Emerging design principles for environmental, economic, and equity successes in land conservation.

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Learn more: PMC Disclaimer | PMC Copyright Notice Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A . 2026 May 26;123(22):e2421731122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2421731122 Emerging design principles for environmental, economic, and equity successes in land conservation Katharine R E Sims a, 1 , Jennifer M Alix-Garcia b Author information Article notes Copyright and License information a Economics and Environmental Studies, Amherst College, Amherst, MA 01002 b Applied Economics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331 1 To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: ksims@amherst.edu . Edited by Daniel C. Miller, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN; received November 12, 2024; accepted August 3, 2025 by Editorial Board Member Arun Agrawal Series information Strengthening Sustainability Science for Sustainable Development in Land and Coastal Systems Received 2024 Nov 12; Accepted 2025 Aug 3; Issue date 2026 Jun 2. Copyright © 2026 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) . PMC Copyright notice PMCID: PMC13229316  PMID: 42189995 Significance Land conservation initiatives, including protected areas, community-based management, and payments for ecosystem services, are crucial to sustainable human-environment systems. We propose eight design principles for conservation that can support multidimensional success across environmental, economic, and equity goals. We outline the rationale and evidence for these emerging principles, based on a synthesis of more than 200 studies on land protection and stewardship. We also highlight areas where future research may be most needed to support “win-win-win” outcomes. Keywords: conservation, design principles, land conservation, land protection, win-win Abstract Land conservation initiatives worldwide are poised to continue rapid growth. Ranging in scale, scope, and mechanisms, these efforts include area-based conservation, incentive-based protection, and community collective management. Evidence from across fields now indicates that it is possible for land conservation to jointly improve environmental conditions, generate positive net local economic benefits, and support social equity. Yet the key policy elements that can lead to this type of multidimensional success are not well understood. Here, we review the considerable body of existing research on land conservation and propose eight emerging design principles that conservation actors can employ to support “win-win-win” outcomes: 1) identify and support credible pathways of change, 2) set goals for all outcomes, recognizing their interdependencies, 3) accommodate multiple needs and uses through spatial or place-specific differentiation, 4) facilitate temporal resilience through diversification and limits, 5) foster nested governance, 6) integrate information structures for environmental and social outcomes, 7) assess policies using counterfactual-based analysis and adaptive management, 8) establish lasting institutions and funding mechanisms. Although these design principles will likely change and evolve, they provide an evidence-grounded framework to support current and future efforts to steward global lands. The protection and stewardship of land to support biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is essential to planetary sustainability ( 1 – 3 ). Multiple global efforts currently seek to expand land protection, including the 2021 Glasgow Declaration to end deforestation by 2030 and the 2022 Kunming-Montreal goals to sustain and replenish biodiversity by 2050 ( 4 , 5 ). Conserving and restoring land is also a critical “nature-based” solution for climate mitigation and adaptation ( 6 ). Land conservation encompasses disparate policy initiatives, varying in their scope, degree of protection, goals, and levers to drive environmental stewardship ( Fig. 1 ). These include direct regulation, such as protected areas or legal restrictions ( 4 , 7 , 8 ), collective action, such as community-based resource management ( 9 , 10 ), and voluntary incentives for landholders, such as payments for ecosystem services and conservation easements ( 11 , 12 ). Although the goals of land conservation are contested ( 13 – 17 ), there is growing consensus among researchers and practitioners that conservation should strive for multidimensional success: improving or maintaining ecological health while also supporting local economic well-being and social equity ( 4 , 18 ). In addition, “success” in each dimension should be measured by the generation of additional improvements, compared to what likely would have happened in the absence of the conservation interventions ( 19 – 21 ). While economic well-being and equity successes are highly context specific, multidimensional success includes increased human capabilities ( 22 ), not just material gains, and procedural or distributional fairness ( 23 ). Fig. 1. Open in a new tab Types of land conservation initiatives, classified by mechanisms of environmental change. Direct regulation protects land through area-based zones and legal restrictions (e.g., national parks, forest codes, species protection laws, cultural heritage sites, biosphere reserves, urban parks). Incentive-based protection provides compensation for stewardship (e.g., payments for ecosystem services, conservation easements, tax incentives, supply-chain agreements). Community-based collective action protects land through changes to local shared norms and rules of use (e.g., indigenous management, community-based protected areas, community-based forest management). The central circle indicates overlapping initiatives, such as payments for ecosystem services to communities within protected areas or protected area systems with buffer zones for community managed resource areas. Debate about whether it is possible for land conservation to achieve this vision of multidimensional success has sparked an explosion of research in the past two decades. While much of this work evaluates a single dimension of environmental, economic, or social outcomes, a growing body of research considers two or more dimensions of success, either within-study or across a constellation of studies investigating a specific policy ( 10 , 24 , 25 ). This literature includes conceptual work from multiple fields ( 26 – 29 ), a rich set of comparative case studies on the processes and contexts of specific conservation interventions ( 25 , 30 , 31 ), counterfactual-based impact assessments ( 32 – 34 ), and meta-analyses of multiple outcomes ( 10 , 24 ). Prior research investigates specific policies as well as potential general factors or facilitating conditions that could drive win-win outcomes, such as conservation policy type, strictness, size, comanagement, resource health, access to alternate labor opportunities, and governance capacity ( 24 , 25 , 35 – 37 ). Together, this body of theoretical and empirical research indicates that multidimensional success is possible, but not at all guaranteed. Win-win outcomes for environmental protection and socioeconomic outcomes have been rigorously attributed to specific land protection initiatives ( 24 , 38 , 39 ), national policies ( 32 , 33 , 40 , 41 ), and global conservation systems ( 42 – 45 ). Yet there are also many examples of land protection leading to tradeoffs or failing to improve outcomes ( 10 , 24 , 27 , 46 – 48 ), as well as causing harmful community displacement or dispossession ( 49 , 50 ). In addition, the accumulated evidence to date does not point to a dominant policy type or a unifying set