of the Maine Attorney General’s Office, a position he has held since 1990. He has been an active participant in the land trust movement in Maine and has a wealth of experience with conservation easements in both his professional and volunteer work. While at the Lincoln Institute, he is researching and writing about the challenges of conservation easements and reforms that may be considered to meet these challenges.
His working paper, Reinventing Conservation Easements: A Critical Examination and Ideas for Reform, is available on the Institute’s website.
Reference
Land Trust Alliance. 2004. National Land Trust Census. November 18 http://www.lta.org/census/index.shtml
Faculty Profile of Carla J. Robinson
Según la tradición impuesta por los anteriores coloquios sobre conservación, un grupo de conservacionistas provenientes de diferentes sectores y regiones geográficas se reunieron con el fin de ir un paso más adelante, en sintonía con el informe recientemente emitido por el gobierno del presidente Obama sobre “Grandes paisajes de los Estados Unidos” (Consejo sobre Calidad Ambiental 2011), y con un sinfín de iniciativas a nivel estatal y municipal. El objetivo de la jornada fue lograr avances en la colaboración entre propietarios, administradores de suelos y ciudadanos tanto del sector público como privado, sin fines de lucro y académico, en lo que respecta a la conservación de grandes paisajes, así como comprender y ampliar sus conocimientos teniendo en cuenta el ejemplo dado por las diferentes iniciativas de conservación de grandes paisajes que están logrando resultados de conservación medibles y duraderos, lo que redundará en beneficios para las generaciones futuras.
De la misma manera que ahora podemos apreciar el resurgimiento de las White Mountains en Nueva Hampshire –desde su imagen desértica, similar a un paisaje lunar en 1900 a su condición actual, majestuosa y exuberante– los estadounidenses del siglo XXII deberán ser capaces de apreciar de qué manera nuestra previsión para trabajar más allá de los límites de propiedad, jurisdiccionales e incluso nacionales se convirtió en un factor clave de los esfuerzos realizados en la nación por distintas generaciones con el fin de preservar las fuentes esenciales de agua dulce, los productos del bosque producidos en forma sustentable y amplias oportunidades recreativas.
Comentarios de los ponentes
Los ponentes de la conferencia hicieron hincapié en la importancia de la cooperación constante entre las diferentes organizaciones y los diferentes sectores para poder lograr objetivos duraderos. Susan Collins, senadora republicana por Maine, relató con orgullo de qué manera se conservaron más de 800.000 hectáreas de bosques de Maine en los últimos doce años. La senadora comentó: Bosque Nacional White Mountain cerca del pueblo de Berlin, Nueva Hampshire.
“Lo logramos mediante la constitución de una sociedad entre todos los niveles del gobierno, la industria de productos forestales, grupos ambientales, forestales y recreativos, y propietarios. A través de esta sociedad, hemos podido mantener y aún aumentar los niveles de productividad de madera y cosechas, apoyando así una industria de productos forestales diversa y sólida que emplea a decenas de miles de trabajadores en la producción de papel, otros productos derivados de la madera y energía renovable. Al mismo tiempo, hemos logrado proteger la biodiversidad, los bosques antiguos y maduros y el acceso público a la recreación, además de aumentar las oportunidades para el turismo” (Levitt y Chester 2011, 72).
Peter Welch, representante demócrata por Vermont, y Rush Holt, representante demócrata por Nueva Jersey, destacaron la importancia de ser perseverantes en estos esfuerzos. Welch hizo hincapié en el valor de mantener los presupuestos para la conservación de tierras durante la presente ronda de negociaciones sobre el presupuesto. Recordó a la audiencia que, en 1864, el entonces presidente Abraham Lincoln dejó por un instante de centrar su atención en una crisis de dimensiones monumentales —la guerra civil— con el fin de firmar un proyecto de ley para transferir el área de Yosemite al estado de California para uso público y recreativo. Si Lincoln fue capaz de crear el parque Yosemite en medio de la guerra civil, afirmó Welch, nosotros podemos hacer lo mismo en estos tiempos de presupuestos ajustados y volatilidad económica.
Holt centró sus comentarios en el hecho de poder cumplir la antigua promesa de financiar integralmente las porciones federales y estatales del Fondo para la Conservación de Tierras y Agua (Land and Water Conservation Fund o LWCF), al igual que otras iniciativas legislativas, tales como la Ley para la Conservación de Corredores de Vida Silvestre. Holt fue categórico a la hora de animar a la comunidad conservacionista a responder a la necesidad de tomar medidas urgentes por nuestro propio bien y por el bien de las generaciones futuras. Recordó además a la audiencia la advertencia del expresidente Lyndon Johnson, firmante de las leyes originales relacionadas con el LWCF y de la Ley de V ida Silvestre en el año 1964: “Si queremos que las generaciones futuras nos recuerden con gratitud en vez de con pena, debemos lograr mucho más que los milagros de la tecnología. También es nuestro dejarles vislumbrar el mundo tal como fue creado, y no sólo su imagen después de que nosotros pasáramos por él” (Henry y Armstrong 2004, 123).
Peter Welch, representante demócrata por Vermont, y Rush Holt, representante demócrata por Nueva Jersey, destacaron la importancia de ser perseverantes en estos esfuerzos. Welch hizo hincapié en el valor de mantener los presupuestos para la conservación de tierras durante la presente ronda de negociaciones sobre el presupuesto. Recordó a la audiencia que, en 1864, el entonces presidente Abraham Lincoln dejó por un instante de centrar su atención en una crisis de dimensiones monumentales —la guerra civil— con el fin de firmar un proyecto de ley para transferir el área de Yosemite al estado de California para uso público y recreativo. Si Lincoln fue capaz de crear el parque Yosemite en medio de la guerra civil, afirmó Welch, nosotros podemos hacer lo mismo en estos tiempos de presupuestos ajustados y volatilidad económica.
Holt centró sus comentarios en el hecho de poder cumplir la antigua promesa de financiar integralmente las porciones federales y estatales del Fondo para la Conservación de Tierras y Agua (Land and Water Conservation Fund o LWCF), al igual que otras iniciativas legislativas, tales como la Ley para la Conservación de Corredores de Vida Silvestre. Holt fue categórico a la hora de animar a la comunidad conservacionista a responder a la necesidad de tomar medidas urgentes por nuestro propio bien y por el bien de las generaciones futuras. Recordó además a la audiencia la advertencia del expresidente Lyndon Johnson, firmante de las leyes originales relacionadas con el LWCF y de la Ley de V ida Silvestre en el año 1964: “Si queremos que las generaciones futuras nos recuerden con gratitud en vez de con pena, debemos lograr mucho más que los milagros de la tecnología. También es nuestro dejarles vislumbrar el mundo tal como fue creado, y no sólo su imagen después de que nosotros pasáramos por él” (Henry y Armstrong 2004, 123).
De estos debates se desprende claramente que los líderes de todos los sectores se encuentran listos para ayudar a implementar las aspiraciones conservacionistas de cooperación mencionadas por Collins, Welch y Holt. Bob Bendick, director de relaciones gubernamentales de los Estados Unidos en The Nature Conservancy, indicó que “el objetivo general de AGO [America’s Great Outdoors] debería ser el de crear y mantener una red nacional de grandes áreas de tierras, agua y costas restauradas y conservadas, alrededor de las cuales los estadounidenses puedan llevar a cabo vidas productivas y saludables” (Levitt y Chester 2011, 74). En la misma línea, Bendick compartió con el grupo su sueño personal de que, algún día, sus pequeñas nietas pudieran, cuando fueran adultas, mirar desde el arco de la entrada el Parque Nacional Y ellowstone y ver que “en todos los Estados Unidos, 400 millones de personas han logrado organizar sus vidas y actividades en toda la extensión de este país extraordinario de tal manera que han podido reconciliar sus vidas con el poder, la gracia, la belleza y la productividad de la tierra y el agua que, al fin y al cabo, nos sustentan a todos” (Levitt y Chester 2011, 75).
Will Shafroth, secretario adjunto de Piscicultura, Vida Silvestre y Parques del Departamento del Interior de los Estados Unidos, y Harris Sherman, subsecretario de Recursos Naturales y Medio Ambiente del Departamento de Agricultura de los Estados Unidos, compartieron con franqueza sus evaluaciones acerca de la situación actual. Shafroth describió el arduo trabajo y la gran cantidad de comentarios que ayudaron a elaborar el informe de America’s Great Outdoors. Shafroth, por su parte, resaltó que, aunque dicho trabajo sirve como buen fundamento para los esfuerzos que se realicen en el futuro, sostener el impulso conservacionista en estos tiempos de rígidas limitaciones presupuestarias exige una gran cuota de creatividad y pensamiento proactivo.
Sherman agregó que la idea integral de conservación de paisajes implica que debemos pasar de llevar a cabo únicamente actos de conservación al azar a fomentar iniciativas a gran escala más integrales y colaborativas, en las que se pueda involucrar a muchas agencias y tipos de propietarios. Resaltó además la importancia especial que tendrán los resultados del debate sobre el proyecto de Ley de Granjas de 2012, ya que las disposiciones conservacionistas que incluye dicho proyecto tendrán una importancia crucial para el éxito de las medidas tendientes a la conservación de paisajes.
El entusiasmo por la conservación de grandes paisajes demostrado por los ponentes provenientes del público en general y de las organizaciones sin fines de lucro se vio apoyado aún más por Jim Stone, propietario particular y administrador de un rancho en el Valle Blackfoot de Montana. Stone fue uno de los fundadores del Desafío Blackfoot, una organización popular que, mediante un enfoque centrado en la conservación de paisajes, ha logrado impresionantes resultados medibles en los últimos 30 años.
Jamie Williams, colega de Stone y miembro de The Nature Conservancy, explicó que el Desafío Blackfoot ha logrado un éxito extraordinario en todos estos años debido a que se tomaron el tiempo necesario para involucrar a gran cantidad de propietarios y socios mediante un enfoque basado en el consenso sobre la conservación. Los pequeños éxitos iniciales fueron de suma importancia a la hora de generar confianza para lograr los exitosos resultados posteriores (Williams 2011). En lo que respecta a la recuperación de arroyos solamente, el Desafío Blackfoot logró involucrar a más de 200 propietarios en unos 680 proyectos sobre 42 arroyos y 960 kilómetros de arroyos, lo que ha dado como resultado directo un aumento del 800 por ciento en las poblaciones de peces en el valle de más de 607.000 hectáreas. Stone es categórico al afirmar que, con la gente correcta en los lugares correctos, lo que se logró en la región de Blackfoot podría también lograrse en toda la nación.
El programa se completó con un panel de investigadores y funcionarios académicos que representaban a distintas universidades, facultades e instituciones de investigación dedicados a la tarea de catalizar las iniciativas de conservación de grandes paisajes. Matthew McKinney, de la Universidad de Montana, moderó un debate junto con David Foster, de Harvard Forest y la Universidad de Harvard, Perry Brown, de la Universidad de Montana, y Karl Flessa, de la Universidad de Arizona. Los panelistas analizaron de qué manera las instituciones, tanto en sus actividades internas como de extensión, pueden utilizar sus capacidades analíticas y su poder de convocatoria con el fin de fomentar las iniciativas para obtener un amplio impacto.
Perry Brown señaló que las universidades que van a representar un papel en las iniciativas de conservación en el mundo real no serán aquellas que permanezcan aisladas sino, por el contrario, las que mantengan relaciones con socios no académicos, tales como tribus indígenas, agencias gubernamentales federales y estatales y organizaciones sin fines de lucro, ya sean de gran envergadura a nivel nacional como de menor escala a nivel municipal. David Foster reforzó esta idea describiendo las actividades de extensión llevadas a cabo por Harvard Forest con el fin de elaborar y divulgar su reciente informe sobre Tierras V írgenes y Bosques en Nueva I nglaterra (Foster y otros 2009).
