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.

本博士论文研究项目将重点关注 20 世纪 70 年代末以来美国境内保护区的治理、所有权和融资方式的变化以及这些变化的影响。 将特别强调越来越多地使用称为保护地役权的法律协议，这些协议通常是由非营利性保护土地信托机构与私人土地所有者就私有财产进行谈判。 该项目将提供关于土地信托团体的保护地役权如何改变保护工作的地理和社会成果的新知识。 它将提供有关此类活动的地理范围的新信息，并将增强对不断演变的环境治理形式和不断变化的产权形式的基本理解。 由于博士生将与全国范围内的各种土地信托组织以及帮助指导土地信托政策制定的伞式团体密切合作，因此项目研究结果将对积极使用这种新治理形式来保护土地的团体和其他人产生直接效用。环境质量和私有产权。 由于与土地信托相关的保护地役权已在许多其他国家采用，项目研究结果应该为全球最近出现的大规模私有化保护以及自然商品化的其他新形式提供新的见解。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将为有前途的学生建立强大的独立研究生涯提供支持。非营利性保护土地信托目前保护美国超过 4700 万英亩的土地，这一面积超过是美国本土 48 个州所有国家公园总面积的两倍。 2005 年至 2010 年间，这一总量增加了 1000 万英亩。该项目将关注的核心问题是 (1) 过去三十年来，土地信托如何成为美国土地保护的主要参与者，以及 (2)土地信托活动对财产关系、治理和保护融资的影响。 博士生将采用由三部分组成的定性方法，包括专家访谈；对美国土地信托团体进行的全国范围的调查；加利福尼亚州旧金山的扩展案例研究；科罗拉多州丹佛市；和缅因州格兰德湖溪。 通过案例研究审查的关键问题包括对土地信托土地永久性的法律挑战的频率增加，这对这种形式的保护构成了新的风险；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的政府机构（例如国税局）在定义、治理和监管自然方面发挥着重要作用；机构投资者和私募股权公司越来越多地参与与土地信托的合作，这催生了保护景观商品化的新方法和衡量成功的新指标。