Management Agreements with Landowners as a Tool for Nature Conservation
Summary
Ten years ago, the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic (NCA CR) began to conclude agreements on management through public contracts, setting up both management measures to be implemented and providing landowners or tenants with a subsidy/subvention. Consequently this practice has been applied step-by-step, also by other State Nature Conservancy authorities, particularly Regional Offices.
At present the agreements on management are one of the principal and commonly used tools in cooperation with land managers. The NCA CR is currently taking active steps to further expand the type of cooperation with landowners, our most important partners in practical nature conservation.
The highest type of agreement with the landowner is the so-called comprehensive management agreement. Its aim is to formulate clear rules and conditions for management by the owner or user. These are long-term agreements, usually for five to ten years.
Classifications
Region
Scale of implementation
Ecosystem
Theme
Other theme
Challenges
Sustainable development goals
Aichi targets
Challenges
The rules for concluding agreements were established step-by-step. When setting up the process, the NCA CR used the relevant interpretation of the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic; however, in order to ensure compliance with the budgetary rules, they had to build the entire system from scratch. The first step was to distinguish between commonly assigned activities in nature conservation and landscape protection and to determine the usual costs for their implementation. Today, the result is a unified code lists of activities in nature conservation and landscape protection linked to costs of common measures and consequently for planning and documenting the interventions having been made in nature and the landscape. Without the implementation of these demanding steps, the concluding public contracts (in particular the provision of financial contributions for the implementation of measures) would be difficult and complicated, with the risk of inefficient use of public funds.
Beneficiaries
There is a higher degree of understanding; firstly by the land manager, about the needs to ensure the existence of objects of protection, and secondly by the State Nature Conservancy authority, about the land manager’s abilities.
Building blocks
How do the building blocks interact?
Without the implementation of these demanding steps, the concluding public contracts (in particular the provision of financial contributions for the implementation of measures) would be difficult and complicated, with the risk of inefficient use of public funds. The standardization of management activities also makes it possible to develop data support tools, which further facilitates the planning and signing agreements and their documentation in particular.
Impacts
Public contracts with landowners and land users have become a commonly used form for agreement on practical measures in Specially Protected Areas, as well as providing a payment for their implementation. Unfortunately, multi-annual agreements have been less common so far, although they save time and effort on administrative steps for both the NCA CR and the land manager.
At present, the NCA CR concludes and signs over 1,100 agreements per year and around one hundred agreements are signed as long-term (up to ten years).
Management agreements arise from the mutual communication of the owner (user) of the land and the State Nature Conservancy authority. By discussing them, and subsequently signing them, a long-lasting commitment has been fulfilled which is repeated in a number of strategic documents on nature conservation and landscape protection, namely to implement nature conservation and landscape protection with the participation of landowners and land managers. Nature conservation is becoming clearer, more understandable, and predictable for partners. The comprehensive and long-term agreements on management measures in Specially Protected Areas have proved successful and therefore, it is necessary to develop this instrument further.
Pictures
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