Casos de conservación de grandes paisajes
En todo el país, existen casos ejemplares de conservación de grandes paisajes que han experimentado progresos in situ, desde M aine hasta M ontana y desde el sur de Arizona hasta el norte de Florida. Uno de los casos más importantes que ha estado en funcionamiento por más tiempo se encuentra en la cuenca ACE, en las famosas tierras bajas de Carolina del Sur. La cuenca ACE, formada por más de 140.000 hectáreas que desembocan en los ríos Ashepoo, Combahee y Edisto Sur, entre Charleston y Beaufort, es uno de los mayores estuarios sin desarrollar de todo el litoral atlántico de los Estados Unidos (ver figura 1).
A fines de la década de 1980, un grupo de organizaciones públicas, privadas y sin fines de lucro unieron sus esfuerzos con el fin de crear una sociedad que protegiera las excepcionales fuentes de agua, la vida silvestre y los paisajes de la región. Entre los miembros de la Sociedad de la Cuenca ACE se encuentran agencias federales, como el Servicio de Piscicultura y V ida Silvestre y la Administración Nacional de Océanos y Atmósfera; agencias estatales, como el Departamento de Recursos Naturales de Carolina del Sur; organizaciones nacionales sin fines de lucro, como The Nature Conservancy y Ducks Unlimited
Los miembros de esta sociedad han logrado conservar más de 54.225 hectáreas, que constituyen una superficie contigua en el centro mismo de la cuenca ACE que une derechos de servidumbre sobre terrenos privados, un Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre, las Áreas de Administración de Vida Silvestre de Carolina del Sur y un centro interpretativo natural e histórico del condado de Charleston, entre otras propiedades.
En su calidad de iniciativa de conservación de paisajes de gran envergadura, la cuenca ACE se destaca realmente entre otros proyectos. Mark Robertson, director ejecutivo de The Nature Conservancy en Carolina del Sur, indicó que este esfuerzo “estableció un estándar en cuanto a la forma de implementar proyectos de conservación a gran escala mediante la colaboración de los propietarios particulares, los grupos conservacionistas y las agencias gubernamentales”. Al preguntársele acerca de la importancia de los progresos obtenidos en la cuenca ACE hasta la fecha, Dana Beach, directora de la Liga de Conservación Costera, responde categóricamente: “La importancia central tiene que ver con el hecho de que, por primera vez, estas tareas de conservación les han brindado a muchas personas la esperanza de que un lugar de tanta importancia no caerá inevitablemente en el desarrollo” (Holleman 2008).
Próximos pasos
El coloquio sobre liderazgo en conservación concluyó con un acuerdo general en cuanto a que todavía queda mucho por hacer y que esta es una oportunidad histórica para extender el progreso logrado inicialmente en el campo de la conservación de grandes paisajes. El debate acerca de los próximos pasos que deben darse se organizó en torno a cuatro tipos de iniciativas.
Coloquios sobre políticas de conservación
Resulta necesario continuar estos coloquios sobre políticas de conservación, tanto entre los conservacionistas de los sectores público, privado, sin fines de lucro y académico como entre la comunidad conservacionista y los responsables a nivel local, estatal y federal, que deberán centrarse en las oportunidades que actualmente se presentan para llevar a cabo iniciativas de conservación de grandes paisajes en toda la nación. En estos encuentros deberían darse a conocer los casos de éxito que han involucrado propiedades orientadas tanto a la cultura como a la naturaleza (ya que ambos tipos de conservación son muy valorados por el público); tener en cuenta las medidas de conservación que se están tomando a nivel regional; y pensar imaginativamente en otras nuevas.
En cuanto a la esfera política, estos coloquios deberían estar conectados con los comités conservacionistas en los diferentes niveles de gobierno (municipal, del condado, estatal, federal e internacional). Dentro de los contextos de organizaciones sin fines de lucro y académico, el diálogo debería producirse entre las diferentes disciplinas y cruzar los límites institucionales. Dichos debates intersectoriales e interdisciplinarios probablemente den como resultado soluciones creativas e ideas novedosas. Aunque en estos debates se aproveche la naturaleza socialmente neutra de las universidades en su calidad de coordinadoras, no por ello deben dejar de dar respuesta a los problemas prácticos y reales que sean causas significativas de preocupación para los profesionales del campo y los propietarios.
Investigación
Otra necesidad inmediata es la de actualizar los mapas e inventarios existentes (como por ejemplo, la base de datos de la Sociedad de Paisajes del Noreste de la Asociación para el Plan Regional) con el fin de ofrecer una visión más completa de las iniciativas que se encuentran en marcha, ya sean públicas, privadas o sin fines de lucro. Por otro lado, un panorama general más amplio acerca de los esfuerzos realizados a nivel nacional resultaría muy útil para los grupos y redes que trabajan con el fin de fomentar la práctica de la conservación de grandes paisajes. Entre estos grupos se cuentan la Red de Profesionales para la Conservación de Grandes Paisajes, un programa del I nstituto Lincoln, y las Cooperativas para la Conservación de Paisajes (Landscape Conservation Cooperatives o LCC) del Servicio de Piscicultura y Vida Silvestre de los Estados Unidos.
Todos estos esfuerzos de investigación podrían resultar mucho más pertinentes y rentables si implicaran la cooperación entre una amplia gama de organizaciones públicas y privadas. Y podrían, además, fomentar el aumento de las iniciativas de educación medioambiental, que ya se cuentan con cuentagotas.
También se precisa una mayor investigación para medir el impacto, el rendimiento a lo largo del tiempo y los resultados de las iniciativas de conservación de grandes paisajes, así como también para identificar los factores claves de éxito de aquellas iniciativas que sean capaces de demostrar resultados significativos medibles. Una investigación particularmente importante sería aquella capaz de identificar dónde, cuándo y cómo ciertos esfuerzos logran prestar servicios mejorados y medibles para el ecosistema, tales como una mejor calidad del agua, un mayor crecimiento en las poblaciones de vida silvestre y una mayor producción sustentable de productos derivados de los bosques.
Redes
Recientemente se han creado, o están emergiendo, una importante cantidad de redes dedicadas a los grandes paisajes, tales como la Red de Profesionales para la Conservación de Grandes Paisajes y las LCC mencionadas anteriormente. A medida que estas redes evolucionen, es muy probable que vayan apoyándose unas en otras a escalas geográficas cada vez mayores, aunque también deberán centrar sus esfuerzos en compartir sus conocimientos y desarrollar capacidades a nivel local con el fin de obtener resultados duraderos. Sin perjuicio de la necesidad de tener los pies en la tierra, estas redes tienen la oportunidad de conseguir socios internacionales que tengan algo que enseñar. Dentro de sus propios territorios, las redes de conservación de grandes paisajes deben conectarse con distintos electorados, como filántropos interesados en la conservación de grandes paisajes, cuerpos docentes y estudiantes universitarios, agencias públicas y, lo que es más importante, propietarios particulares y administradores de terrenos.
Demostración e implementación
Dadas las fuertes restricciones que se esperan en los nuevos programas de conservación a nivel federal, estatal y local para los próximos años, los participantes centraron gran parte de su atención en la utilización creativa de los presupuestos existentes para la conservación de paisajes. Uno de los participantes destacó el papel significativo que ya está representando el Departamento de Defensa al conservar y limitar el desarrollo en los terrenos adyacentes a las reservas militares activas. Dichos programas se utilizan en la actualidad para proteger de forma efectiva los distintos hábitats y tierras de trabajo del desarrollo, y para limitar la fragmentación de los paisajes. Asimismo, estos programas podrán utilizarse en el futuro para tratar los problemas relacionados con la protección de las fuentes de agua. Otro de los participantes mencionó la importancia que podrían tener los presupuestos estatales y federales para el transporte, los cuales podrían utilizarse con el fin de mitigar el impacto negativo que generan las nuevas carreteras y autopistas.
Particular entusiasmo mostraron varios participantes de sociedades formadas por organizaciones públicas, privadas y sin fines de lucro que poseen una reconocida trayectoria en la protección y mejoramiento de recursos naturales y culturales de gran valor local para constituir la médula de una infraestructura ecológica regional. A modo de ejemplo, podemos mencionar Santa Fe, Nuevo México; la cuenca Chattahoochee/Apalachicola en Georgia, Mississippi y Florida; la Corona del Continente, en Montana, Alberta y la Columbia Británica; y las tierras altas de Nueva Jersey.
Otras oportunidades de financiamiento para las iniciativas de conservación de grandes paisajes incluyen incentivos estatales para la protección de terrenos privados que pueden utilizarse como fondos de contrapartida en relación con ciertos programas federales (como por ejemplo, los fondos de contrapartida necesarios para el financiamiento establecido por la Ley de Conservación de Pantanos de Norteamérica); programas comunitarios de protección de bosques que, en la actualidad, están adquiriendo impulso en toda la nación; oportunidades especiales de Inversiones Relacionadas con el Programa (Program-Related Investmentso PRI) para fundaciones; y mercados emergentes dedicados a los servicios de protección de ecosistemas que reciben apoyo de las políticas federales y de las sociedades formadas por organizaciones públicas y privadas, entre los que se incluyen los mercados bancarios estatales de mitigación para los créditos destinados al carbón, tales como los de California.
Conclusión
A pesar de las evidentes restricciones presupuestarias a nivel federal, se encuentran disponibles incontables oportunidades para llevar a cabo proyectos de conservación a escala expansiva, con un enfoque de extensión, capaces de lograr resultados de conservación medibles y duraderos. Los propios participantes de la conferencia ofrecieron claras muestras de que el concepto de conservación de grandes paisajes se ha extendido y ahora pueden observarse iniciativas en todo el continente. Estos participantes y sus colegas, tanto aquí como en el exterior, se encuentran hoy a la vanguardia — y lo seguirán estando— en las iniciativas para la protección de la naturaleza dentro del contexto de los valores humanos, en proporción a los desafíos conservacionistas a los que se enfrentan.
Coloquio sobre Liderazgo en Conservación
El primero de marzo de 2011, el Lincoln Institute of Land Policy celebró su décimo Coloquio sobre Liderazgo en Conservación anual, centrado en “El futuro de la conservación de grandes paisajes en los Estados Unidos”. La sesión fue organizada por James N. Levitt, fellow del Instituto Lincoln, con la colaboración de Armando Carbonell, senior fellow y director del Departamento de Planificación y Forma Urbana. La jornada tuvo lugar en el Salón de miembros del Congreso de la Biblioteca del Congreso, justo enfrente del Capitolio de los EE.UU. en Washington, DC, coincidiendo con el centésimo aniversario de la fecha en que el expresidente William Howard Taft suscribió la ley que permitió la creación de bosques nacionales en la región este del país, lo que marcó un hito en la legislación. La Ley Weeks de 1911, así llamada en honor al congresista (y más tarde senador) de Massachusetts John Wingate Weeks modificó la esencia del conservacionismo en cooperación, al permitir la participación de ciudadanos activos en los sectores público, privado, sin fines de lucro, académico y de investigación de los Estados Unidos.
Sobre el Autor
James N. Levitt es fellow del Departamento de Planificación y Forma Urbana del Lincoln Institute of Land Policy y director del Programa de Innovaciones sobre la Conservación de Harvard Forest, Universidad de Harvard.
Referencias
Consejo sobre Calidad Ambiental. 2011. “America’s great outdoors: A promise to future generations”. Washington, DC: Imprenta gubernamental. http://americasgreatoutdoors. gov/report
Foster, D., D. Kittredge, B. Donahue, K. Fallon Lambert, M. Hunter, L. Irland, B. Hall, D. Orwig, A. Ellison, E. Colburn, A. D’Amato y C. Cogbill. 2009. “Wildlands and woodlands: A vision for New England”. En Harvard Forest Paper 32. Petersham, MA: Harvard Forest.
Henry, Mark y Leslie Armstrong. 2004. “Mapping the future of America’s national parks: Stewardship through geographic information Systems”. Redlands, CA: ESRI.
Holleman, Joey. 2008. “Ace Basin: Protected forever”. En The State, Local/Metro Section, 10 de noviembre. http://www.thestate.com/2008/11/10/584599/ace-basin-protected-forever.html#ixzz1W3yQd7KP.
