SRI External Seminar

Dr Anthea Coggan, Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO, Australia).

Can a competitive tender generate landholder attitudinal change to managing the environment in the long term? – a study of the Australian Environmental Stewardship Payment scheme over time

Abstract: The Environmental Stewardship Program is unique amongst large scale Australian environmental management programs in involving long term contracts (generally fifteen years), a reverse tender implementation, and strong ecological and social/economic evaluation components. In this presentation I describe some of the social/economic responses by landholders to the program approximately halfway through most participants’ contract period. We have found that landholder motivations are changing over time. Financial factors are declining as the dominant landholder management motivation, now the most important motivation for just over one third of respondents. Protecting the environment is growing as a primary motivation (over one quarter of respondents) reinforced by high priorities for environmental outcomes amongst land use and land management decisions.

Bio: Dr Anthea Coggan is an environmental/institutional economist at CSIRO Australia, specialising in the selection, design, implementation and review of economic instruments for improved natural resource management by private landholders. These economic instruments range from financial market based instruments such as competitive tenders and development offsets to non-financial suasive instruments such as extension and social recognition. Anthea’s specialized knowledge of transaction cost economics brings a unique and sought after skill set to the question of economic instrument design and implementation in numerous implementation contexts.