Private land, public benefits: Conservation covenants and easements aiding global biodiversity targets

Conservation covenants are an innovative legal mechanism that modify private property rights to promote biodiversity benefits. Their use is increasing as governments encourage private land conservation to help meet national and global biodiversity goals, such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. However, existing use of covenants from a variety of countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the United States, highlights some limitations. There is limited explicit accommodation of changing circumstances such as climate impacts; insufficient support to landowners and a need for increased environmental monitoring and compliance oversight. Several actions could be taken to ameliorate these and other law-related impediments, including improved reciprocity between parties to covenants, designing covenants with greater flexibility, and improving integrity mechanisms.