Levitt, James N. y Charles N. Chester. 2011. “The future of large landscape conservation in America”. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/1916_The-Future-of-Large-Landscape-Conservation-in-America.
Williams, Jamie. 2011. “Scaling up conservation for large landscapes”. En Land Lines 23(3): 8–13. https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1923_1246_LLA_071103.pdf.
Otros Recursos
Levitt, James N., ed. 2005. “From Walden to Wall Street: Frontiers of conservation finance”. Washington, DC: Island Press y Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
———. 2010. “Conservation Capital in the Americas: Exemplary Conservation Finance Initiatives”. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, en colaboración con Island Press, el Instituto Ash para el Gobierno y la Innovación Democrática de la Facultad Kennedy de Harvard y el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos David Rockefeller de la Universidad de Harvard.
McKinney Matthew J. y Shawn Johnson. 2009. “Working across boundaries: People, nature, and regions”. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
McKinney, Matthew J., Lynn Scarlett y Daniel Kemmis. 2010. “Large landscape conservation: A strategic framework for policy and action”. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Yellowstone National Park seems so wild today because in 1872 it became the first national park on Earth and because the wildfires in 1988 and the successful reintroduction of wolves in the 1990s have restored the dynamic character of the original landscape. In his recent PBS television series, filmmaker Ken Burns called our national parks “America’s best idea,” but a growing number of people within the conservation movement now believe that, at best, fully protected areas like Yellowstone are only part of the conservation solution. They argue that we should be saving nature for people, not from the impacts of people, and that our efforts should encompass more different kinds of areas with less emphasis on “preserved” lands.
This is a variation on the 100-year-old debate between conservationist John Muir and forest manager Gifford Pinchot: Should we protect nature for its intrinsic value or should our approach be much more utilitarian? The latter view sought to maximize the long-term production of water, harvestable wildlife, and timber, and now would include carbon storage, biofuels, nutrient removal, protection from natural hazards–in sum, all the things that the natural world provides.
Contemporary discussions raise another issue about the pervasiveness of human impacts on natural areas. Yellowstone and every other place on the planet are profoundly influenced by human decisions. Aldo Leopold (1966, 254) perceived this dilemma more than 60 years ago when he wrote, “man’s invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity and scope.” These tools are far more powerful today. In her recent book, Rambunctious Garden, science writer Emma Marris (2011) advances the argument that we will have to learn to accept a nature altered by human activities. It is not sufficient to think about preserving natural areas to allow the unimpeded function of their natural systems. Every place requires some form of management, even if only to protect what remains of its “natural” condition.
The extent to which humans have become responsible for nature was brought home to me in a recent conversation with Phil Kramer, The Nature Conservancy’s Caribbean director. He described the die-back of coral reefs in that region and his team’s efforts to restore them by selecting coral genotypes that seem most resilient to warmer water, growing those corals in nurseries, and then using them to rebuild reefs at many locations.
For thousands of years, consciously and unconsciously, humans have shaped their environments to fit their needs, but this kind of intentional intervention to respond to the growing threats to nature represents a new direction that is different from Muir’s preservation and Pinchot’s scientific management. We are now trying to create our conservation future at increasingly large scales. This creative conservation process builds on the analytical approaches to conservation of the past, but does not depend only on baseline analysis of historic ecosystems to establish goals for the future. Rather, it requires that our goals be derived from a synthesis of human and natural needs and benefits guided by what Aldo Leopold (1966, 239) called “a land ethic”–an informed personal responsibility for the health and future of our land and water.
Challenges to Protecting Nature
This approach to conservation faces a lively debate within the conservation community. Many people hold on to the idea of restoring disturbed areas to wilderness and to the ultimate power of nature, but others recognize that these approaches can be only a part of our future. From my perspective, the energy of the conservation community is better directed not to internal debate but to meeting the real challenges we face in sustaining the core framework and functions of natural systems for their benefit to people and to nature itself. What are these challenges?
Strategies for Creative Conservation
At this pivotal point in America’s conservation history, what does the conservation movement have to do to resolve the conflicts between today’s political parties, the global human pressures on our natural systems, and the need to create an environmental future in this country and around the world that is ethical, sustainable, and achievable? The answers, I believe, come not from Washington, but rather from a nationwide movement of landowners, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and community groups working together to protect the places they value, such as the Blackfoot Valley in Montana, the Flint Hills of Kansas, and the Connecticut and Hudson River Valleys in the East. Popular projects such as these suggest a number of strategies that can contribute to lasting and large-scale conservation success.
Work at the landscape scale.
In a world with many stresses and threats to nature, we know that disconnected pieces of natural systems are unlikely to survive. Most federal agencies are beginning to think in these terms, but many institutional barriers must be overcome to make the conservation of what The Nature Conservancy calls “whole systems” the usual way of doing business.
Use multiple conservation tools at the same time.
It is essential to integrate preservation, traditional private and public land management, and restoration in places defined by both natural and human attributes. The combination of working at a large scale and using multiple approaches suggests that government must achieve an unprecedented level of coordination in how it uses its influence and resources.
Recognize, respect, and quantify the short- and long-term human benefits of conservation.
Conservation organizations must become expert in understanding and explaining the value of nature in shaping the future world. As multiple interests try to piece together the future, they must be able to represent accurately how important the natural components of that future will be.
Do not discard the idea of baseline conditions.
It is not always possible to sustain nature as it has existed in the past, but we can give the highest priority to protecting those places where ecological processes can continue, where change can be managed, and where we can, as The Nature Conservancy’s scientist, Mark Anderson, says, “save the stage if not all the players.”
Learn to balance adaptive management with long-term goals.
This requires bringing together a willingness to admit and adjust to mistakes with the consistency of purpose and action needed to influence the future of large systems. It takes time to reach the kind of long-term consensus building about the desired future condition that communities are trying to achieve. Successful, creative conservation projects extend over decades, not years.
Maintain fair and consistent environmental laws.
Environmental and land use regulatory processes and economic incentives and disincentives can and should be restructured in ways that will establish a more consistent and flexible framework for shaping the future and bring a positive environmental influence to the operation of markets. But regulatory standards must be maintained to ensure a level playing field and to protect the environment and human health while enabling long-term economic growth. The broad use of the mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimize, compensate) can be helpful here. This approach to the siting of infrastructure and development can enable investment and economic growth while providing net benefits for nature.
Do more to ensure the involvement of citizens and diverse stakeholders in planning for the future.
If our society is not simply protecting nature, but creating a future world, then all of us have an even greater right–and I would say a responsibility–to be involved in setting those goals. We no longer live in a mainframe society. Most decisions are driven by networked individual actions, and citizens need a renewed sense of empowerment in determining the character of the places where they, live, work, and recreate. Conservation, too, will become a more decentralized, from-the-bottom-up process. The engagement of young people is particularly important, and environmental issues must be made relevant to the diverse residents of the nation’s metropolitan areas where the great majority of Americans live.
Identify, train, and mentor a new generation of local conservation leaders.
A new generation of conservationists skilled at working with diverse interests will be able to create a future that brings together environmental and long-term economic needs.
Shared Problem Solving
Of course, doing these things could put creative conservation in the crossfire between those for whom nature is irrelevant and those who are fearful that changing anything about environmental regulation or protection of public lands will open the door to cataclysmic change. But these steps can advance practical solutions to the nation’s growing political impasse on conservation and the environment. At the heart of this impasse is the shared belief that we have lost control over the future of our families and communities, and that we have become victims of the actions of distant forces.
Done right, creative conservation can give all of us significant roles in shaping the future of the places most important to us–our home ranges. It also offers two benefits that can have powerful political traction–the opportunity for better places to live, work, and visit that provide tangible benefits to our lives, and the sense of respect and self-worth implicit in helping to determine the future of the places we love.
Such an approach might move the environmental politics of both conservatives and liberals toward shared problem solving. For conservatives–is it planning for the future they oppose, or just planning by those with whom they disagree? Are they willing to include the hopes of citizens for their own communities as a legitimate part of the less government and more market-driven future they would like to see? For liberals–are they willing to trust people who work on the land to make more decisions about the fate of our land and water, or are they, too, really more interested in centralized control to achieve their own vision of what should be? Can the opportunity to work together to create good futures for the real places that surround our lives be the literal and symbolic common ground that can heal some of our society’s divisions?
The stone arch at the North Entrance to Yellowstone was erected to commemorate the creation of the park and is inscribed “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” Theodore Roosevelt put the cornerstone of the arch in place when he visited Yellowstone in 1904, at a time when Americans increasingly saw government as a protector of the common good. Yellowstone was an example of that spirit.
But now, in the twenty-first century, it seems to me that the gateway arch also has an important message about looking outward from the park, down Paradise Valley where the Yellowstone River heads toward the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico. The conservation challenge before us, against all odds and whether we like it or not, is to create a future for the benefit of the people, based on a respect for and understanding of the multiple values of nature in many more places across America.
If approached place-by-place in this way, Americans with diverse points of view can rally to the cause of conservation as not just something to think about on vacation, not just a luxury, but as a durable foundation for healthy, safe, more prosperous and more spiritually rewarding lives for all of our children and grandchildren.
About the Author
Bob Bendick is director of U.S. Government Relations at The Nature Conservancy in Washington, DC.
References
Leopold, Aldo. 1966 [1949]. A Sand County almanac: With essays on conservation from Round River. New York: Oxford University Press.
Marris, Emma. 2011. Rambunctious garden: Saving nature in a post-wild world. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Como consecuencia del huracán Sandy, la mayor frecuencia de eventos climáticos extremos y el aumento del nivel del mar, la vulnerabilidad de las ciudades y pueblos costeros se ha convertido en una cuestión de urgencia. Pero los desastres pueden suponer también oportunidades de innovación. Después de Sandy, se ha comenzado a ensayar una serie nueva de iniciativas, herramientas, políticas, marcos de gobierno e incentivos, e incluso concursos como el de Reconstrucción por Diseño (Rebuild by Design o RBD) Este concurso, promovido por el Grupo de Trabajo de Reconstrucción después del Huracán Sandy y el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano (HUD) de los Estados Unidos, usa el diseño como herramienta clave para crear estrategias integradas para construir resiliencia, sostenibilidad y habitabilidad.
Después de que HUD anunció los ganadores en junio, Land Lines habló sobre RBD con Helen Lochhead, arquitecta y diseñadora urbana y paisajista, y fellow Lincoln/Loeb de 2014 en la Escuela de Posgrado de Diseño de la Universidad de Harvard y el Instituto Lincoln. Anteriormente fue Directora Ejecutiva de Desarrollo del Sitio en la Autoridad Costera del Puerto de Sídney. También es profesora adjunta en la Universidad de Sídney.
Land Lines: ¿En qué manera fue distinto el huracán Sandy de otras tormentas en los Estados Unidos?
Helen Lochhead: Sandy causó daños sin precedentes y puso en evidencia la vulnerabilidad de las ciudades y pueblos costeros a eventos climáticos extremos más frecuentes. Dados los costos económicos, que alcanzaron 65 mil millones de dólares, y el desmesurado número de víctimas humanas —más de 117 muertes y 200.000 personas desplazadas de sus hogares— quedó claro desde el principio del proceso de recuperación que reconstruir lo que existía antes no era una opción viable.
Todos los niveles de gobierno —federal, estatal y municipal— expresaron claramente el imperativo de aumentar la resiliencia de las áreas afectadas por Sandy en Nueva York, Nueva Jersey y Connecticut. Para garantizar que la región triestatal tuviera un mejor desempeño la próxima vez, se reconoció que teníamos que construir en forma diferente. Como cada dólar gastado en mitigación y preparación puede ahorrar cuatro dólares más adelante en gastos de reconstrucción después de desastres, las entidades gubernamentales están ensayando una gama de iniciativas nuevas, como por ejemplo concursos para promover la resiliencia mediante planificación y diseños innovadores, tales como RBD.
Land Lines: ¿En qué se diferenció RBD de otros esfuerzos de recuperación y concursos de diseño?