of characteristics that consistently predict joint successes across environmental and social outcomes. What then, can we distill from research about conservation initiatives that can guide practical efforts by conservation actors to achieve multidimensional progress? Based on a conceptual analysis and narrative review ( 51 – 54 ) analyzing more than 200 studies from a plurality of research methods ( Materials and Methods and SI Appendix , Table S1 ), we propose eight “design principles” for the planning and implementation of land conservation initiatives that can simultaneously support environmental, economic, and equity goals ( Fig. 2 ). A term used by Elinor Ostrom ( 55 ) in the context of institutional robustness for common property resource management, a design principle seeks to identify “an essential element or condition that helps to account for the success of these institutions” (p. 90). A design principle should be theoretically plausible and should be a consistent feature that tends to be present in successful cases or lacking in unsuccessful ones. Applying this idea to the broader scope of land conservation, we identify the rationale and evidence in support of these emerging principles ( Figs. 2 and 3 and SI Appendix ). Among the principles we propose, some are supported by considerable theoretical and empirical evidence, while others may generate more debate and deserve further investigation. Ideally, the emerging principles proposed here can catalyze discussion around how to most effectively support multidimensional success in land conservation. Fig. 2. Open in a new tab Emerging design principles for environmental effectiveness, local economic development, and social equity in land conservation. ( A ) Land conservation initiatives change rules, norms, or incentives, with successful interventions leading to three critical components: reduced resource use, compensating benefits, and the fair distribution of responsibilities and benefits. Principle #1 directly supports these components through credible pathways of change linking conservation interventions to each of the outcome dimensions. Principle #2 calls for explicitly multidimensional goals, set with an understanding of the potential synergies and tradeoffs defined by Principle #1. ( B ) Principles #3 to #5 enable Principle #1 by providing spatial differentiation and place-based rules, temporal resilience and diversification, and nested governance structures. ( C ) Principles #6 to #8 define factors of assessment and sustainability that support each of the other sets of principles. Fig. 3. Open in a new tab Summary of support for design principles across studies reviewed. Mosaic plots of studies supporting each principle, shown by ( A ) type of conservation intervention and ( B ) study type, coded by primary methodology. The x-axis shows the share of support by each principle (out of the total number supported) and the y-axis shows the share of studies of each category supporting that principle. The total number of studies coded was 222. Results Critical Components of Change. Although conservation interventions are diverse in type and scope ( Fig. 1 ), their common purpose is to affect human behavior by changing rules, norms, or incentives ( Fig. 2 ). Community-based management, for example, shifts the trajectories of resource abundance by reframing rules of use and social norms or sanctions ( 9 ). Payments for ecosystem services (PES) changes land-use choices by providing compensation that is conditional on maintaining or enhancing specific land use patterns ( 11 ). Area-based conservation deters loss or supports sustainable use through direct enforcement of legal restrictions, often combined with support for alternate livelihoods ( 24 ). Through specific pathways of change, these shifts in behavior determine multidimensional outcomes ( Fig. 2 ). To succeed, conservation policies must usually: reduce resource use, compensate for potential losses created by this reduction, and fairly allocate responsibilities and gains. These three critical components link directly to the environmental, economic development and social equity outcomes that together define multidimensional success. Conceptually, the emerging design principles that we identify underpin and support these three critical components, either directly or indirectly ( Fig. 2 ). We propose two principles focusing on pathways for change and goal setting, three principles that establish supporting policy features, and three relevant to assessment and long-term sustainability. In the text below, we outline the key conceptual rationale and empirical evidence for each of the principles, as well as their relational structure (also see Fig. 2 ). In Fig. 3 , we graphically summarize the type and quantity of studies reviewed that support the principles (with details in SI Appendix , Table S1 ). Throughout the paper, we identify where additional research would be particularly valuable to support multidimensional success. Principle #1: Identify and support credible pathways of change for each outcome dimension. Our first design principle directly underlies the three critical components of change necessary for multidimensional success. Specifically, success depends on identifying and supporting credible pathways of change for reduced resource use, offsetting compensation, and equitable process and distributions ( Fig. 2 ). While positive outcomes may occur even if these pathways are not well understood by conservation actors, many researchers have noted that success is more likely when these critical components of change are actively articulated and supported ( 27 , 31 , 56 – 61 ). Crucially, multidimensional success requires credible pathways of change for not just one, but each of the outcome dimensions (see also Fig. 3 and SI Appendix ). First, to be environmentally effective, initiatives must change resource extraction behavior (usually reducing it), at least in the short run or compared to what would have happened in their absence. Greater changes in resource use can be achieved by targeting initiatives to high value and environmentally threatened areas ( 11 , 26 , 33 , 43 , 62 – 64 ), as well as through effective monitoring and compliance ( 8 , 11 , 65 – 67 ). For example, the Government of Mexico has operated federal payments for ecosystem services programs since 2003 that have enrolled more than 7 million hectares of land to support biodiversity conservation and watershed protection ( 68 ). These PES programs provide compensation to individual or communal landowners in return for land management that enhances or maintains ecosystem functions ( 33 , 68 ). To target land that is of high value for biodiversity or hydrological services, the program implementer (CONAFOR) sets zones of eligibility and scores applicants to the program according to characteristics related to potential benefits as well as risk of environmental loss and landowner type ( 33 , 69 , 70 ). Such targeting has been shown to increase environmental effectiveness of this and other PES programs ( 11 , 33 , 71 , 72 ). Similarly, protected areas (PAs) that have been located in areas with high human pressures have repeatedly generated greater avoided deforestation, with evidence of this pattern globally ( 43 ) and from PA systems including in Brazil ( 36 ), Costa Rica ( 34 ), and Mexico ( 73 ). In addition to policy targeting, land protection interventions rely on monitoring and enforcement to achieve changes in resource use ( 8 , 11 , 55 , 65 – 67 ). In the Brazilian Amazon, for example, near real-time satellite monitoring alerting authorities drove additional enforcement efforts that led to reduced deforestation ( 8 ). Publicly announced “blacklists” prioritizing