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Benefits of the Ballot Box for Species Conservation

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Benefits of the Ballot Box for Species Conservation 1 Benefits of the Ballot Box for 2 Species Conservation 3 4 Kailin Kroetz1, James N. Sanchirico2, Paul R. Armsworth3, H. Spencer Banzhaf4 5 1 Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, One Shields 6 Avenue, Davis, CA 95616 ; email: [email protected] 7 2 Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, 8 Davis, CA 95616 and University Fellow, Resources for the Future; email: [email protected]; 9 phone: (530) 754-9883 10 3 Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996; email: 11 [email protected] 12 4 Department of Economics, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, 14 13 Marietta Street, NW, Atlanta, GA 30303, and Research Associate at the NBER, and a Senior Research 14 Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC); email: [email protected] 15 16 Running title: Ballot Box Conservation 17 Keywords: Biodiversity, conservation, conservation movement, endangered species, integer 18 programming, open space, referenda, reserve site selection 19 20 Type of article: Essay 21 Manuscript length: Abstract (143 words), Body (5,000), References (43), Figures (4), Tables (1) 22 Corresponding author: 23 James N. Sanchirico 24 Department of Environmental Science and Policy 25 University of California, Davis 26 One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616 27 Telephone: (530) 754-9883 Email: [email protected] 28 29 Author Contributions: K.K, J.N.S., P.R.A., and H.S.B. designed research, analyzed results, 30 and wrote the paper. 31 32 The authors declare no conflict of interest. 1 33 Benefits of the Ballot Box for 34 Species Conservation 35 36 Kailin Kroetz, James N. Sanchirico, Paul R. Armsworth, H. Spencer Banzhaf 37 38 Abstract 39 40 Recent estimates reaffirm that conservation funds are insufficient to meet biodiversity 41 conservation goals. Organizations focused on biodiversity conservation therefore need to 42 capitalize on investments that societies make in environmental protection that provide ancillary 43 benefits to biodiversity. Here, we undertake the first assessment of the potential ancillary 44 benefits from the ballot box in the United States, where citizens vote on referenda to conserve 45 lands for reasons that may not include biodiversity directly but that indirectly might enhance 46 biodiversity conservation. Our results suggest that referenda occur in counties with significantly 47 greater biodiversity than counties chosen at random. We also demonstrate that large potential 48 gains for conservation are possible if the past and likely future outcomes of these ballot box 49 measures are directly incorporated into national-scale conservation planning efforts. The possible 50 synergies between ballot box measures and other biodiversity conservation efforts offer an 51 under-utilized resource for supporting conservation. 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 2 59 Introduction 60 61 Global conservation funding needs to at least double to meet the 2020 biodiversity commitments 62 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (McCarthy et al. 2012). The shortfall of funding 63 heightens the importance of finding additional funding sources to support conservation. It also 64 means that what resources are available need to be deployed efficiently and has led to calls for 65 improving the coordination and planning of conservation organizations in a bid to capture 66 potential efficiency gains (Mace et al. 2000; Kark et al. 2009). The idealized coordinated efforts 67 that some authors have called for would prioritize sites that protect biodiversity at low cost 68 (Margules & Pressey 2000; Naidoo et al. 2006; Wilson et al. 2009), engage in planning that 69 operates at a number of scales (Erasmus et al. 1999; Meretsky et al. 2012), and have access to 70 resources for conservation that are fungible over these scales (Balmford et al. 2003). 71 72 Although the conservation biology literature includes pleas for more systematic planning 73 (Margules & Pressey 2000; Wilson et al. 2009), these efforts often are not well-coordinated 74 (Bode et al. 2011) or when coordinated, there is a mismatch between ecosystem and planning 75 scale (Meretsky et al. 2012). Indeed, much of the support for conservation is locally sourced 76 (Armsworth et al. 2012) and is intended to meet locally derived priorities (e.g. to provide open 77 space, recreation opportunities and other ecosystem services). For example, in the United States 78 there are over 1,600 active nonprofit land trust organizations that have varying objectives 79 including open space preservation, but whose activities may provide ancillary benefits for 80 biodiversity conservation (see e.g. Chang (2011)). As these groups have their own locally- 81 derived objectives aside from biodiversity, their conservation activities might not be judged as 82 efficient in terms of biodiversity conservation per dollar spent. Nevertheless, their efforts are 83 likely beneficial to biodiversity. Understanding the magnitude of these potential gains and how 84 best to capitalize on them in biodiversity planning is an important question for the conservation 85 community. 