Helen Lochhead: La concurso RBD identificó el diseño como herramienta clave para poder resistir eventos climáticos extremos, con la posibilidad de reorientar las preguntas y desarrollar nuevos paradigmas que desafíen el status quo. Los diseñadores son colaboradores, visualizadores y sintetizadores. RBD les dio la oportunidad de analizar los temas y construir escenarios de maneras nuevas y distintas.
El enfoque de RBD también fue regional. El huracán Sandy superó los límites políticos, así que el concurso se propuso abordar vulnerabilidades estructurales y medioambientales que la tormenta puso en evidencia en todas las áreas afectadas. También prometió reforzar nuestro conocimiento de las interdependencias regionales, fomentando la coordinación y resiliencia tanto a nivel local como nacional.
La estrategia de adquisición también fue distinta. El modelo estándar para los concursos federales de diseño es definir un problema existente, escribir un resumen y solicitar soluciones a los mejores expertos en el campo. Pero un problema de una escala y complejidad sin precedentes como Sandy no se puede definir fácilmente hasta que se haya comprendido en todas sus dimensiones. Esto toma tiempo. Este territorio virgen sugirió la necesidad de hacerse preguntas abiertas y de utilizar un enfoque interdisciplinario y multijurisdiccional.
Primero, una combinación única de socios de proyecto —el Grupo de Trabajo de Reconstrucción después del Huracán Sandy del Presidente Obama y HUD, en colaboración con el Instituto de Conocimiento Público (Institute for Public Knowledge o IPK), la Sociedad Municipal de Artes (Municipal Art Society o MAS), la Asociación de Planes Regionales (Regional Plan Association o RPA), y el Instituto Van Alen (Van Alen Institute o VAI), con el respaldo económico de la Fundación Rockefeller y otras fundaciones importantes— contrataron a un diverso grupo de talento. En vez de limitar el campo de acción, los socios de proyecto armaron equipos integrados por pensadores interdisciplinarios y colaborativos para abordar una amplia gama de ideas y enfoques, y crear estrategias más holísticas.
Segundo, el proceso del concurso propiamente dicho fue distinto. Su duración, de ocho meses en total, fue breve, claro y concentrado. El proceso involucró investigación y diseño para abordar los temas de interés y maximizar el alcance y la extensión de las ideas por medio de paradigmas abiertos de innovación. El proceso fue colaborativo, gobernado por la investigación y con un intercambio abierto de información, para poder refinar mejor la naturaleza y el alcance de los complejos desafíos regionales, y desarrollar soluciones de diseño comprehensivas.
Tercero, RBD reservó fondos de Subsidios Globales de Desarrollo Comunitario (Community Development Block Grants, CDBG-DR) de HUD —concretamente 920 millones de dólares— para ayudar a implementar los proyectos y propuestas ganadoras. Normalmente, los acreedores de las subvenciones tienen que desarrollar planes de acción sólo después de haber recibido estos fondos. Pero RBD cambió este procedimiento informalmente, promoviendo propuestas innovadoras antes de otorgar el dinero. De esa manera, los dólares federales se convirtieron en un catalizador de innovación, así como un mecanismo para facilitar la implementación. Se alentó también a los equipos a que consiguieran su propio financiamiento para el desarrollo adicional de diseños, impulsando una extensión de sus tareas y del alcance del proyecto.
Finalmente, RBD interactuó con comunidades, organizaciones sin fines de lucro, entidades gubernamentales y dirigentes locales, estatales y federales a todos los niveles para construir nuevas coaliciones de respaldo y capacidad en paralelo con cada propuesta de diseño.
Land Lines: ¿Cuán efectivo fue RBD como vehículo para impulsar la innovación y resiliencia en la región? ¿Y cuáles son las posibilidades y desafíos más importantes de este tipo de proceso liderado por diseño?
Helen Lochhead: No sabremos por un tiempo si RBD generará innovaciones que preparen y adapten mejor a la región al cambio climático, o si los proyectos se podrán implementar y aprovechar exitosamente para construir resiliencia en otras comunidades vulnerables. No obstante, es posible identificar dónde el concurso ha demostrado innovación y un impacto potencial más allá de los procesos normales.
La mera cantidad de participantes, la gama de disciplinas y las estructuras de equipos integrados facilitaron una multiplicidad de ideas y enfoques, y también estrategias más holísticas. De un total de 148 propuestas, RBD seleccionó 10 equipos de diseño multidisciplinarios para investigar y desarrollar una gama de propuestas. Estos finalistas incluyeron más de 200 expertos, principalmente en las disciplinas de planificación, diseño, ingeniería y ecología.
La fase de investigación multifacética, que comenzó en agosto de 2013, también diferenció el proceso del concurso desde el comienzo. Los equipos se sumergieron en investigaciones basadas en diseño, debates sobre temas específicos y excursiones de campo a áreas afectadas por Sandy, para comprender la enormidad del desafío. El Instituto de Conocimiento Público (IPK) se hizo cargo de esta etapa, como manera de abordar una amplia variedad de temas, recabar las opiniones de la comunidad local y realizar trabajo de campo. Las investigaciones del IPK identificaron vulnerabilidades y riesgos, para los que los equipos de diseño podían proponer alternativas mejores y más resilientes. Este marco de acción permitió que los equipos de proyecto no sólo identificaran, comprendieran y respondieran a los problemas centrales, sino que también definieran oportunidades y generaran posibles escenarios. El proceso también facilitó el intercambio de investigaciones e ideas entre los distintos equipos.
Los diseñadores realizaron amplios estudios de precedentes, examinaron buenas prácticas globales, y se reunieron con miembros de la comunidad para recabar su opinión sobre las soluciones más efectivas en el contexto local. Así identificaron tanto enfoques nuevos y emergentes de protección costera, financiamiento, políticas y planificación del uso del suelo, como modelos de comunicación que fueron prometedores en otros contextos y quizás se pudieran adaptar a las regiones afectadas por Sandy. Una de las claves de exploración fueron las herramientas visuales. Los equipos ensayaron escenarios usando herramientas de generación de mapas por SIG para compilar, sintetizar y comunicar datos complejos. Las visualizaciones tridimensionales ayudaron a ilustrar varias opciones y estimular a las partes interesadas.
No se puede subestimar el poder de las propuestas impulsadas por diseño como medio para traducir problemas intangibles en soluciones reales que las partes interesadas puedan comprender y discutir de manera significativa.
Land Lines: Usted mencionó que RBD construyó nuevas coaliciones de respaldo. ¿De qué manera fue distinto el alcance?
Helen Lochhead: Se seleccionaron diez ideas para el desarrollo de diseños en octubre, comenzando la etapa final del concurso. Los equipos trabajaron de cerca con MAS, RPA y VAI para transformar sus ideas de diseño en proyectos viables que inspiraran la cooperación de políticos, comunidades y entidades gubernamentales en toda la región, facilitando así la implementación y el financiamiento. Debido al enfoque regional de estos proyectos de gran alcance, el papel de los socios de proyecto fue clave para poder congregar las redes locales que frecuentemente tenían intereses distintos.
Fue esencial construir coaliciones para asegurar que el enfoque era no sólo integral sino también inclusivo. Más importante aún fue el respaldo de base para implementar y crear el impulso necesario para concretar los proyectos a largo plazo, ya que inevitablemente algunos serán ejecutados más adelante a medida que se disponga de fondos.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles fueron algunos de los temas clave abordados por las propuestas?
Helen Lochhead: La lógica primordial de las propuestas es que, para poder obtener el mayor beneficio y valor, la inversión no tiene que confrontar solamente el riesgo de inundaciones o tormentas, sino también los efectos combinados de eventos climáticos extremos, la degradación medioambiental, la vulnerabilidad social y la susceptibilidad de las redes vitales. Al restaurar ecosistemas y crear oportunidades recreativas y económicas, los proyectos aumentarán la sostenibilidad y la resiliencia.
Las metodologías que predominaron fueron aquellos enfoques a múltiples niveles que incorporaron más infraestructura ecológica verde/azul, así como sistemas de infraestructura gris, junto con propuestas de modelos de gobernanza nuevos y más regionales, herramientas en línea, e iniciativas educativas que construyen capacidad dentro de las comunidades. Muchos proyectos demostraron soluciones localizadas que también tenían una aplicación más amplia. Todos los proyectos resaltaron las interdependencias, la coordinación y la inclusión.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son algunas de las innovaciones clave de los proyectos ganadores anunciados por el Secretario de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano (HUD), Shaun Donovan, el 2 de junio?
Helen Lochhead: El proyecto “Living Breakwaters” (“Rompeolas vivientes”) de SCAPE/Landscape Architecture podría tener aplicaciones de gran alcance si los arrecifes artificiales de ostras son exitosos. Si bien la propuesta enfrenta ciertos desafíos —se tiene que resolver todavía el permiso para operar dentro del agua y los impactos medioambientales potencialmente amplios— tiene la posibilidad de modelarse y ensayarse a una escala mucho más pequeña, siempre y cuando las comunidades locales estén de acuerdo y se cuente con expertos como la Escuela del Puerto de Nueva York para resolver los problemas de aprendizaje iniciales. De ser posible, tiene el beneficio adicional de contar con sistemas biológicos autosustentables que se reponen solos. La ingeniosidad de este esquema es el uso de un proyecto piloto para reemplazar la política y el marco regulador existente con un replanteamiento radical de las posibilidades. Las normas reguladoras imponen frecuentemente una barrera significativa a la innovación, de manera que un ensayo de pequeña escala es una inversión de bajo riesgo. Si no funciona, los efectos son mínimos; si tiene éxito, habrá superado barreras políticas importantes, abriendo el camino a nuevas metodologías de protección más ecológicas contra tormentas.
La propuesta “New Meadowlands: Productive + Regional Park” (“Ciudad productiva y parque regional de Nuevas praderas”) de MIT CAU + ZUS + URBANISTEN, para el área de Meadowlands en Nueva Jersey, es otro enfoque igualmente innovador de implementación. Es un ejemplo llamativo de infraestructura verde compuesto de bermas gruesas, multifuncionales y apaisajadas a lo largo de la costa que actúan como barrera contra inundaciones, pero también permiten la ocupación. La propuesta incluye un parque regional productivo, con bermas y humedales rodeando el curso de agua que protegen las propiedades e infraestructuras vitales de las inundaciones, reconstruye la biodiversidad y hospeda programas recreativos y sociales, así como también una combinación de emprendimientos que aprovechan la nueva zona de parques.
El proyecto también abre una oportunidad atractiva para utilizar un modelo de gobierno regional para ayudar a implementar la visión. La Comisión de Meadowlands de Nueva Jersey —que gobierna la zonificación del uso del suelo en 14 municipalidades— es un caso de estudio en colaboración intermunicipal, con poderes latentes que le permiten organizar esfuerzos de coalición sobre esta área regional. Con un poco de rediseño, podría convertirse potencialmente en una entidad ecológica y de desarrollo económico. Hay muchos impedimentos reguladores incorporados en esta propuesta, y un organismo de gobierno poderoso como éste podría potencialmente simplificarlos. La escala regional de muchas de estas propuestas hace que se crucen los límites jurisdiccionales, lo cual complica la implementación. Al identificar el potencial no aprovechado de este marco de gobierno existente, este equipo ha tomado pasos para ir superando esta importante barrera.
El proyecto “BIG U” del equipo BIG es una barrera compartimentada y multipropósito diseñada para proteger distritos vulnerables en la parte baja de Manhattan contra inundaciones y marejadas ciclónicas. El equipo se concentró en la parte oriental inferior de la isla. El proyecto integra espacios verdes y programas sociales y, a largo plazo, propone soluciones muy necesarias de transporte público. Si bien se propone resolver la falta de espacios abiertos recreativos en el barrio, no aborda adecuadamente ciertas necesidades sistémicas, como la escasez y la calidad de viviendas de interés social, el acceso a servicios y el aburguesamiento potencial que este proyecto podría acelerar.