a selected set of Brazilian municipalities for additional law enforcement also reduced deforestation ( 67 ). A recent metaketa of community monitoring finds rigorous evidence for the importance of information provision using randomized treatments across resource management in six different countries ( 65 ). In addition, a meta-analysis of PES found that conditionality provisions to revoke payments when there was noncompliance were associated with greater environmental effectiveness ( 74 ). Second, since reductions in resource use usually impose real costs in terms of reduced consumption or future development opportunities, simultaneously achieving socioeconomic gains requires channels for compensating benefits ( Fig. 2 ) ( 11 , 25 , 27 , 42 ). Ultimately, land conservation can generate net positive local socioeconomic gains only if the economic benefits for communities are greater than the costs they bear ( 7 , 11 , 24 , 33 , 34 , 58 ). Pathways to ensure compensation include direct payments, return of revenue from entrance fees or resource sales to communities, rules to allow subsistence use, support for local infrastructure, compensation for wildlife-related damages, local hiring, and support for local business development, including capacity training ( 27 , 31 , 57 , 75 – 80 ). Pathways also include support for communities to safeguard sustainably managed and culturally vital resources threatened by external exploitation ( 81 ), including resource stocks or ecosystem services that may be crucial for local food systems and health outcomes ( 24 , 44 , 81 , 82 ). While both researchers and practitioners have called for more identification and support of these compensating benefits mechanisms ( 57 , 76 ), there is limited direct, causal evidence testing this aspect of Principle #1. However, there are several examples where conservation initiatives are rigorously linked to socioeconomic gains and these are associated with well-defined mechanisms for benefit-sharing. For example, counterfactual-based studies have shown that protected areas in Nepal and Costa Rica contributed to local poverty alleviation ( 40 , 83 – 86 ). In Nepal, communities have historically been legally empowered to retain a substantial portion of park entrance fees for community development functions ( 87 – 89 ). In Costa Rica, parks have had local advisory boards that can promote local hiring and revenue-sharing ( 90 ), and income gains have been causally linked to tourism channels through mediator analysis ( 40 ) and evidence of increased labor demand near park entrances ( 85 ). Employment and income gains for communities near U.S. national parks have also been rigorously demonstrated and linked by association to increased visitation rates ( 91 ). Globally, parks with more tourism have been associated with less poverty ( 44 ). In addition, there is evidence that pathways for compensating gains matter from research on community forestry and PES initiatives. Community forestry systems devolve primary responsibility for local management to user groups that set rules allowing resource use and distribution of resources ( 32 ). Although these rules may restrict resource use in the short run, they can support sustainable compensating benefits in the medium and long-term through firewood, fodder, other forest products, and revenues from timber. Correspondingly, community forest management has been rigorously shown to improve livelihoods in Nepal, Indonesia, Madagascar, and Guatemala ( 7 ). Finally, payments for ecosystem services are deliberately designed to provide compensating benefits, by offering payments that are greater than the expected returns from alternate land uses (and allowing voluntary enrollment) ( 28 , 33 , 92 ). PES have moderately reduced poverty or not negatively impacted households in countries including Costa Rica, Vietnam, Mexico, Uganda, Burkina Faso, and Cambodia ( 7 ). The third critical component for multidimensional success is maintaining or improving social equity, which depends on the distribution of responsibilities and gains, including processes of decision-making and the composition of costs and benefits ( 17 , 23 , 93 ). Several studies show that in the absence of deliberate mechanisms to support equity, conservation policies tend to reinforce underlying economic and power dynamics. Specifically, land conservation benefits have often gone disproportionately to those who already have greater access to land, financial capital, or social capital ( 7 , 27 , 38 , 94 – 99 ). For example, in Mexico’s federal PES, landholders with full rights gained more material benefits than those without ( 33 ). In Costa Rica, workers with more skills or capital gained more from park establishments ( 100 ). In China, households with greater human and physical capital were more successful at using reforestation payments from the nation’s Sloping Land Conversion Program to transition to off-farm labor opportunities ( 101 ). The recreational and health benefits of urban parks in the United States have also been distributed unequally, with fewer, smaller, and less well-resourced parks close to disadvantaged communities ( 94 , 102 ). Emerging channels to improve equity include mechanisms to target programs toward disadvantaged communities, to encourage participation, and to share revenues equitably. For example, PES programs in Mexico and Brazil have targeted enrollment opportunities toward disadvantaged communities. To do so, Mexico’s federal program gave additional points in the scoring criteria for communal landowners and applicants in high marginality or indigenous areas ( 69 , 77 ). Brazil’s “Bolsa Verde” program specifically supported poor landowners to receive payments for community forest cover goals in the Amazon ( 103 ). In addition to targeting, mechanisms to encourage participation can increase procedural equity and may improve other outcomes. A recent analysis of more than 300 community forestry initiatives found that more participation in rule-making was associated with more instances of positive outcomes for both livelihoods and forests together ( 25 ). Finally, direct benefit-sharing of entrance fee revenues can support communities more equitably because it does not require tourism-related skills or capital. For example, Rwanda’s national parks return a proportion of park fees to local cooperatives, which have often used them to support local public goods like infrastructure and education ( 104 ). Additional tests of mechanisms to support more equitable outcomes could improve understanding of these channels in the future. The main pathways that we have described to achieve each of the critical components of conservation (Principle #1) are also interrelated positively and negatively (note feedback arrows in Fig. 2 ). For example, effective monitoring of resource extraction rules in some community-managed forests may positively support both environmental benefits like biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and economic benefits like renewable resource production ( 10 , 105 – 108 ). Yet in other cases, well-enforced extraction rules may create negative feedbacks: For example, optimizing forests to produce high-value timber may reduce subsistence forest product availability, increasing economic gains while harming equity ( 98 , 109 ). Similarly, the compensation provided by payments for ecosystem services programs can affect both environmental and economic change ( 33 , 110 ). In Mexico’s Federal PES, payments induced additional environmental stewardship by raising the economic returns to maintaining natural land cover and compensating for activities such as building fire breaks and patrolling ( 77 ). They also increased economic