It should be pointed out that conservation and reserves are not enough. We have got to be restoring land with native plants, in particular land in urban environments.
Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
101–110 of 156 posts
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#102A cautionary tale from personal experience: My parents retired to a rural area and wanted to ensure that their area would remain a healthy old growth forest. They have been actively involved in a land trust that has successfully created large, continuous corridors throughout the area. One of their contributions was a continuous strip of about 20 acres. Their community has stitched these together to create wonderful cycling/walking paths through the woods, linking up different areas.
At the start of the pandemic, a developer bought up a large (~200 acre) tract neighboring them and the corridor. They immediately clearcut the whole thing, and are building hundreds of tract houses, cheek by jowl, and have consequently forced the local government to build additional roads. Guess the big selling point they use in their website and listings? 'Neighbors a wilderness trust with extensive woodland paths.'
Knowing all of this, I'm not sure whether I'd still go through with the land trust purchases or not. They couldn't have afforded the 200 acre parcel, and who knows if the developer would have bought the other 50 acres. All I can say is that it is dispiriting to see people doing the right thing and having a net increase in clearcutting at their doorstep.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
TL;DR: Sometimes! So its a little more complex and a little bit more nuanced. The mechanism is part of the land reform policy and called the ‘Community Right To Buy’. Ahead of time, a community body (which has a legal definition) can register an interest in buying qualifying land. All of these notes of interest are available from the registers of scotland and has to be renewed regularly/etc. At the point that a lando…
So if I want to give land to a friend, I can be forced to sell it if one of these groups have shown interest? That sounds very strange
At a high level, yes.
However there are a lot of checks and balances to it. Not all land falls under the criteria and there's a lot of requirements around forming a group and the proposed use of the land ( such as being geographically local /etc ).
When I last looked into it, I think there'd only been 2 occurrences of the right to buy happening over a 4 year period.
Which does raise the question on 'Does the act achieve the goals it was setout to achieve' or is it mainly political posturing.
That's not something I can really comment on (nor would I want to).
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is using property to profit private business "for public use"? > "[the decision eliminates] any distinction between private and public use of property—and thereby effectively delete[s] the words 'for public use' from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment." > "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a…
> How is using property to profit private business “for public use”? Because, as the Supreme Court has consistently held since interpreting the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause to apply the 5th Amendment’s protections against the states in the first place (without which, the issue would be moot since absent such application there would be no federal constraint at all) use in which the state action is pursuing a le…
[deleted]
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#105The big problem, at least in the US, is that we don't build things anymore. The homeless camp 2 blocks from me is one glaring proof. The lack of power generation, power transmission, and pretty much any infrastructure you can think of is another. I agree that there is some conflict of interest between humans and untouched nature, and I am firmly on the side of us, humanity! What side are you on?
We do build things. I'm in SF where we have recently replaced the Bay Bridge, dug a big ol' tunnel, put up skyscrapers and luxury condos, etc. What we don't do is build housing. (A lot of people blame NIMBYism for that but the situation is complex.) > The lack of power generation, power transmission, and pretty much any infrastructure you can think of is another. A friend of mine drives a Tesla, he says charging stat…
You're probably giving a more thoughtful answer than my rant deserved :)
What I was trying to express was said better by Marc Andreessen "It’s Time to Build" manifesto. Read that instead: https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/
The Bay Bridge only got built because the old one proved seismically unsafe, and that took 24 years, with a 2500% cost overrun, according to Wikipedia. No other bridges will be build in the SF bay, despite huge needs.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#106There's one aspect of this that the article doesn't note, which is enforcement. On a small scale, this sort of thing can work (modulo the criticisms the post highlights). On massive scales... It's not just the cost of land, it's the cost of paying people to patrol that land to prevent poaching.
Exactly, I was going to mention this. Sometimes in large areas, like the Amazon, it is extremely difficult to monitor and secure these lands. Regardless if you have satellites and everything watching it. It is even more complex to safely reach the areas to stop someone from doing unlawful things.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#107In the United States, the American Prairie Reserve [1] is doing something along these lines in the area around the Wyoming/Montana border. In particular, their purchases (which often include private ranches that come up for sale) focus on building those corridors between existing public lands, effectively creating much larger continuous ecosystems that this article mentioned. It's probably easier to do in the United…
It would be tricky in more densely populated areas, thanks to the ruling in Kelo vs. City of New London . "The local government thinks they'll get more economic activity from someone else" is a valid reason to exercise eminent domain powers for some reason. It works in more rural places because, frankly, it's generally not worth the trouble of litigation there.
As someone who lives in a county with National Forests, this is a huge issue. Originally the deal was the Feds could have national forests, but make up for missing property tax/economic activity with logging grants, mineral right grants, and paying a portion of the money the feds made from that to the local community. Then for environmental reasons the feds just stopped allowing anything on the land and paying what they promised AND killed all those local community jobs. Double whammy. Personally I think the Feds should have to sell all the national forests now since they did not keep to the promises they made, or at least renegotiate with the local community. But unlike when these deals were made, the USA is now a Federal system without any state rights power, so we just try to keep the roof from leaking on our school and vote to increase our own taxes to educate kids. Meanwhile people talk trash about rundown rural communities and all the unemployed millworkers/miners that turned to drugs when they lost their job opportunities and ignore that the entire country broke it's promise to those people. Imagine the weight of the country choosing to break a promise and ruin you while making fun of your rundown ignorant small town po-dunk life, an ant crushed with no-power to do a thing about it. Lumber is through the roof, yet the mills are all closing. Because the country hates you, your way of life, and TOOK all of the land and locked it up even though it promised not to do that when it took the land.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate this process. It effectively gives someone else rights over the current owners land. The person becomes a tenet farmer in effect and is responsible for the taxes and upkeep while under the control of the organization. And the land is not accessible to the public. It's much better for the land to be organization-owned and open to public use. Just my opinion.
I volunteer with a regional land trust, and I think you're maybe misunderstanding the conservation easement process, or at least it's typical application. The typical process is: Private Landowner Decides they want to conserve their land. They work with a Land Trust to define, and put in place the restrictions of that conservation easement. Those typically restrict development (though the landowner can in some cases…
Thanks for the detailed information. I am curious here: After an easement is added to the property, who has the ability to cancel the easement? Or is an easement non-removable forever?
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, TIL the Missouri river flows through Montana (from the map on the American Prairie site). It's not clear from a cursory glance at the site whether American Prairie is giving the land to the public, or whether they retain ownership and are simply allowing public access. I would think giving it to some federal parks/wildlife agency would come with stronger protections than an NGO could provide. I'm also curious if…
> I would think giving it to some federal parks/wildlife agency would come with stronger protections than an NGO could provide. This largely depends on whether an NGO is more trustworthy than the party in control of the federal government when it comes to conservation. Half the time, the answer seems to be "yes".
To be clear, my intended implication wasn't "NGOs are untrustworthy", but rather that "the federal government is a lot more likely to be around in 50 years than an NGO". I was also assuming that donating the lands to a federal program implied that the federal government couldn't just turn around and sell the land a few years later, although that might be naive on my part.
Re: Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?
#110The super wealthy in the US sometimes pull off major conservation easements.
Roxanne Quimby, of Burt's Bees fame, slowly purchased land in Maine over many years then donated an entire National Monument.[0] She wasn't the first to do this, though. JD Rockefeller pulled the same trick almost a century prior by donating a National Park in Wyoming.[1]
[0]https://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/transforming-kata... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/12/04...