En el condado de Nassau, Long Island, el proyecto “Living with the Bay” (“Viviendo con la bahía”) del equipo de Interboro se propone incrementar la calidad de la vida cotidiana en la región en épocas normales y al mismo tiempo abordar el riesgo de inundación. Tomadas en conjunto, estas iniciativas presentan una colección de propuestas de relativamente poco riesgo que se pueden implementar ya mismo, y que siembran las semillas de un futuro más estratégico y resiliente. En el largo plazo, se podrían realizar otras mejoras, como viviendas con mayor densidad cerca del transporte público y un nuevo fideicomiso de suelo comunitario.
La propuesta “Hunts Point Lifelines” (“Hunts Point cuerdas salvavidas”) de PennDesign/OLIN para el barrio de Bronx se enfoca en la resiliencia social y económica. Si bien el equipo tuvo en cuenta las vulnerabilidades medioambientales, su preocupación principal era el papel crítico que el Mercado de alimentos de Hunts Point juega en la comunidad local y la cadena de alimentos regional. El equipo trabajó con la comunidad y los dueños de propiedades industriales para desarrollar diseños específicos para el sitio, con protección integrada contra tormentas e infraestructura verde que ofrece un espacio social de alta calidad con componentes que se pueden fabricar localmente y construir en forma cooperativa. El proyecto demostró el potencial de la protección y ecología híbrida de los puertos que se encuentran a lo largo del estuario.
La estrategia integral para Hoboken de OMA —“Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge” (“Resistir, demorar, almacenar, descargar”)— representa un catálogo de intervenciones que incorpora una extensa infraestructura verde/azul y también una barrera de protección para la infraestructura crítica de transporte. Si bien tiene mucha similitud con el proyecto Comunidades Sostenibles de Hoboken, su punto fuerte es la metodología integral, lograda por medio de una serie de iniciativas clave que contaron con la participación de más de 40 partes interesadas en Hoboken y Jersey City, que serán esenciales para su implementación.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles fueron los mejores aspectos de los proyectos que no ganaron?
Helen Lochhead: Los marcos de intercambio abierto de información crearon un proceso de información pública en línea, para que los equipos pudieran alcanzar a una variedad mucho más extensa de usuarios que aquellos que asisten tradicionalmente a las reuniones comunitarias. Por ejemplo, el proyecto “CrowdGauge for Rebuild” (“Calibrar para reconstruir”) de Sasaki pidió primero a los usuarios de Asbury Park, Nueva Jersey, que clasificaran una serie de prioridades. Después demostró cómo una serie de acciones y políticas podrían afectar dichas prioridades. Finalmente, entregó a los usuarios una cantidad limitada de monedas y les pidió que las “gastasen” en las acciones que más les interesaran.
Varios equipos demostraron un método de “juego de componentes”, utilizando iniciativas de desarrollo económico, juegos de herramientas de uso, y proyectos de mejora urbana en varias combinaciones, para alcanzar metas de resiliencia. La propuesta de HR&A Cooper Robertson para Red Hook, Brooklyn, es un ejemplo de este método. Con todos los componentes en su lugar, se podría utilizar una serie de estas estrategias a mayor escala y crear transformaciones y beneficios sistémicos. Dichos enfoques granulares facilitan la implementación por fases y, con el debido financiamiento, se pueden ejecutar inmediatamente y tener un impacto a distintas escalas.
El proyecto “Resilience + the Beach” (“Resiliencia + la playa”) de Sasaki/Rutgers/Arup se enfocó más tierra adentro de la costa de Nueva Jersey, en los terrenos más altos y secos, redefiniendo la zona costera como el ecosistema de seis millas de ancho entre la playa y los pinares de Nueva Jersey. Al revelar los atributos escénicos y el potencial recreativo de los cursos de agua y bosques interiores, esta estrategia fomenta el desarrollo para migrar del borde de las islas de barrera a áreas más estables tierra adentro, con el objeto de crear una economía turística más estratificada. El sitio de este proyecto es Asbury Park, pero este enfoque se puede aplicar a nivel regional, capitalizando los atributos geográficos de la costa de Nueva Jersey —los pinares, las bahías internas y las islas de barrera— para crear nuevas atracciones. La estrategia incluye una serie de medidas de infraestructura nueva verde/azul, espacios abiertos y emprendimientos, y un juego de herramientas comunitarias para educar a los propietarios sobre los riesgos locales y las opciones de resiliencia.
Otro prototipo de ciudades costeras regionales, “Resilient Bridgeport” (“Bridgeport resiliente”) de WB, es un marco de resiliencia y propuestas de diseño específicas para la región de Long Island Sound. Una serie de estrategias de diseño y principios de planificación costera, urbana y ribereña integrados proporcionan múltiples líneas de defensa para proteger Bridgeport contra inundaciones y marejadas ciclónicas, estimulando al mismo tiempo la restauración medioambiental, el desarrollo económico y la revitalización barrial, enfocándose en viviendas de interés social.
Land Lines: En suma, ¿cuáles han sido hasta ahora los éxitos más importantes del concurso?
Helen Lochhead: La urgencia del problema y el ritmo acelerado del concurso generó un nivel de intensidad, impulso y energía que dio resultados en muy poco tiempo. Muchas de las soluciones de diseño se caracterizaron por ideas ricas y cuantificadas, análisis profundos para resolver problemas y metodologías ingeniosas. El enfoque no se limitó a la recuperación y reducción de riesgo, como mitigación de inundaciones y tormentas, sino que se extendió también a la resiliencia y sostenibilidad a largo plazo. Todas las propuestas crean múltiples beneficios a nivel social, económico y medioambiental —mejoras relativas a instalaciones, ecología, educación, construcción de capacidad, ahorro de largo plazo, y salud y bienestar comunitarios— y por lo tanto tienden a ser soluciones más holísticas y de superior desempeño.
El impacto a la fecha ha sido catalizador. Como mínimo, RBD ha generado el impulso y proporcionó beneficios importantes a la región al haber iniciado una conversación sobre la resiliencia por diseño. Por supuesto, la medida real del éxito estriba en la implementación, pero hace falta un proceso robusto e innovador para provocar cambios culturales en la práctica. RBD ha dado el ejemplo.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles serán los desafíos más importantes de implementación?
Helen Lochhead: Encontrar el justo medio entre lo visionario y lo pragmático.
El incentivo para los ganadores fue la posibilidad de implementar estos proyectos con subsidios de recuperación de desastres de HUD y otras fuentes de financiamiento públicas y privadas. Por eso, una parte clave de la fase final fue una estrategia de implementación para demostrar factibilidad, el respaldo de los beneficiarios locales de subsidios, la ejecución por fases y entregas de corto plazo que se puedan financiar con los subsidios CDBG-DR de HUD, así como con fuentes de financiamiento para etapas posteriores.
La verdadera oportunidad para HUD ahora es utilizar este proceso y sus proyectos ejemplares para beneficiar otras regiones que corren riesgo a escala nacional.
Because many brownfield sites are located in areas with depressed property values, the cost of remediation and redevelopment can be greater than the expected resale value. These sites, referred to here as low-to-no market value brownfields, are rarely addressed under current policies and programs. Rather, the current practice of many brownfield redevelopment projects is to select only the most marketable sites for remediation and redevelopment, essentially perpetuating the age-old “creaming” process. Private and public developers’ avoidance of the lowest market value parcels typically excludes disadvantaged neighborhoods from programs aimed at redeveloping brownfields and creates the potential for widening existing inequalities between better-off and worse-off neighborhoods.
The Role of Land Banks
In a recently completed project supported by the Lincoln Institute, I examined the barriers to brownfield redevelopment and focused on promising approaches for improving the prospects of the least marketable sites. The specific research goal was to identify land transfer procedures and processes through which land bank authorities and other community land development entities would be willing to receive vacant brownfield property that is tax-delinquent and environmentally contaminated, and then arrange for its remediation and sale.
A local land bank authority is typically a nonprofit entity established by either a city or county to address the problems of urban blight and to promote redevelopment. The original motivation for this project was to seek a solution to the problem of land banks being unwilling to accept some tax-delinquent brownfield properties due to fears of becoming liable for the contamination on these properties. Removing that barrier improves the prospects for promoting productive land redevelopment and reducing property vacancies to enhance a community’s economic development.
Over the course of this project, the nature of the original problem shifted in a positive way when recent federal guidelines clarified that land bank authorities that are part of a local government and acquire brownfield properties involuntarily (e.g., because they are tax-delinquent) are not liable for any contamination. With removal of this legal liability, it became clear that the real problem land banks face in taking on tax-delinquent, low-to-no market value properties is a lack of financial resources to arrange for their subsequent remediation, sale or redevelopment.
For example, the Atlanta/Fulton Country Landbank operates on a model of clearing title on properties to allow for private redevelopment, since it does not have the financial resources to act as the redeveloper itself. The Landbank, like most of the public or quasi-public entities we have identified as engaging in brownfield redevelopment, is promoting a market-based, creaming process of redevelopment. While there is validity in employing such processes, to do so exclusively poses a serious public policy issue. It serves to widen the inequality between the most depressed neighborhoods, where the low-to-no market value properties are most likely to be found, and the neighborhoods experiencing revitalization and brownfield cleanup.
Barriers to Brownfield Redevelopment
Our review of current land bank activity in other cities has revealed that, overall, land bank authorities do not take a pro-active stance on brownfield redevelopment for several reasons: operational limitations, fear of legal liability, and/or lack of funds to cover remediation costs. Our national search yielded only two exceptions: the Cleveland Land Bank and the Louisville/Jefferson County Land Bank Authority. But of these two, only the Louisville/Jefferson County Land Bank has pursued brownfield properties actively and has made the required changes in its by-laws to effectively acquire, remediate and redevelop contaminated properties. The Cleveland Land Bank experience in brownfield redevelopment was with a donated parcel that was suspected of being contaminated.
Operational Limitations
The two major operational requirements that currently deter land banks from entering into brownfield redevelopment are the need to identify an end user for a property before the property can be acquired by the land bank and the limited scope of activity for which the land banks were established originally. For example, the Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard land banks in Massachusetts were established for conservation purposes; they rarely deal with properties that would be considered brownfields, although their organizational structure makes them ideal candidates to do so.
Fear of Legal Liability
As with any owner of contaminated property, land banks are concerned about the legal liability associated with brownfields. Although most state volunteer cleanup programs offer liability exemptions for municipalities, the issue of federal liability still has to be addressed when land banks choose to acquire contaminated properties.
Federal legal liability arises from the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as Superfund, but both federal and state governments have developed programs and guidelines aimed at eliminating that barrier. As a point of clarification, it is not the intent of federal or state programs to release responsible parties from their legal obligation to clean up property that they have contaminated, but, rather, to facilitate brownfield remediation and redevelopment by reducing the fear of unwarranted legal liability.
Landowners who are not responsible for contaminating the property, who did not know, and had no reason to suspect contaminants were present on the property are not liable under CERCLA sections 107(b) and 101(35). This is often referred to as the “innocent landowner defense.” Sections 101(20)(D) and 101(35)(A) protect federal, state and local governments from owner/operator liability if they acquire contaminated property involuntarily as a function of performing their governmental duties, including acquisition due to abandonment, tax delinquency, foreclosure, or through seizure or forfeiture authority. This process was further clarified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 1997 to facilitate the work of state and local brownfield redevelopment programs.
For land bank authorities that are a part of local government, the above-mentioned program should protect the acquisition of contaminated properties through the land bank’s normal operational functions. However, any land bank seeking to acquire contaminated properties should contact its regional EPA office for further legal clarification and assistance with the redevelopment process.
Lack of Funds for Remediation Costs
The often costly remediation process is another significant problem for land banks seeking to redevelop brownfields. Even when the mission of the land bank is to eliminate blight and spur revitalization, both of which are directly related to brownfield reuse, limited budgets prevent interested and willing land banks from acquiring brownfields for remediation and redevelopment. Therefore, while the land bank authority could be helpful in forgiving the property taxes owed on the parcel as an incentive for reuse, the property’s redevelopment potential is still thwarted by its having little-to-no market desirability.