capabilities and social capital when surplus funds were invested in labor-saving equipment, education, or community resources ( 33 , 77 ). Yet surplus funds from PES payments may have led to some additional land clearing, undermining environmental gains ( 111 ); PES also contributed to heterogeneous outcomes for equity ( 96 ). Overall, we find that there is considerable support in the literature for design Principle #1: Multidimensional conservation successes are tied to credible channels of change identified and supported by conservation actors ( Fig. 3 and SI Appendix , Table S1 ). The mechanisms for environmental effectiveness have been more frequently studied than those for economic or equity outcomes. This highlights a need for continued research investigating the specific structures through which land conservation can boost local incomes and wealth ( 40 , 112 ). These mechanisms may also depend strongly on contextual factors including other land use regulations, underlying wealth levels, degree of community autonomy, and market pressures ( 10 , 32 , 113 ). Given the complex interdependencies between pathways for each outcome, future research that incorporates systems views of social and ecological relationships can contribute to identifying and supporting credible pathways of change ( 31 , 57 , 114 , 115 ). Principle #2: Set goals for all outcomes, with attention to interdependencies. Complementing Principle #1, conservation initiatives are more likely to support joint success if they include explicitly defined goals for each dimension (Principle #2). Crucially, the naming and prioritizing of goals for environmental effectiveness, economic well-being, and social equity together forces transparency about their positive or negative interdependencies and the possible need for compromise ( 18 , 57 , 94 , 116 – 118 ). This point has been suggested by researchers and practitioners across several fields, with some emphasizing that holistic goal setting protects against counting success in one outcome while ignoring the others ( 18 ) and others emphasizing that goal setting must account for the potential for inherent tradeoffs and the feasibility of joint achievements ( 116 , 118 ). For example, as noted above, PES can achieve greater environmental benefits if targeted to areas at high threat of ecological loss ( 11 , 33 , 71 , 72 ). Yet to achieve socioeconomic and equity benefits, PES also need to reach landowners who are more economically marginalized and whose opportunity and participation costs are less than the payments ( 28 , 33 , 92 ). The possibility to achieve all three goals simultaneously depends on the spatial correlations between environmental threats, expected costs, and social marginalization, which are inherently context-specific ( 101 , 119 ). In the case of Mexico’s federal PES programs, for example, joint successes could be achieved by additional targeting to agrarian and indigenous communities, as these lands were at higher risk of ecological loss and communal landholders were also more economically disadvantaged than individual landholders ( 33 ). Explicit prioritization of social development as a secondary program goal allowed the implementing agency to change targeting in ways that supported multiple goals ( 69 ). Setting goals for all outcomes rests on identifying and characterizing these types of potential synergies or tradeoffs, so that choices are better understood in the process of goal setting and implementation ( 23 , 34 , 120 ). Researchers have and can continue to contribute to this information. For example, areas of global forest restoration priority have been analyzed to understand potential tradeoffs with food security ( 116 ). Suitability maps have identified potential protected area locations most likely to achieve win-win poverty alleviation and avoided deforestation ( 34 ). Hypothetical changes in conservation program prioritization show how changes to conservation payments programs might shift the balance between efficiency and equity ( 71 , 121 ), or how a shift toward prioritizing equitable access might change the ranking of conservation priorities to protect undeveloped land ( 94 ). Researchers can also play a role in studying the goal-setting processes themselves. For example, greater procedural justice in conservation decision-making may include recognition of a diverse set of value structures, transparency in processes, and agency of stakeholders through voice, decision-control, and capabilities ( 122 ). Attention to process itself may also improve the likelihood of joint successes ( 23 , 57 ). Supporting Policy Features. While Principles #1 and #2 directly articulate critical conditions for multidimensional success, Principles #3 to #5 propose general policy features associated with enabling these conditions ( Fig. 2 ). We see these principles as cross-cutting, in that they support aspects of each of the critical conditions of resource use reduction, compensating benefits, and fair distribution. For example, spatial differentiation is strongly related to environmental outcomes but also matters for socioeconomic benefits. Nested governance is strongly related to distributional equity, but also contributes to environmental effectiveness. All three principles deserve additional research but are not easily explored using standard causal methods, because of both the complexity and the endogeneity of effective structures ( Fig. 3 ). Principle #3: Accommodate multiple needs and uses through spatial or place-specific differentiation in rules. Our review of the literature suggests the importance of spatial or place-specific differentiation of rules as a core principle of win-win-win outcomes. Joint environmental and economic success have repeatedly been linked to flexibility across space in protection types, incentives, or rules ( 44 , 123 – 126 ). Indeed, the need for spatial flexibility is recognized in principle 10 of the 2007 Convention on Biological Diversity, which calls for a full range of protection types in a “continuum from strictly protected to human-made ecosystems” as well as by the IUCN’s recognition of multiple types of protected areas. Flexibility in rules may also be place-specific or differentiated by spatial characteristics. For example, conservation interventions may allow some activities depending on seasons, or some harvesting techniques depending on human-ecological system specifics. Economic and social–ecological systems theories justify spatial differentiation and place-based rules as important for multidimensional success ( 115 , 127 ). When there is spatial variation in the benefits of resource extraction or land use, a combination of protected area types or spatial zones can lead to the highest level of well-being by matching differentiation in net benefits with differentiation in rules ( 127 ). While spatial differentiation as a factor of success is difficult to test directly, indirect evidence comes from analyses of park zoning, PES, devolution of resource management, and hybrid policies. For example, Biosphere Reserves in Mexico, which are zoned to support a combination of strictly protected core areas and areas that allow for sustainable use, tourism, and recreation, were able to achieve greater avoided deforestation while better supporting local livelihoods than PAs that were fully restrictive ( 73 , 128 ). Similarly, case-based and household survey evidence indicates that the spatial differentiation of buffer zones surrounding many of Nepal’s protected areas have supported the system’s multidimensional gains ( 89 , 129 ). These areas of more intensive human settlement have complemented the stricter protection of core areas by allowing more resource use and by