No abstract

Governance of global natural resources is increasingly hybrid, with complementary public and private sector initiatives layered on landscapes to improve environmental outcomes. The challenge of polycentric land use governance is alignment of goals across diverse governance mechanisms when agricultural producers, public agencies, and corporations have distinct motivations. This case study of soil carbon governance on California rangelands explores a new payment for ecosystem services (PES) initiative led by the food and agriculture industry, called the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC). Applying hybrid governance theory to agricultural lands, we conduct an ex-ante policy evaluation of potential policy impact based on (i) alignment between corporate sustainability goals and ranchers' priorities and (ii) complementarity of the ESMC market with existing public and private policies enabling rangeland conservation. We found corporations developing the PES market to be motivated by carbon insetting, the objectives of which converge with ranchers' goals of preserving soils. Each policy offers distinct benefits and challenges, with synergies around climate change adaptation and soil health. As a new policy tool, carbon markets like the ESMC are positioned to meet demand for soil health financing, support resilience and ranch productivity, and improve ranchers' access to soil health data for adaptive management. Given carbon markets' outcome-based payment structure, we highlight the importance of complementary governance mechanisms that mitigate upfront risk with financial and technical support during the transition period, including Farm Bill cost-share programs and private sector financing tools. This policy evaluation highlights the challenges and opportunities surrounding rangelands soil carbon governance, particularly the trade-offs that ranchers, corporations, and society at large must consider for landscape-scale conservation programs.

Context Land use change drives a host of sustainability challenges on Earth’s grasslands. To understand the relationship between changing land use patterns, human well-being, and ecosystem services, research is needed into land use transitions on privately-owned grasslands. Such inquiry lies at the intersection of land system science, landscape sustainability science and environmental governance. Objectives This study investigated land use change in a mountain ranching community in the Sierra Nevada, California. The research objective was to highlight factors influencing land use transitions and corollary ecological outcomes on privately-owned grasslands in the Western US. Methods This mixed methods case study integrated participant observation, 30 semi-structured interviews, and analysis of land cover and real estate data. Interviews were conducted with ranchers, public agencies, and conservation and real estate industry representatives, and analyzed with the constant comparison method using NVivo 12. Results Land use transitions in the case study region include agricultural intensification, residential and solar development, and disintensification. These transitions were influenced by many factors including decreasing land access and water availability, amenity migration, intergenerational succession, and conservation policy. Conclusions By highlighting factors influencing land use transitions on working lands, this study can be applied to improve the uptake of environmental policies. For the future, several approaches may support grasslands conservation: ensuring grazing lands access, income diversification, groundwater regulations, agriculture-compatible conservation easements, and land use policies supporting ownership transition to amenity purposes rather than low-density residential development. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-021-01385-6.

Mitigating the predicted impacts of climate change requires rapid expansion of renewable energy production, including Utility-Scale Solar Energy (USSE) on an unprecedented scale. In the US, a significant share of planned USSE targets working lands—particularly farms and ranches—yet the decision factors informing private landowners’ decisions to host USSE on their lands are little understood. Our research addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of working lands in California’s San Joaquin Valley and San Francisco Bay Area, based on 60 interviews with farmers and ranchers, solar developers, and community and government organizations. Applying land system science and agricultural decision-making theory, we find that landowner decisions to host USSE are based on profit-maximization, water availability, visual and ecological landscape values, and agricultural land preservation ethic. Solar interest varies across landowner types, with farmers typically maximizing operational income while maintaining agricultural production, and ranchers often prioritizing lifestyle-related landscape benefits. The current feasibility of integrating solar with agriculture appears to be low beyond sheep grazing, with benefits and drawbacks discussed in detail. Optimal areas for future USSE development include farmlands with declining water availability, lands without permanent crops or high amenity value, and regions with energy-intensive agricultural operations. Study findings can inform state land use planning and community engagement by solar developers.

Global solar power generation is predicted to expand significantly in the coming decades. Croplands and rangelands - commonly called working lands - will likely absorb a significant share of new utility-scale solar capacity due to land availability and proximity to existing load centers and transmission infrastructure. Beyond meeting energy needs, working lands already provide critical ecosystem services like food production, nature-based recreation, and biodiversity conservation. In the context of such competition for working lands, studies and real-world experiments have begun to investigate the co-location of solar with agriculture, habitat conservation, and water conservation, including through low-impact solar development. This has resulted in a patchwork of co-location approaches across multiple disciplines such as energy planning and policy, food systems science, and natural resources management. Prior work is also largely dominated by approaches to co-locate just one activity with solar development. However, beyond this patchwork lies a new frontier — an emerging need for broader and more deliberate consideration of multiple energy and non-energy activities on working lands. Therefore, in lieu of the current array of fragmented approaches and to facilitate a more systematic exploration of this new frontier, we offer a new Multi-Benefit Value Stacking (MBVS) framework to explore land use efficiencies from co-location of solar generation and non-energy uses on working lands, a clear conceptual definition of such opportunities and the scales at which they can be considered, a table of compiled examples, and key gaps for research and policy.