Promising Alternatives for Low-value Sites
When the focus of this research project became the identification of promising approaches for improving the redevelopment prospects of low-to-no market value brownfield sites, we began to examine different kinds of roles for land banks. These included identifying possible ways of raising revenues for land banks and other community development agencies to use in financing the remediation and redevelopment of low-to-no market value sites, and considering potential reuses of such sites, including open space, residential or commercial/industrial uses.
One alternative is found in community land trusts, which generally are private non-profit corporations in both urban and rural areas engaged in social and economic activities, such as to acquire and hold land for affordable housing development. While traditionally they have not focused on conservation issues, their model could be adapted for brownfield redevelopment efforts. One approach for solving the problem of low-to-no market value brownfields is a community land trust modeled after Boston’s Dudley Neighbors, Inc., which received from the city the power of eminent domain to acquire vacant land and buildings in its neighborhood. This strategy provides an alternative mechanism to a citywide land bank for acquiring brownfield properties, and it can be used to target geographic areas in greatest economic decline.
Another promising alternative to the traditional land bank is modeled after Scenic Hudson, an environmental advocacy organization and land trust located in Poughkeepsie, New York. It has an urban initiative to acquire, remediate and develop environmentally friendly reuses for derelict riverfront sites. Among its projects has been the redevelopment of a twelve-acre abandoned industrial waterfront for a public park, the Irvington Waterfront Park. Scenic Hudson has proven that, with cooperation from public and private organizations, land trusts can be effective vehicles for brownfield redevelopment.
The most popular form of land trust is one founded to protect natural areas and farmlands. Such land trusts most often operate at the local or regional level to conserve tracts of land that have ecological, open space, recreational or historic value. If land trusts choose to expand their conservation goals to include urban open space, they could become very helpful partners in public/private projects to create green space and parks from remediated brownfields. The Scenic Hudson land trust model specifically addresses brownfield redevelopment for the stated purpose of stemming greenfield development.
To address the needs for financing the redevelopment of low-to-no market value brownfields, the Louisville Land Bank Authority’s approach is promising. It established a fund that uses the profits from the sale of remediated brownfields to fund future remediation projects. Another possibility for raising funds for land banks is suggested by the two-percent transfer fee the state of Massachusetts authorized for its Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard land banks to purchase open space. The transfer fee idea could be adapted by land banks to create a fund for brownfield remediation.
The research project also sought to identify municipalities that did not have a specific land bank authority, but did have a municipal office or program that dealt with tax-delinquent properties and their redevelopment. Two municipalities found to be engaging in noteworthy and innovative brownfield redevelopment are Kalamazoo, Michigan, and, Emeryville, California. Kalamazoo’s brownfield pilot approach of creating brownfield redevelopment districts emphasizes community development over traditional, market-based economic development goals. The city uses stakeholder groups to design brownfield projects and to plan for redevelopment.
Emeryville has determined, through surveying its property owners and developers, that offering financial assistance for site assessment alone is not effective; it must be backed up by financial assistance for remediation. The city’s brownfield program is based on the principle that “sharing of risks should lead to sharing of rewards.” That is, if a community bears the residual risk for permitting the private sector to conduct risk-based cleanup, a portion of the private sector’s savings on remediation expenses should be shared with the community. The Emeryville approach to brownfield redevelopment also recognizes that smaller sites and projects require proportionately more loans, grants and technical assistance than do larger sites and projects.
Conclusion
At the present time, there is a paucity of programs and strategies to address tax-delinquent, low-to-no market value brownfield properties in marginal urban neighborhoods. If this deficiency persists, the current brownfield redevelopment movement will likely lead to a widening of intraurban inequalities. If municipalities, land bank authorities, and community development organizations will recognize the need for, and move towards, promoting more equitable brownfield redevelopment, the approaches presented in this article hold promise for correcting this deficiency and preventing wider inequalities. Further, such actions could remove potential polution sources and health hazards from the neighborhood, provide much-needed open space, and hold the remediated property until the surrounding area increases in value and the site can be redeveloped through traditional market processes.
References
City of Emeryville, Project Status Report, Emeryville Brownfields Pilot Project. Emeryville, California. November 1998. See also
Rosenberg, Steve. “Working Where the Grass Isn’t Greener: Land Trusts in Urban Areas.” Land Trust Alliance Exchange. Winter: 5-9, 1998.
U.S. EPA. Handbook of Tools for Managing Federal Superfund Liability Risks at Brownfields and Other Sites. Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. November 1998.
Nancey Green Leigh, AICP, is associate professor of city planning in the Graduate City and Regional Planning Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She teaches and conducts research on urban and regional development, industrial restructuring, local economic development planning, and brownfield redevelopment.
In recent years, politicians, lobbyists and voters in the United States have often seemed polarized—or paralyzed—over where to draw the line between private and public rights in land. Common property, defined as group- or community-owned private property, straddles that line.
Most recognized common property is in natural resources, and most recognized commoners are rural people in developing countries. But the concept of commons might also apply to some aspects of urban land in the United States. At the least, common property theory may help U.S. policymakers understand more clearly what is at stake in debates about land rights.
At Voices from the Commons, the June 1996 conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property in Berkeley, California, the Lincoln Institute assembled a dozen researchers and practitioners from the U.S. to discuss these new forms of commons, some of which are described in this article:
Property Rights and Land Use Strategies
Economist Daniel Bromley and legal scholar Carol Rose have proposed independent but roughly compatible schemes for classifying property regimes. Bromley focuses on the form of land rights, while Rose focuses on management strategies:
PROPERTY IN LAND
Bromley Rose
1. private property rights
2. state keep out
3. nonproperty do nothing
4. common property right way
Option 1 on each of these lists is classically private property. The owner’s rights are exclusive, and the owner decides what to do with the land. Option 2 is often associated with public land, in the sense that government owns it and decides what, if anything, can be done and who can do it on the land. Option 3 is the situation often lamented as “the tragedy of the commons,” in which the land is owned by no one, and everyone therefore has both access and incentives to abuse it. Despite the “tragedy of the commons” language, this option is better described as “open access,” “unowned” or “nonproperty.” Option 4 is most often associated with common property, defined as private property owned and managed in a specific “right” way by a group of people.
There is not a perfect correspondence between Rose’s strategies and Bromley’s categories. “Keep out” as a strategy may apply to either private or group-owned property as well as public lands–wherever the main strategy is to restrict access to a defined group, or to no one. The “right way” strategy may apply to “nonproperty” as well as commons–if anyone, and not just members of a specific group, can use the resource simply by following the prescribed rules of use.
Nevertheless, putting Bromley’s and Rose’s lists side-by-side suggests that the distinguishing feature of common property may be assigning land both to a specific group of people and to prescribed uses.
Most urban land in the United States is defined as either private or public property. Yet such land may be more like common property than is usually recognized. Zoning and environmental regulations, for example, do not allow private landowners to do anything and everything with “their” land. Instead, for example, the private owners of land next to a river may not be permitted to install underground oil storage tanks. Those aspects of land use that affect the community’s quality of life or shared environment are managed almost like common property.
What Makes a Successful Commons?
Elinor Ostrom has identified two prerequisites for successful common property regimes: the system must face significant environmental uncertainty, and there must be social stability in the group of owners/users. As Ostrom puts it, commoners must have “shared a past and expect to share a future.” They must be capable not just of “short-term maximization but long-term reflection about joint outcomes.”
Environmental instability gives commoners an incentive to share risks. Social stability allows or forces them to preserve resources for future generations. For example, in many Alpine villages, herds are private property but summer pastures are common property. To avoid overgrazing and free-riding, individual farmers cannot graze more sheep and goats on the summer pastures than they can feed privately over the winter. Access to the summer pastures helps to guarantee all families, whatever their private resources, a chance to earn a living.
Environmental instability and social stability are usually associated with rural places. Rural landowners face the random risks of droughts, floods and plagues, and are known–accurately or inaccurately–for their sense of community.
Do these requirements exist in the urban United States? Perhaps. Environmental instability is easy enough to find, if “environment” is defined as social and economic as well as physical. For many inner-city residents, depopulation, gentrification, or plant and base closings are just as random and devastating as floods or plagues. The social stability of these neighborhoods may be largely involuntary, created by economic and racial barriers to mobility. But some community activists also see human knowledge, social relationships and the land itself in such places as “social capital,” which can be mobilized for development through new forms of ownership.
Pros and Cons of Common Property
Most scholars who have written about common property have seen commoners as political and economic underdogs. A classic example is villagers defending their traditional forest grazing grounds against timber companies or government foresters who want to prohibit grazing to protect tree seedlings or prevent erosion. But commoners may also be prosperous or even highly privileged. For example, many private or gated “common interest” communities attempt to wall in high home values and wall out social and economic diversity.
Commoners are by definition conservative. To preserve their shared resources, they must exclude or expel anyone not willing to follow their land use rules. They must also keep the individuals who make the most productive or profitable use of the common property from taking their share of the proceeds and “cashing out” of the system. Although less comforting than the stereotype of downtrodden commoners who share and share alike, exclusionary commons may still be preferable to either privatization or state control.
But in practice, both these options may speed up resource exhaustion. Private owners may extract the maximum cash value from their land as quickly as possible, rather than preserve resources for their own or anyone else’s future use. “Keep out” signs may not keep local people from extracting resources unsustainably from government lands–in fact, hostility toward a distant government may encourage such behavior.
Economist William Fischel has applied this implicit comparison to U.S. local governments’ primary dependence on land-based (property) taxes. He sees all residents in a jurisdiction as commoners who share an interest in maximizing local land values. Fischel argues that California’s Proposition 13 was exactly the equivalent of turning a village commons into a national park. By restricting local property taxes and giving state government a stronger role in school funding, Proposition 13 transferred “ownership” of the schools from face-to-face communities to a distant government.
From the local taxpayers’ vantage point, this upward transfer of responsibility changed their schools from a local “commons,” with strong norms about the “right way” to finance and use education, into state property, which local residents almost saw as nonproperty. As a result, the quality of California schools was leveled across local jurisdictions, but it was leveled down rather than up. Education was exhausted rather than managed sustainably.
New Commons
A few experimental forms of land ownership and management in the U.S.–including land trusts, neighborhood-managed parks, community-supported agriculture and limited-equity housing cooperatives–explicitly avoid the extremes of private or public property. All these “new” forms of common property fit Carol Rose’s description of option 4: “right way.” All aim to foster or protect specific land uses or groups of users.
These experiments with property rights and responsibilities raise questions that few researchers, either on urban development or on common property, have yet addressed. When and how should local policymakers support experiments with “common property”? For example, should local and state officials help to remove regulatory barriers to group ownership of land, or support new criteria for mortgage financing of group-owned land?
There are also long-standing legal objections to “perpetuities”–trying to tie the hands of future owners about how to use their land. To avoid these objections, land trusts must sometimes seek special legal exemptions, or even change state property laws. The long-term costs and benefits of common property experiments, however, may depend less on the initial distribution of land rights than on shifting local politics and economic conditions. Finding answers to these questions will require close collaboration between researchers and practitioners.
Sidebars
Land Trusts and Limited-Equity Cooperatives
Much of land’s market value depends on whether it contains important natural resources, is located in a thriving community, or has access to services and infrastructure provided by government. The nineteenth-century American philosopher Henry George argued that all these values were created by something other than private action, and should therefore be captured for public use through taxation.
In recent years, land trusts and other groups have experimented with distributing the costs and benefits of land development in much the same way as proposed by Henry George, but through new forms of land ownership rather than taxation. Some of these experiments include limited-equity cooperatives and land trusts such as Boston’s Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. The Dudley Street project has made the land in an inner-city redevelopment area the common property of a nonprofit group, while allowing private ownership of homes and other buildings.
Using similar arguments, groups such as the Connecticut-based Equity Trust have dedicated the “social increment” in property values–the increase in land prices as a neighborhood recovers from blight, or a small town grows–to social purposes. For example, the portion of a home’s sale price that is due to the increase in land values rather than housing construction costs is used to subsidize the purchase price for the next homeowner.
Incidental Open Spaces
Vacant lots, old cemeteries and partially buried urban streams raise a host of questions about managing urban landscapes as commons. Groups seeking to reclaim or use such incidental urban open spaces must often persuade private owners to let them use and help to maintain the land. Some geographers and planners have remapped cities’ neglected, and in practice often “unowned,” open spaces.
