Doctoral Dissertation Research: Land Trusts, Conservation Easements, and the Growth of Private Land Protection in the United States

博士论文研究：土地信托、保护地役权和美国私人土地保护的发展

• 批准号: 1458913
• 负责人: James McCarthy
• 金额: $ 1.54万
• 依托单位: Clark University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-03-01 至 2017-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1458913&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Land; Trusts

This doctoral dissertation research project will focus on the ways that the governance, ownership, and financing of protected areas have changed within the United States since the late 1970s as well as the impact of those changes. Special emphasis will be placed on the growing use of legal agreements called conservation easements negotiated with private landowners on private property, often by non-profit conservation land trusts. The project will contribute new knowledge about the ways that conservation easements by land trust groups have altered the geographies and social outcomes of conservation efforts. It will provide new information about the geographic dimensions of such activity, and it will enhance basic understanding about evolving forms of environmental governance and changing forms of property rights. Because the doctoral student will work closely with a wide range of land trust organizations across the country as well as umbrella groups that help guide land trust policy making, project findings will have direct utility by groups and others actively using this new form of governance to protect environmental quality and private property rights. Because land trust-related conservation easements have been adopted in many other nations, project findings should contribute new insights regarding the recent emergence of large-scale privatized conservation around the globe as well as other novel forms of the commodification of nature. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.Non-profit conservation land trusts now protect more than 47 million acres in the U.S., an area that is more than twice the combined acreage of all the national parks in the lower 48 states. This total increased by 10 million acres between 2005 and 2010. The core questions on which the project will focus are (1) how land trusts emerged as major actors in land conservation in the United States over the past three decades and (2) what were the consequences of land-trust activity for property relations, governance, and the financing of conservation. The doctoral student will employ a three-part qualitative methodology consisting of expert interviews; a national-scale survey of U.S.-based land trust groups; extended case studies in San Francisco, California; Denver, Colorado; and Grand Lake Stream, Maine. Among key issues to be examined through the case studies are increases in the frequency of legal challenges to the perpetuity of land trust lands that constitute new risks to this form of conservation; reliance on federal and state tax credits to incentivize conservation, which means that government agencies not charged with oversight of the environment or natural resources like the Internal Revenue Service have come to play a significant role in defining, governing, and regulating nature; and the increasing involvement of institutional investors and private equity firms in collaborations with land trusts, which has led to new approaches to the commodification of conservation landscapes and new metrics for measuring success.

该博士学位论文研究项目将集中于自1970年代后期以来美国在美国的治理，所有权和融资以及这些变化的影响的方式。 通常将特别重点放在使用私人财产上与私人土地所有者在私有财产上谈判的法律协议的日益增长的使用，通常是非营利性保护土地信托。 该项目将有助于有关土地信托集团保护地役权的方式的新知识，从而改变了保护工作的地理和社会成果。 它将提供有关此类活动的地理维度的新信息，并将增强有关环境治理和不断变化的财产权形式不断发展的基本理解。 由于博士生将与全国各地的广泛土地信托组织以及有助于指导土地信托政策制定的伞形组织紧密合作，因此项目发现将由团体和其他人积极使用这种新形式的治理来保护环境质量和私有财产权。 由于许多其他国家已经采用了与土地信任相关的保护地役权，因此项目发现应就全球大规模私有化保护以及其他自然商品化的其他新型形式产生新的见解。 作为博士学位论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，以使有前途的学生能够建立强大的独立研究职业。现在，美国保护土地信托基金会（Nornon-Profit Conservation Land Trusts）在美国保护超过4700万英亩，该地区是该地区的两倍以上，是低48个州所有国家公园的共同土地。 在2005年至2010年之间，这一总数增加了1000万英亩。该项目将重点的核心问题是（1）在过去的三十年中，土地信托如何成为美国土地保护领域的主要参与者，以及（2）土地信托活动对房地产关系，治理和保护融资的影响。 博士生将采用由专家访谈组成的三部分定性方法；一项针对美国土地信托集团的国家规模调查；加利福尼亚州旧金山的扩展案例研究；科罗拉多州丹佛；和缅因州的大湖溪。 在案例研究中要研究的关键问题之一是，法律挑战的频率增加了土地信托土地的永久性，这些土地构成了这种形式的保护形式；依靠联邦和州税收抵免来激励保护，这意味着不负责监督环境或自然资源（例如国税局）的政府机构在定义，管理和监管性质方面发挥了重要作用；机构投资者和私募股权公司与土地信托的合作越来越多，这为保护景观商品化和新指标提供了新的方法，以衡量成功。