Abstract

In Australia, and across the world, there is growing interest in protecting biodiversity on privately tenured rural land. New design frameworks and new funding models, including market-driven opportunities, are being actively pursued by Australian governments at all levels. Recent critiques have exposed a number of design flaws in some of these programs. This makes it timely to consider alternative models, both national and international, with a view to ascertaining what lessons, if any, Australia can learn from these examples. In pursuit of this objective, this article describes and comments on some alternative models for securing land for biodiversity conservation on privately tenured rural land in Australia and overseas. We survey three different schemes in Australia and briefly describe a variety of schemes in five overseas jurisdictions. These schemes were selected because they include some approaches that are different from those in the Australian case studies. Overall, we found that whilst Australia has made some strides towards expanding the range and type of programs available to secure biodiversity conservation on privately held rural land, there are more options and some promising approaches with which Australia is yet to engage. Overseas jurisdictions can provide valuable insights and additional ideas.