Groups such as the Waterways Restoration Institute in Berkeley, California, have built on this research to help low-income city residents uncover and restore forgotten streams and their banks, turning them from neighborhood eyesores into neighborhood treasures. The process increases residents’ appreciation of the interdependence between the city and nature, which they often think of as exclusively suburban or rural.
Housing
For the elderly, single-parent households and many low-income families, detached single-family housing is either inappropriate or priced beyond reach. Yet traditional land use regulations, grounded partly in concerns about property values, favor only single-family housing. Advocates of privatization, in the U.S. as well as in developing or transitioning economies, often argue for converting common property into private ownership to promote reinvestment or increase property values. Organizations serving the homeless, such as San Francisco’s HomeBase, are seeing this argument applied even to traditionally public spaces such as doorways, parks and bus benches. To discourage the homeless from occupying these spaces, some local businesses and neighbors support regulations that convert them into quasi-private property.
Yet in all these settings, some researchers and practitioners have also proposed to manage the housing stock as a whole as a form of common property, both to meet needs not met by single-family detached housing and to encourage neighborhood reinvestment. In the U.S., researchers such as Cornell’s Patricia Pollak have examined the sources of opposition to, and the consequences of, converting some single-family homes into group quarters, accessory apartments and elder cottages. Many home and business owners who oppose these land uses in interviews, expecting them to depress property values, are ironically unaware that their neighborhoods already contain some of this alternative housing.
Converted Military Bases
For each base closed, the federal government offers planning funds to a single organization. That organization must represent the entire local community affected by the base closing, from public to private interests and across local political jurisdictions. Researchers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Bernard Frieden are now studying the way that communities around these bases, which often include very diverse interests, are being forced to create at least temporary “commons” structures to receive federal grants.
Few bases have been all the way through the conversion process yet, so it remains to be seen whether these temporary structures will be converted for permanent land ownership or management. In the Oakland-San Francisco area, however, the Earth Island Institute’s Carl Anthony and others on the East Bay Conversion and Reinvestment Commission consciously considered long-term group or community ownership of some base lands as a way to meet regional needs for housing, open space and jobs.
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Alice E. Ingerson, director of publications at the Lincoln Institute, earned her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, for research on the politics of rural industrialization in Portugal. She moderated the session “Is There an Urban Commons in the U.S.?” at the 1996 Voices from the Commons conference in California.
References
Steve Barton and Carol Silverman, Common Interest Communities: Private Governments and the Public Interest (Berkeley, CA: Institute of Governmental Studies Press, 1994).
Daniel Bromley, Environment and Economy: Property Rights and Public Policy (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1991).
William A. Fischel, Regulatory Takings: Law, Economics, and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Carol M. Rose, “Rethinking Environmental Controls: Management Strategies for Common Resources,” Duke Law Journal 1991, no. 1 (February 1991), pp. 1-38.
Lawrence Susskind is the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and president of the Consensus Building Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Columbia University and received his Masters of City Planning and his Ph.D. in Urban Planning from MIT. As current head of the Environmental Policy Group in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, he teaches courses on international environmental treaty negotiation, public sector dispute resolution and environmental planning. He also holds a joint appointment at Harvard University as visiting professor of Law and director of the Public Disputes Program at the interuniversity Program on Negotiation, which he helped to found. Susskind has published many books and reports and held many visiting appointments and guest lectureships. He is a faculty associate of the Lincoln Institute.
Land Lines: How did you become interested in land use mediation?
Lawrence Susskind: Land use planners are supposed to ensure that the public is involved in all growth management decisions. Yet, most efforts to ensure such public participation lead to protracted political battles. Within the planning profession it is not clear how competing conceptions of appropriate land uses ought to be reconciled. Since the early 1970s I have been trying to introduce the concept of mediation as well as other conflict management tools into the lexicon of professional planners. In my view, in the absence of consensus building strategies of some kind, most communities are doomed to use resources inefficiently, unfairly and unwisely. I got interested in land use mediation as a way of helping the planning profession do a better job.
LL: What types of land use disputes are most difficult to resolve?
LS: Land use disputes that revolve around values or identity are the most difficult to resolve. When values (as opposed to economic interests) are at stake, people often feel that their identity is threatened and in such situations they are rarely open to considering the views of others. For example, proposed changes in land use that would eliminate agriculture as a way of life are not likely to be accepted, even if financial compensation is offered to the landowners involved.
LL: When did you start collaborating with the Lincoln Institute?
LS: My ties to the Lincoln Institute go back a long time. When Arlo Woolery was executive director in the late 1970s, we worked together on a multiyear effort to analyze the impacts of the Property Tax Limitation Law (Proposition 2 1/2) in Massachusetts and on the state’s Growth Policy Development Act. Two decades later, in 1997, I began working with Rosalind Greenstein and later Armando Carbonell, co-chairs of the Institute’s Department of Planning and Development, on a series of research projects that evolved into the training programs on land use mediation that we (LILP and CBI) currently offer together.
LL: Explain a little more about CBI.
LS: The Consensus Building Institute is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1993 to provide consensus building services to clients involved in complex disputes. Building on the “mutual gains” approach to negotiation developed at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, CBI offers conflict management assistance, negotiation training, dispute system design services and evaluative research to public agencies, corporate clients and nongovernmental agencies on five continents.
Our staff now includes a dozen full-time professionals, mostly based in Cambridge, and a network of more than 30 experienced affiliates around the world. We have become known as expert public and environmental dispute mediators and have helped to resolve complex disputes related to the siting of controversial facilities, the setting of public health and safety standards, the formulation and implementation of development plans and projects, and conflicts among racial and ethnic groups.
LL: When did the joint Lincoln and CBI training programs begin?
LS: After several years of careful analysis of land use mediation efforts throughout the United States, CBI developed a curriculum with Lincoln Institute for public officials and planners, and that course has been offered since 1999 at a number of locations. During the first few years we offered only a basic course designed to familiarize participants with assisted negotiation as a method to resolve land use disputes, and then we expanded our offerings to include more detailed skill building for experienced mediators and practitioners. Today we offer a full range of courses at multiple locations around the country.
LL: Who are the primary participants in these introductory and advanced courses?
LS: We are trying to reach three different audiences. First, we have identified and invited local elected and appointed officials who preside over land development disputes and administer land use regulatory systems at the local, regional and state levels. They need to know that there are techniques they can use to help resolve land use disputes before they escalate.
Second, we are trying to attract real estate developers and their attorneys so they know how to participate effectively in dispute resolution efforts when they are offered or suggested by public officials. Third, we have a special interest in attracting professionals of all kinds who want to learn how to be better facilitators, particularly of multiparty land use dialogues that involve complex technical dilemmas.
LL: What are the key goals and lessons of these programs?
LS: The introductory course offers a quick overview of the reasons that land use disputes seem to escalate so quickly and often end up in court. We then introduce the basic principles and tools of dispute resolution and show how they can head off such escalation. They are presented in a very interactive way using gaming and simulations. Participants are given a number of hands-on opportunities to apply what they are learning in hypothetical situations and to bring their own cases before the group. We spend some time talking about techniques for overcoming resistance to the use of mediation and other consensus building strategies.
The advanced course is aimed at experienced mediators or planners and lawyers who think they might want to become mediators. It assumes that the participants have mastered the material presented in the introductory course and moves to a set of dilemmas at the next level, including methods of handling science-intensive disputes through the use of joint fact finding. We also review key theoretical debates, such as managing unequal power relationships in a mediation context.
LL: How do you incorporate both theory and practice into the curriculum?
LS: We expect many of the participants to bring their own stories about land use disputes in which they have been intimately involved. We model in real time how the theory we are teaching can be applied in their cases. We also try to ground all of our theoretical presentations in detailed case accounts of actual practice. Finally, as mentioned above, we use role playing simulations. Students can’t just sit back and take notes. They have to wrestle with the application of the ideas we are presenting.
LL: What other projects have you undertaken with the Institute?
LS: About a year ago, in May 2004, I joined Institute President Jim Brown at a Lincoln-sponsored seminar in Cuba on the problems of restoring and redeveloping Havana Harbor. Energy production and inadequate attention to pollution control have spoiled one of the most beautiful harbors in this hemisphere. Some of the many different committees and groups concerned with economic development, environmental cleanup, restoration of the harbor ecology, historic preservation of Old Havana, and enhanced tourism are seeking advice on strategies for balancing these (sometimes) competing objectives.
CBI is beginning to develop a new joint course with the Lincoln Institute and some of its partners involved in local economic development efforts around the country. We believe conflict resolution tools and negotiation skills can be of great use in neighborhood development disputes, not just growth management conflicts in the suburbs. With Roz Greenstein CBI is creating a new set of training programs for community-based organizations that we plan to offer for the first time next summer.
Another new initiative is a collaborative Web site that highlights recent research by the Lincoln Institute and CBI, as well as timely news articles, background material on consensus building, and links to related programs and publications. One section of the site will provide an interactive platform that will permit hundreds of alumni of our joint courses to remain in touch with each other and share their mediation experiences. This “virtual learning community” will be a valuable resource for public- and private-sector stakeholders involved in land use disputes (even if they haven’t taken the course).
LL: What is the outlook for future joint programs?
LS: I believe our ongoing CBI–Lincoln Institute partnership holds incredible promise. We have conducted an Institute-sponsored study on the use of consensus building to resolve land reform disputes in Latin America and hope to expand on that work, as well as to address land issues facing China and the newly independent states of Eastern Europe. The Institute is already involved in research and training programs in these regions, and land use disputes are at the core of many of the challenges facing national and local policy makers.
The Lincoln Institute is an ideal partner for CBI. We both care about applied research, theory building and sharing new knowledge through educational programs of all kinds. We both measure our success in terms of real improvements on the ground, and we share interests in both domestic and international arenas.
Conservation Leadership Dialogue
On March 1, 2011, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy hosted its tenth annual Conservation Leadership Dialogue with a focus on The Future of Large Landscape Conservation in America. The session was organized by James N. Levitt, a fellow at the Lincoln Institute, with support from Armando Carbonell, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Planning and Urban Form. Held in the Members of Congress Room of the Library of Congress, across the street from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, the meeting took place on the 100th anniversary, to the day, of President William Howard Taft’s signing of the landmark legislation that allowed for creation of national forests in the eastern part of the country. The Weeks Act of 1911, named for Congressman (later Senator) John Wingate Weeks of Massachusetts, changed the nature of cooperative conservation involving citizens active in the public, private, nonprofit, academic, and research sectors in the United States.
In the tradition of previous conservation dialogues, a cross-sectoral, geographically diverse group of conservationists convened to seek a path forward—in concert with the Obama administration’s recently released report on America’s Great Outdoors (Council on Environmental Quality 2011), as well as myriad initiatives at the state and local level. Their goals were to advance collaboration on a large landscape scale among landowners, land managers, and citizens from the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors. They also sought to understand and expand on the example set by large landscape initiatives that are achieving measurable, durable conservation outcomes that will provide benefits for generations to come.
Just as we can now appreciate the revival of the White Mountains of New Hampshire from their barren, moonscape-like conditions around 1900 to their majestic, verdant stature today, twenty-second century Americans ought to be able to appreciate how our foresight in working across property, jurisdictional, and even national boundaries has become a key element in the nation’s multigenerational effort to preserve essential sources of clean water, sustainably produced forest products, and expansive recreational opportunities.
Speakers’ Comments
The conference speakers emphasized the importance of sustained cooperation across many organizations and sectors to achieve lasting results. Proudly recounting how some two million acres of Maine forestland has been conserved over the past dozen years, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, reported that “we have done this by building a partnership among government at all levels, the forest products industry, environmental, forestry and recreation groups, and landowners. Through this partnership, we have been able to maintain or increase productivity for wood and harvest levels, supporting a diverse and robust forest products industry that employs tens of thousands of workers who produce paper, other wood products, and renewable energy. At the same time, we have been able to protect biodiversity, old growth and late succession forest, and public access to recreation, and also increase opportunities for tourism” (Levitt and Chester 2011, 72).