facilitating tourism that captures compensating benefits from biodiversity conservation ( 89 ). Community-based management of resources also has the potential to match differentiation in management to specific places through the devolution of rule-making to local communities ( 10 , 98 , 107 ). If those rules are well tailored to local conditions, they may increase sustainable production, generate more compliance due to community participation, or increase the equitable distribution of resources if there is more participation by marginalized members in community-level decision-making (but note this is not guaranteed) ( 10 , 98 ). Community-managed forests with flexibility in place-based rules have outperformed state-managed areas on both ecological and social dimensions in countries like Nepal ( 32 , 106 ) and Madagascar ( 130 , 131 ). However, in Madagascar, only community forests that did not allow commercial forest use were environmentally effective, further illustrating the importance of specific rules and how they interact with place. Finally, spatial flexibility in protection may come from the hybrid combination of policy types. For example, both Mexico and Brazil have PES systems that overlap with direct protection, providing household support for environmental stewardship within legally protected areas. These hybrid policies increased environmental impacts in Brazil ( 132 , 133 ) and both environmental and social impacts in Mexico ( 73 ). Synergies have also been documented between PES and community forests in Mexico ( 134 ), and between PES and regulatory disincentives in Peru ( 135 ). Indeed, landscape approaches to conservation encourage a full mosaic of policies across a spatial area, recognizing the importance of spatial differentiation as well as interdependence between types ( 136 , 137 ). Landscape approaches can also mitigate potential spillovers, where conservation efforts in one location lead to changes among neighboring locations due to social interactions or price-based market channels ( 138 ). Although the importance of spatial differentiation has considerable support, future research should investigate the pros and cons of different policy mixes in specific contexts. In particular, research can illuminate how the pathways of change may interact differently when policies are mixed in specific contexts. Principle #4: Encourage temporal resilience through diversification of strategies, limits, and anticipation of change. In addition to differentiation of policies across space, conservation initiatives are more likely to achieve multidimensional success if they incorporate aspects of temporal flexibility related to each goal. Although one type of policy or livelihood strategy may be a best fit in the short run, this is rarely true over time because ecological threats and economic conditions change rapidly ( 58 , 125 , 139 – 142 ). For example, climate change has shifted optimal management strategies for forestry due to changes in the risks of natural disasters ( 143 ), while new narcotrafficking patterns present an increasing threat to forest conservation in South America ( 140 ). In addition, success in one dimension may create new threats in other dimensions. PES can lead to land-grabbing or displacement of marginalized populations by raising land values ( 144 ). Successful marketing of tourism opportunities may boost local livelihoods and create new wealth, yet threaten the biodiversity or cultural heritage of the resources themselves ( 145 , 146 ). The literature suggests that conservation initiatives are more likely to be resilient to negative shocks if they include a diverse set of strategies, set limits to address possible critical thresholds, and anticipate change. Diversification is a well-established theoretical concept for withstanding disturbances, as shocks to one part of the system can be absorbed without taking down the full system ( 147 , 148 ). Land conservation interventions are more likely to be successful if households can find alternative income sources that are less-resource dependent, but also if the full suite of options is diverse. For example, if communities near protected areas have diversified livelihoods that include a combination of tourism, sustainable industry, agriculture, subsistence forest use, and agroforestry, they may be more able to grow without encroaching on protected areas, as well as more able to absorb negative shocks from a decline in tourism or a specific crop failure without falling back on resource extraction ( 49 , 149 ). In addition, although economic growth may be desirable, resilience may also require setting limits to protect underlying ecological resources and support long-term well-being. For example, in a study of tourism and livelihood outcomes in Kenya, intermediate levels of visitation were best aligned with community goals ( 150 ). Indeed, many parks and communities worldwide have moved to implement limits on visitation ( 151 ). Finally, anticipation of change can also provide greater joint success. For example, community land trusts can mitigate community displacement in urban areas due to rising housing costs by acquiring land prior to the establishment of new parks ( 152 ). Conservation organizations can seek to improve tenure security before introducing initiatives ( 144 ), and protected area managers can anticipate threats when siting new parks ( 153 ). However, livelihood diversification, limits, and anticipatory approaches are not without cost, particularly in the short run. Future research should clarify the role of these factors, including how cooperatives, risk-reduction programs, insurance systems, social capital, quality of life plans, or skills training initiatives can support resilience alongside conservation ( 93 , 154 ). Principle #5: Foster nested governance structures from local to global. Both human and ecological processes in land conservation operate at scales from local to global, with individual landholders making choices that reverberate at higher scales ( 155 ). Nested governance allows local structures to be embedded inside of governance units operating at broader scales, such as municipal or state government authorities ( 55 ). The sharing of power between more decentralized and centralized structures can ideally strike a balance between institutions tailored to local situations and to goals at the regional level ( 90 , 137 , 156 , 157 ). Cash and Moser ( 29 ), for example, suggest that nested governance should be based on scale-dependent comparative advantages, with the goal of harnessing complementary capabilities across scale. In the context of conservation interventions, this might mean that in some cases rules and enforcement of aspects like fodder or firewood collection are determined locally, while satellite monitoring by higher levels of government can reduce the threat of extraction by outside actors. However, the optimal choice of which components are controlled by which level of government depends on multiple factors such as information costs, the benefits of place-specific rules, and the potential for elite capture. Nested governance can also involve non-governmental organizations and other nonstate actors who may play complementary roles ( 137 , 158 ). Substantial evidence supports the principle that win-win-win outcomes for land protection are more likely when it includes nested governance ( 24 , 25 , 156 , 159 ). A meta-analysis of more than 150 protected area studies found that positive joint socioeconomic and conservation outcomes were associated with comanagement arrangements ( 24 ). Similarly, an analysis of joint livelihood and resource benefits across forest commons found that local participation in rule making and a