services and temper the tendency to displace ecologically undesirable activities
elsewhere.
Alternatively, establishing a firm frontier implied by an effective conserva-
tion concession may spur intensification on remaining land under production,
with potentially harmful environmental consequences. In an agroforestry con-
text, a conservation concession may, for example, induce a farmer to remove
shade trees or apply more agrochemicals on production plots when prevented
from expanding to new areas. In the Bahian scenario described earlier, the
result would be greater protection for forest fragments but reduced connectiv-
ity between them, with ambiguous net benefits to biodiversity. This potential
dynamic illustrates that interactions between sustainable agroforestry pro-
grams and conservation concessions must be carefully managed to ensure
desirable outcomes. Stakeholder analysis, agreement design, and compensa-
tion negotiation must be structured within a long-term, systemwide perspec-
tive, with the boundaries of the system defined broadly enough to capture the
full intertemporal and spatial impacts of both agroforestry efforts and conser-
vation concessions.
Another concern arises when ownership is easily established over new for-
est areas, as in large stretches of the Amazon. When a precedent of paying pri-
vate landowners for conservation services is set, an incentive may arise to claim
areas simply for the sake of leveraging them as potential conservation conces-
sions. However, because the areas in question did not attract ownership claims
or investment in the absence of conservation payments, the implication is that
the opportunity cost of conserving them would be very low. Thus, by clarify-
ing ownership regimes and compensating new owners for the opportunity cost
of conservation, this dynamic could facilitate long-term, cost-effective protec-
tion of large areas previously inaccessible because of ill-defined tenure. More
importantly, such a process might compel governments to consider the bene-
fits of negotiating long-term conservation concessions over such areas.
The conservation concession approach is particularly suitable for extensive
areas controlled by a single entity, such as the government or large landown-
ers. For areas not under government or private ownership, the practicability of
the approach depends on the ownership structure that is in place. Agroforestry
systems operate under a variety of ownership regimes, ranging from small, pri-
vately owned plots to large plantations to communal land distributed by tra-
ditional chiefs. The complexity of tenure arrangements itself influences the
identification of stakeholders and the relationships between them, involving
local, regional, and national governments, traditional authorities, landowners,
land renters, sharecroppers, hired labor, farmer organizations, and others. This
feature of agroforestry systems raises two factors to consider with respect to the
conservation concession approach. First, to achieve meaningful conservation
outcomes, a critical mass (in the number of participants and spatial configu-
ration of plots) typically is needed for an effective corridor or buffer zone.
- Achieving Biodiversity Conservation Using Conservation Concessions 147