Representatives Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, and Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, each stressed the importance of perseverance in such efforts. Welch remarked on the value of sustaining land conservation budgets during the current round of budget negotiations. He reminded the audience that in 1864 President Abraham Lincoln took his attention off a monumental crisis—the Civil War—in order to sign a bill deeding the area of Yosemite to the state of California for public use and recreation. If Lincoln could create Yosemite in the midst of the Civil War, Welch asserted, we can do our part in a time of tight budgets and economic volatility.
Holt focused his remarks on achieving a longstanding promise to fully fund the federal and stateside portions of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), as well as a number of other legislative initiatives such as the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act. Holt was emphatic in urging the conservation community to respond to the need for urgent action for our own sake, and for the sake of future generations. He reminded the audience of the admonition of President Lyndon Johnson, signer of the original LWCF legislation and the Wilderness Act in 1964: “If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow,” said Johnson, “we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it” (Henry and Armstrong 2004, 123).
It was evident from the discussions that leaders from every sector stand ready to help implement the cooperative conservation aspirations of Collins, Welch, and Holt. Bob Bendick, director of U.S. government relations at The Nature Conservancy, stated that “the overall objective of AGO [America’s Great Outdoors] should be to create and sustain a national network of large areas of restored and conserved land, water, and coastlines around which Americans can build productive and healthy lives” (Levitt and Chester 2011, 74). Accordingly, Bendick shared with the assembled group his personal dream that someday his young granddaughters might, as adults, look out from the arch at the gateway to Yellowstone National Park and note that “all across America, 400 million people have been able to arrange themselves and their activities across this remarkable country in a way that reconciles their lives with the power, grace, beauty and productivity of the land and water that ultimately sustain us all” (Levitt and Chester 2011, 75).
Will Shafroth, acting assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks of the U.S. Department of Interior, and Harris Sherman, undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, shared their frank assessments of the current situation. Shafroth described the hard work and extensive comments that helped shape the America’s Great Outdoors report. While this work serves as a good foundation for the effort ahead, Shafroth noted that it takes considerable creativity and proactive thinking to sustain conservation momentum in these times of sharp budgetary constraints.
Sherman added that the whole idea of landscape-scale conservation implies that we need to move from performing random acts of conservation to more comprehensive and collaborative large-scale initiatives that engage many agencies and ownership types. Of particular importance, he noted, will be the outcome of the debate on the 2012 Farm Bill, because its conservation provisions will be critically important to the success of large-scale conservation efforts.
The enthusiasm for large landscape conservation on the part of speakers from large public and nonprofit organizations was strongly reinforced by Jim Stone, a private landowner and ranch operator in Montana’s Blackfoot Valley. Stone helped to start the Blackfoot Challenge, a grassroots organization that has yielded impressive, measurable results over the last three decades using a landscape-scale approach.
Stone’s colleague Jamie Williams of The Nature Conservancy explained that the Blackfoot Challenge has achieved remarkable success over the years because it has taken the time to engage so many landowners and partners in consensus-based approaches to conservation. Initial small successes were critical to building the foundation of trust that led to larger successes later (Williams 2011). In the area of stream restoration alone, the Blackfoot Challenge has helped to engage more than 200 landowners in some 680 projects involving 42 streams and 600 stream-miles that have contributed directly to an 800 percent increase in fish populations in the 1.5 million acre valley. Stone is emphatic in saying that, with the right people in the right places, what has been done in the Blackfoot region could be done across the nation.
Complementing the program was a panel of researchers and academic officials representing universities, colleges, and research institutions that are helping to catalyze large landscape initiatives. Matthew McKinney of the University of Montana moderated a dialogue with David Foster of Harvard Forest and Harvard University, Perry Brown of the University of Montana, and Karl Flessa of the University of Arizona. They explored how institutions, within their own walls and beyond, can use their analytic and convening capacities to advance initiatives with extensive impacts.
Perry Brown pointed out that those universities that will play a role in real-world conservation initiatives will not be insular, but rather will cherish their relationships with nonacademic partners such as Indian tribes, state and federal government agencies, and large national and small local nonprofits. David Foster reinforced that idea by describing the Harvard Forest’s outreach efforts to develop and disseminate its recent report on Wildlands and Woodlands New England (Foster et al. 2009).
Large Landscape Cases
There are many exemplary cases of on-the-ground progress in large landscape conservation across the country from Maine to Montana and from Southern Arizona to Northern Florida. One of the longest operating and most important cases is in the ACE Basin in South Carolina’s celebrated Lowcountry. The ACE Basin, comprised of some 350,000 acres that drain into the Ashepoo, Combahee, and South Edisto Rivers between Charleston and Beaufort, is one of the largest undeveloped estuaries along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard (figure 1).
In the late 1980s, a group of public, private, and nonprofit organizations banded together to form a partnership that would protect the remarkable scenic, wildlife, and water resources in the region. Among members of the ACE Basin Partnership are federal agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; state agencies including the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources; national nonprofits including The Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited; local nonprofits including the Coastal Conservation League and the Lowcountry Open Land Trust; philanthropic organizations and individuals including the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation; and private interests such as MeadWestvaco Corporation.
Partnership members have conserved more than 134,000 acres, covering a contiguous core in the heart of the ACE Basin that stitches together easements on private land, a National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina Wildlife Management Areas, and a Charleston County natural and historical interpretive center, among other properties.
As a large landscape initiative, the ACE Basin truly stands out from other efforts. Mark Robertson, the executive director of The Nature Conservancy in South Carolina, has noted that the effort “set a standard of how to get conservation done on a large scale using collaboration between private landowners, conservation groups and government agencies.” Asked about the significance of the progress in the ACE Basin to date, Dana Beach, director of the Coastal Conservation League, is emphatic: “It’s real importance is that it has given many people for the first time hope that a place of great importance is not inevitably going to be developed” (Holleman 2008).
Next Steps
The leadership dialogue concluded with general agreement that there is a great deal of work to be done, as well as an historic opportunity to expand on initial progress in the field of large landscape conservation. The discussion of next steps was organized to focus on four types of initiatives.
Policy Dialogues
There is a need for ongoing policy dialogue, both among conservationists in the public, private, nonprofit and academic sectors and between the conservation community and local, state and federal decision makers, regarding the very timely opportunities to realize landscape-scale conservation initiatives across the nation. The dialogue should celebrate existing success stories about both cultural and nature-oriented properties (both being highly valued by the public), consider ongoing regional conservation efforts, and envision new ones.
In the political sphere, these dialogues should connect with conservation caucuses at multiple layers of government (local, county, state, federal, and international). In nonprofit and academic contexts, the dialogue should reach across disciplines and institutional boundaries. Such intersectoral, interdisciplinary discussions are most likely to come up with creative solutions and novel ideas. While the dialogues may be able to take advantage of the socially neutral nature of universities as conveners, they nevertheless need to be responsive to the practical, on-the-ground issues of vital concern to field practitioners and landowners.
Research
Another immediate need is to build on existing maps and inventories (e.g., the Regional Plan Association’s Northeast Landscape Partnership database) to offer a more comprehensive picture of existing public, private, and nonprofit initiatives. A more comprehensive overview of nationwide efforts should be of particular use to groups and networks working to advance the practice of large landscape conservation, including the Large Landscape Practitioners Network, a program of the Lincoln Institute, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs).
Such research efforts should be more regionally relevant and cost-effective if they involve cooperation among a wide assemblage of public and private organizations. They might also serve to augment environmental education initiatives that already are spread thin.
Additional research is also needed to measure the impacts, performance over time, and conservation outcomes of landscape-scale initiatives, and to identify the key factors of success for initiatives that are able to show significant measureable results. Of particular importance is research that is able to identify where, when, and how certain efforts are able to yield measurably improved ecosystem services, such as improved water quality, increased wildlife populations, and enhanced sustainable production of forest products.
Networking
A number of large landscape networks have been created recently or are now emerging, including the Large Landscape Practitioners Network and the LCCs mentioned above. As they evolve, the networks are likely to nest within one another at larger and larger geographic scales, but they will also need to focus on sharing knowledge and building capacity at the local level to yield lasting results. Notwithstanding the need to be grounded in local realities, the networks have an opportunity to reach out to international partners with lessons to share. Within their own territories, large landscape conservation networks need to be linked to diverse constituencies, including philanthropists interested in landscape-scale conservation, university faculty and students, a range of public agencies, and, most importantly, property owners and land managers.
Demonstration and Implementation
Given what are expected to be very tight constraints on new conservation programs at the federal, state, and local levels over the next few years, participants focused much of their attention on the creative use of existing budgets for landscape-scale conservation purposes. One noted the significant role that is already being played by the Department of Defense to conserve (and limit development on) lands adjacent to active military reservations. Such programs are now being used effectively to protect habitats and working lands from development and to limit landscape fragmentation. They also may be used in the future to address water supply protection issues. Another participant noted the potential significance of state and federal transportation budgets that could be used to mitigate the disruptive impact of new roads and highways.
Particularly enthusiastic support came from several participants for public-private-nonprofit partnerships that have a proven track record for protecting and enhancing locally valued natural and cultural resources to form the backbone for a regional green infrastructure. Examples include Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Chattahoochee/Apalachicola basin in Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida; the Crown of the Continent in Montana, Alberta, and British Columbia; and the New Jersey Highlands.
Additional opportunities for funding large landscape conservation initiatives include state incentives for private land protection that can be used to match selected federal programs (e.g., the matching monies required by funds provided by the North American Wetlands Conservation Act); community forest programs that are now gaining momentum around the nation; selected opportunities for foundation Program-Related Investments (PRIs); and emerging ecosystem service markets assisted by federal policy and public-private partnerships, including mitigation banking and statewide markets for carbon credits, such as those in California.
Conclusion
Notwithstanding evident federal budget constraints, myriad opportunities are available to pursue conservation projects that are expansive in scale, extensive in scope, able to achieve measureable conservation outcomes, and enduring. The conference participants themselves offered clear evidence that the concept of large landscape conservation has spread to initiatives across the continent. These individuals and their colleagues at home and abroad are now and will continue to be at the forefront of initiatives that protect nature in the context of human values at a scale commensurate with the conservation challenges they face.
About the Author
James N. Levitt is a fellow in the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University.
References:
Council on Environmental Quality. 2011. America’s great outdoors: A promise to future generations. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. http://americasgreatoutdoors.gov/report
Foster, D., D. Kittredge, B. Donahue, K. Fallon Lambert, M. Hunter, L. Irland, B. Hall, D. Orwig, A. Ellison, E. Colburn, A. D’Amato, and C. Cogbill. 2009. Wildlands and woodlands: A vision for New England. Harvard Forest Paper 32. Petersham, MA: Harvard Forest.
Henry, Mark, and Leslie Armstrong. 2004. Mapping the future of America’s national parks: Stewardship through geographic information systems. Redlands, CA: ESRI.
Holleman, Joey. 2008. Ace Basin: Protected forever. The State, Local/Metro Section, November 10. http://www.thestate.com/2008/11/10/584599/ace-basin-protected-forever.html#ixzz1W3yQd7KP
Levitt, James N., and Charles N. Chester. 2011. The future of large landscape conservation in America. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/1916_The-Future-of-Large-Landscape-Conservation-in-America
Williams, Jamie. 2011. Scaling up conservation for large landscapes. Land Lines 23(3): 8–13. https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1923_1246_LLA_071103.pdf.
Related Resources
Levitt, James N., ed. 2005. From Walden to Wall Street:Frontiers of conservation finance. Washington, DC: Island Press and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
———. 2010. Conservation Capital in the Americas: Exemplary Conservation Finance Initiatives. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, in collaboration with Island Press, the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.
McKinney Matthew J., and Shawn Johnson. 2009. Working across boundaries: People, nature, and regions. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
McKinney, Matthew J., Lynn Scarlett, and Daniel Kemmis. 2010. Large landscape conservation: A strategic framework for policy and action. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.