formal community management association were associated with joint success ( 25 ). Nested governance has also been shown to buffer local institutions from outside actors involved in specific cases of resource exploitation ( 81 , 88 , 160 ). Although nested governance is clearly an important feature of multidimensional success, consensus does not exist about an ideal structure. Indeed, this is likely to vary depending on the scales and relative power of other societal institutions ( 10 , 25 , 123 , 156 , 159 , 161 ). In their review of factors associated with joint environmental and socioeconomic success in community forests, Hajjar et al. ( 10 ) found that comanagement cases with a more equitable sharing of power and responsibility between local user groups and governments were more successful. However, capture by elites or any one faction of a community can still complicate participatory approaches ( 10 , 162 , 163 ). In addition, existing land management institutions are an important aspect of governance context. In many places, tenure is unsettled and current institutional structures operate over a web of historical, colonial, and postcolonial configurations of ownership ( 98 , 164 ). In Uganda, for instance, a colonially imposed tenure type has resulted in overlapping claims associated with high deforestation rates ( 165 ) and low investment in intensive agriculture ( 166 ). Overall, although it is widely recognized that nested governance structures are important to achieving joint conservation successes, specific governance and allocation mechanisms deserve additional research ( 25 , 123 , 167 ). Since these structures emerge endogenously through history and community processes, there is little convincing quasi-experimental evidence for this principle ( Fig. 3 and SI Appendix , Table S1 ) and few settings in which it would be reasonable to randomize governance structures to causally test their impacts. Observational studies with plausible controls and case-based qualitative attribution methods ( 30 ) have the best potential to reveal future insights about nested governance. Assessment and Sustainability. The final three principles—integrated information structures, counterfactual-based assessment/adaptive management, and lasting institutions/funding mechanisms—provide key logistical support for the other principles ( Fig. 2 ). They are particularly important for setting and sustaining multiple goals (Principle #2) but also for achieving the pathways needed to reduce resource use, compensate for reductions, and improve equity (Principle #1). The support structures outlined in these principles also inform appropriate spatial differentiation, resilience strategies, and nested governance (Principles #3-5). Finally, the assessment and sustainability principles are interlinked, as information structures are closely tied to adaptive management and institutional sustainability supports both of the other principles in this group (feedback arrows between principles in Fig. 2 ). Principle #6: Integrate information structures for environmental and social outcomes. Strong integration of information systems across scales and outcome dimensions plays a role in supporting each of the other design principles. For example, the prioritization systems for Mexico’s PES depend on a combination of social and environmental information including economic marginalization, geophysical characteristics such as water scarcity, and risk of deforestation modeled from past satellite-based forest loss data and characteristics such as slope and transport networks ( 69 ). In addition, monitoring and enforcement, which are crucial inputs for changing resource use behavior, depend on working information structures ( 65 ). For example, one of the cases where information mattered in the “metaketa” of interventions to improve common property resource management was for forest use in the Peruvian Amazon ( 168 ). In this case, the program combined early access to government-based deforestation alerts with local community monitoring, integrating information across spatial scales. Similarly, the enforcement of Brazil’s environmental laws restricting deforestation have been enabled by the availability of real-time satellite-based deforestation monitoring in combination with field-based information ( 8 ). Although there are few examples of comprehensive information systems for land conservation, substantial progress has been made in the integration of indicators across environmental and social dimensions ( 117 , 169 ). On the ecosystem side, researchers have collaborated to develop major sets of indicators for environmental monitoring and ecosystem services valuation ( 170 – 172 ). On the social science side, international protocols for household survey questions and support from multilateral institutions and national statistical organizations for ongoing data collection has facilitated more systematic comparison of outcomes over time. In addition to project-based data collection, data from national census organizations and the Demographic and Health Surveys and Living Standard Measurement Studies have been used effectively to evaluate many of the joint conservation impacts that we referenced in Principle #1 ( 44 , 109 ). Multiteam, multicountry initiatives such as the International Forestry Resources and Institutions Program have supported research on socioenvironmental systems across hundreds of settings ( 9 , 25 , 65 ). Large scale evidence gap reports and databases can also highlight where there is additional need for research ( 173 – 176 ). In the future, data collection for integrated systems may be facilitated by the continuing development of systems using remotely sensed data, including land-cover change alert systems ( 177 , 178 ), and estimated social indicators based on proxies such as nightlights or social media density ( 42 , 179 , 180 ). However, fundamental differences in spatial and temporal scales, survey methods, and treatment of missing data can easily lead to misinterpretation and erroneous conclusions when data is combined without care ( 181 ). The accuracy of remotely sensed indicators will always depend on ground-truthing of ecological and social data including national forest inventories, national census systems, and face to face household and community surveys. High spatial resolution information, particularly about livelihood strategies, is important to design smaller-scale conservation programs like community-based resource management or incentive-based programs ( 33 , 182 ) and to understand the pathways of change for any intervention. Integrating the collection of environmental data into existing efforts by national statistical agencies to gather census and other household data and leveraging the information to support conservation programs is a natural step forward. In addition, there is a need for continued development of appropriate, context-specific indicators of human capabilities and ecosystem health that can better capture nonmaterial aspects of well-being and equitable distributions ( 22 , 58 , 183 ). Principle #7: Use counterfactual-based assessment and adaptive management. Along with the increasing integration of indicators, a major shift in conservation in the past two decades has been the use of counterfactual-based assessment of conservation initiatives. Counterfactual-based evaluation assesses outcomes in relation to what most likely would have happened otherwise, allowing changes to be attributed to the conservation intervention rather than other co-occurring factors, and can use either quantitative or qualitative approaches ( 19 , 20 , 30 , 61 , 184 ). For example, protected areas have frequently been established in locations that