86 87 Much of the support for local land trusts derives from the direct democracy process, where 88 citizens vote on ballot initiatives to conserve lands for a myriad of reasons (e.g., public access to 89 open-space, conservation, groundwater protection, and recreation). According to the Land Trust 3 90 Alliance (LTA), there have been approximately 2,400 land-vote referenda since 1988 occurring 91 in over 46 states and setting aside more than $58 billion in conservation funds (Trust for Public 92 Land 2012). Although larger conservation organizations (e.g., LTA, The Nature Conservancy) 93 do provide support to help formulate initiatives and bring them to the ballot (Kline 2006; 94 Kotchen & Powers 2006; Sundberg 2006; Nelson et al. 2007; Banzhaf et al. 2010), ultimately 95 the success of the referendum depends on the preferences of the jurisdictional (e.g., municipality, 96 county) residents towards land conservation as expressed through their votes (see, e.g., Deacon 97 & Shapiro (1975)). 98 99 To date, there is no systematic assessment of the potential ancillary benefits of the ballot box 100 initiatives on biodiversity protection. Even though the local services citizens derive from land 101 conservation are likely not the same as the value of a site assigned by a planner with the 102 objective of maximizing biodiversity, the potential biodiversity benefits can be nonetheless large 103 in aggregate because ballot initiatives are prevalent and the sums of money are substantial (e.g., 104 according to Jordan et al. (2007), the average yearly expenditure on these initiatives is 105 approximately on par with the U.S. average annual expenditure of the U.S. Conservation Reserve 106 Program). 107 108 Furthermore, the potential for efficiency gains by incorporating these ballot measures into 109 national-scale planning is an open question. For example, Abbitt, Scott, and Wilcove (2000) 110 identified U.S. county-level hotspots of vulnerability across the United States as a type of area 111 for central planning efforts to target. These hotspots where based on projected increases in 112 populations and development and occur in areas near urban centers. These areas, however, 113 might also be the places more likely to hold ballot measures for land conservation (see e.g. Press 114 (2002)). 115 116 We contribute to the literature by developing insights into the complementarity of these two 117 processes: top-down national-scale biodiversity planning and bottom-up citizen voting. 118 Specifically, our paper connects the political-economy research analyzing the occurrence and 119 success of the land-vote referenda (e.g., Kline (2006), Kotchen & Powers (2006), Nelson et al. 120 (2007) and Banzhaf et al. (2010)) and the conservation biology literature on the optimal 4 121 conservation site selection that assumes a nationally-planned and well-coordinated set of 122 activities. In particular, we compare the outcome of the direct democracy process with a 123 hypothetical top-down planner to address the following questions: how well has direct 124 democracy done at directing funding towards places that the top-down planner would have 125 identified and how well is direct democracy likely to do by this standard in the future? We also 126 illustrate the potential for efficiency gains by incorporating the spatial patterns of direct 127 democracy directly into conservation planning. 128 129 130 Materials and Methods 131 132 We divide up our analysis into three parts. First, we undertake a retrospective analysis and 133 examine the overlap of the location of past successful ballot measures with areas of high species 134 concentration. We also compare the successful ballot measures with both a random selection 135 process and one that corresponds to the recommendation of a hypothetical top-down biodiversity 136 planner allocating a fixed conservation budget across the United States. The planner is 137 represented by the solution of a reserve site selection algorithm (RSS). In the second part, we do 138 a prospective analysis using a multivariate regression model to predict the likelihood of 139 jurisdictions holding and passing land vote referenda. We compare the set of predicted counties 140 to data on the presence of endangered species and to the sites selected by the top-down planner. 141 Finally, we do an illustrative experiment where we include the past results of referenda directly 142 into the reserve site RSS algorithm to investigate the potential efficiency gains from 143 incorporating direct democracy outcomes in conservation planning. 144 145 Our analysis uses a number of different data sources to capture the two processes. The three 146 main data sets include; county-level USDA agricultural land values as a proxy for the cost of 147 conservation land in a county; county-level data on the presence of endangered species; and 148 county referenda ballot and outcome data between 1988-2006 come from the Trust for Public 149 Land’s “Landvote database”.
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