were more remote and economically disadvantaged by geography or history ( 41 , 86 , 185 ). Similarly, community forest management institutions may be more likely to gain formal status where there is reduced resource use pressure because of migration patterns, where users are closer to administrative offices, or where forest resources are abundant ( 32 , 106 , 186 ). Voluntary PES or carbon sequestration initiatives are more likely to attract landowners with the least likelihood of deforesting ( 187 ). In each of these situations, counterfactual-based assessments have challenged simple associational conclusions about conservation impacts. Accurately attributing changes to land conservation initiatives is crucial for effective adaptive management, which can ideally facilitate win-win-win outcomes and support resilience ( 57 , 59 , 69 , 93 , 112 , 125 , 148 ). Adaptive management treats policy choices as an experiment, or a cycle where possible implementation strategies should be tested, reviewed, and refined ( 188 , 189 ). It allows practitioners to learn from and change in response to new conditions and can be particularly useful where it is necessary to balance multiple objectives. As previously mentioned, in Mexico’s national PES program, managers adaptively modified targeting criteria over time to increase enrollment of forest located in areas of both high deforestation risk and high social marginalization ( 69 ). In another case, Chilean parks have prioritized the continuous revision of management plans, with input from multiple stakeholders including agricultural communities, forestry companies, universities, local schools, and local authorities; these revisions have been crucial for the parks to adapt to changing conditions and opportunities ( 93 ). Adaptive management has been broadly supported in principle ( 29 , 125 , 188 ), but successful examples in land conservation are rare ( 190 ) ( SI Appendix , Table S1 ). Researchers can play a role in understanding and reducing the barriers to adaptive management, which may include expensive and time-consuming data collection, the difficulty of translating information into change, a varied set of problems and actors, political risk from program changes, and tendencies to support new initiatives rather than sustain evaluation of existing ones. In addition, there can be tension between adaptive management and counterfactual evaluation—it can be challenging to isolate causal effects if policy implementation changes frequently, and difficult for implementers to persist with policy innovations that do not appear to be working long enough to collect reliable data. Despite these challenges, future researchers can prioritize working with implementers as conservation initiatives evolve to provide consistent measurement of program components and outcomes over long periods of time. Principle #8: Build lasting institutions and funding mechanisms for conservation. The long-term sustainability of land conservation initiatives has repeatedly been demonstrated to depend on durable structures of support, including long-term funding mechanisms and high-quality institutions ( 16 , 60 , 188 , 191 ). Fundamentally, this is because most threats to sustainable land use have their roots in persistent, underlying market failures, where the individual or local incentives to protect land are not aligned with the overall regional and global benefits that stewardship provides. In the absence of permanent changes in incentives, these threats will simply re-emerge when funding or institutional structures lapse, even if there is a successful period of initial change ( 163 , 192 ). Principle #8 suggests that multidimensional success will require destigmatizing long-term financial support for conservation from governments and outside funders. Considerable evidence indicates the importance of sustained funding flows ( Fig. 3 and SI Appendix , Table S1 ). For example, PES programs in Uganda ( 192 ) and Brazil ( 193 ) both saw deforestation resume when the program payments stopped. Conversely, the renewal of PES contracts over time was linked to their longer-term effectiveness in Mexico’s Selva Lacondona ( 194 ). Funding structures also matter: for example, in Vietnam and Mexico, PES programs are funded in part by taxes on water users, directing recurring funds from beneficiaries to providers and providing a more sustainable source of funding ( 195 , 196 ). In both Mexico and Costa Rica, funds to cover all years of PES contracts are set aside up front to reassure landholders, and administrative costs are limited to a set percentage of the total budget ( 99 , 195 , 197 ). Parks committees in Costa Rica attribute some of their success to financial autonomy that allowed them to build long-term endowments, increasing their political power and institutional sustainability ( 90 ). In the United States, best practice recommendations from a consortium of land trusts advises members to establish permanent stewardship funds for any new conservation acquisitions ( 198 ). Sustainable funding also requires an understanding of the full set of costs that protection and stewardship may entail. Land conservation costs include the opportunity costs of forgone returns from other productive uses of land, the administrative costs of implementation, and the time and material costs of application and participation by local communities. The true costs of conservation have often been higher than anticipated ( 33 , 199 , 200 ). For example, a nationally representative household survey of participants in Mexico’s PES program indicated that the labor costs of forest conservation, including activities like patrolling, building fire breaks, and maintaining fences, were equivalent to 84% of payment value for communal land holders and 110% for private landowners ( 33 ). In Brazil, recent estimates of the costs of labor and materials for active forest restoration indicate they are often more than 50% of total costs ( 200 ). Relatively few studies to date provide rigorous data on all cost dimensions—including nonmonetary costs—or on the distributional implications of those costs, making this an important area for future research. In addition to funding, broader institutional structures of conservation programs and supporting systems are likely to be particularly important to ensuring better economic and social equity outcomes ( 60 ). For example, for land trusts in the United States, greater justice and equity outcomes have been associated with having a broad base of volunteers and visitors and sufficient staff capacity, factors indicating institutional sustainability ( 201 ). A recent meta-analysis of global cases ( 10 ) showed that joint successes for community forest management are more likely if institutional features include the rights to exclusion and the collective choice rights to make the rules for management. More broadly, protected area effectiveness globally has been associated with greater underlying rule of law and protection of property rights ( 202 ). In Brazil, better governed areas have been shown to have a lower risk of both resource degradation and degazetting ( 203 ). Although the importance of institutions is clear, researchers can continue to investigate the qualities of these structures and funding mechanisms that can ensure long-term sustainability ( 9 , 47 , 60 ). Discussion Land conservation has the potential to drive improvements in environmental conditions, local economic well-being, and social equity, but sustained gains on all dimensions are far from guaranteed. The search for design principles to support multidimensional success inevitably involves tension between a smaller set of strongly supported, general insights and a complex array of contextual factors that matter in specific cases. Still, this pursuit is worthwhile so that conservation actors have a plausible checklist of major considerations in efforts to design, implement, and revise land conservation interventions. It is also a search informed by the tremendous body of high-quality research investigating specific cases and patterns of impacts as well as multiple recent meta-analyses and systematic reviews ( Fig. 3 and SI Appendix , Table S1 ). Despite this rapid expansion of evidence, there are few broad analyses of the overall patterns that may drive success or failure across all land conservation approaches. We have sought to fill this gap by identifying eight emerging principles based on synthesis and review of more than 200 existing studies. We document strong evidence that multidimensional success is related to credible pathways of change (Principle #1), goal setting that explicitly includes all dimensions (#2), integrated information systems (#6), and counterfactual-based assessment (#7) ( Fig. 3 and SI Appendix , Table S1 ). Other principles, notably spatial differentiation (#3), diversification that increases resilience to changing conditions (#4), nested governance structures (#5), and the importance of long-term funding that continuously transfers compensation to local conservation stewards (#8) are supported, but with less depth of existing research. In addition, we have sought to highlight in each section aspects of these design principles that deserve continued evidence-based inquiry. There are important limitations to this analysis. Although we identify elements supported by existing literature about what drives synergies in conservation, future work may certainly find that additional or different design principles are important. Moreover, no single conservation actor can implement all of these principles alone, especially given that conservation possibilities are limited by the global realities of power relations, resource constraints, and current conflicts. Yet we hope that this conceptual synthesis can open conversations among practitioners and encourage continued research on land conservation. In particular, implementing each of the principles in context rests crucially on the first one—establishing credible pathways of change. Progress in every case therefore must rely on an accurate understanding of the underlying human-ecological system relationships that drive change in each dimension and underpin the possibility of joint success. This is a vital area for continued future research. Finally, although additional research that causally identifies conservation impacts using quasi-experimental or experimental methods is crucial, some of the principles we propose cannot be tested feasibly or ethically using those approaches. This highlights the continued need for a plurality of research methods and researcher collaborations devoted to use-inspired, place-based research ( 204 ) of specific conservation contexts and institutional structures. Materials and Methods We generated and finalized design principles using methods of conceptual synthesis and narrative review. Conceptual synthesis develops frameworks by integrating theories and models from existing literature ( 51 , 52 ). Narrative review highlights key themes and perspectives from a defined set of literature, seeking to provide critical interpretation of the evidence most relevant to policy questions ( 53 , 54 ). These approaches are best suited to our research goal of developing a broad set of principles that is supported by a combination of expert judgment, existing theory, and empirical evidence—in contrast with systematic reviews, which seek to comprehensively summarize results about a well-defined, previously studied question ( 53 ). To document the evidence used in generating these principles, we catalog the literature we reviewed, which consists of 222 studies ( SI Appendix ). These studies were selected with a goal of ensuring broad geographical and methodological representation of the literature that has assessed multiple conservation outcomes or is related to conservation and at least one of the hypothesized principles. We identified studies using a combination of search engines, references from recent review papers and expert networks. We considered research coming from a plurality of methodological approaches, including studies that use qualitative and quantitative methods, advance a framework or theory, or provide reviews and meta-analyses. For each study, we coded the research according to study type and inference method, geographic scope, type of conservation intervention, outcome dimensions, and support for each of the principles. The full dataset is given in SI Appendix , Table S1 and also provided as a sortable spreadsheet file ( Dataset S1 ). Of the studies we coded, 170 out of the 222 (or 77%) jointly evaluated or discussed at least two of the three dimensions of environmental, social, and equity outcomes; 74 (33%) pertained to all three dimensions. Although studies that consider multiple outcomes are particularly important, studies with single outcomes can also contribute to identifying the design principles through evidence on specific pathways or from a constellation of studies on a specific policy context. For example, there have been separate but complementary studies on environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of parks, PES, or community forests in countries including Mexico, Nepal, Costa Rica, Madagascar, Indonesia, and Vietnam ( SI Appendix , Table S1 ). In addition, the set of studies we review is not intended to be comprehensive, given the thousands of potentially relevant studies that exist ( 7 , 10 , 25 , 139 , 159 , 174 , 175 ). We have, however, sought to include all recent meta-analyses or systematic reviews published in the past five years that address conservation synergies specifically. We consider a study to support a principle if it directly contains a statement agreeing with the principle or if the evidence presented in the paper substantiates the principle according to our reading of the work. We used an iterative process for this coding that combined deductive and inductive approaches: we began coding based on initially hypothesized principles, then recoded literature as additional principles emerged during our review. We include these data as a sortable table so that other researchers can transparently reference key papers related to a given principle ( Dataset S1 ). To characterize the quantity of evidence supporting each principle within the studies we reviewed, we show the share of different studies of each type and conservation intervention that were coded as supporting a given principle ( Fig. 3 ). The diversity of research approaches across studies does not lend itself to a quantitative evaluation of evidence quality across studies and we do not create such a classification. Finally, we note that several studies include multiple types of research (e.g., a framework and review plus original empirical evidence). In order to avoid double-counting, these are displayed in Fig. 3 according to the primary type of research conducted in each study. SI Appendix , Table S1 provides the more complete information about multiple types where applicable. Supplementary Material Appendix 01 (PDF) pnas.2421731122.sapp.pdf (1.1MB, pdf) Dataset S01 (XLSX) pnas.2421731122.sd01.xlsx (54.8KB, xlsx) Acknowledgments We thank the anonymous reviewers, organizers of this special issue, and participants in the associated workshops for their valuable feedback. We thank Amherst College and Oregon State University for financial support. 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