Ecosystem Services in Working Lands: US Northeast

This report documents results from a regional assessment of over 1,300 ecosystem service provisioning programs and policies across the U.S. Northeast, in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia as well as in the District of Columbia. The assessment describes the programs' institutional arrangements, their incentive structures, and the ecosystem services they provide. The analysis was grounded in four overarching goals for the Northeast region named in the RFP by the Association of Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors).

Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy of the U.S. Northeast: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Producers and Extension

Extension Northeast Ecosystem Services Assessment Fellows: Alicia F. Coleman, University of Massachusetts Amherst Mario Reinaldo Machado, Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont

Photo by Michael Baccin on Unsplash

ATTRIBUTION

Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy in the U.S. Northeast: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Producers and Extension

978-1-955687-11-9

Publish Date: April 15th, 2022

Citations for this publication may be made using the following: Coleman, A.F., Machado, M.R. (2022). Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy in the U.S. Northeast: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Producers and Extension (1 st ed). Kansas City: Extension Foundation. ISBN: 978-1- 955687-11-9.

Editorial Assistance: Heather Martin and Rose Hayden-Smith

Producer: Ashley Griffin

Technical Implementer: Rose Hayden-Smith

Welcome to the Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy in the U.S. Northeast: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Producers and Extension . This resource was created for the Association of Northeast Extension Directors and the Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors with advisory support from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. It was published by the Extension Foundation. We welcome feedback and suggestions for this resource.

For more information please contact: Extension Foundation c/o Bryan Cave LLP One Kansas City Place

1200 Main Street, Suite 3800 Kansas City, MO 64105-2122 https://impact.extension.org/

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Attribution ..............................................................................................................................................2 Table of Contents.....................................................................................................................................3 Advisory Group And Acknowledgments....................................................................................................5 Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................6 Part 1: Project Overview.................................................................................................................8 1.1 Research Objectives ........................................................................................................................ 8 1.2 Scope of Work ................................................................................................................................8 Part 2: Introduction ......................................................................................................................10 2.1 Background ...................................................................................................................................... 10 2.2 The U.S. Northeast in an Age of Uncertainty .....................................................................................10 2.3 From Ecosystem Services to Managing Multifunctional & Multiscalar Landscapes..............................12 Part 3: Methods ...........................................................................................................................14 3.1 Overview .........................................................................................................................................14 3.2 Guiding Concepts and Definitions .....................................................................................................16 3.2.1 Ecosystem functions and services .......................................................................................................................... 16 3.2.2 Working lands and producers/managers ............................................................................................................... 19 3.2.3 Incentive or finance mechanisms ........................................................................................................................... 20 Part 4: Results..............................................................................................................................21 4.1 Overview .........................................................................................................................................21 4.2 Farming, Food, And Agriculture ........................................................................................................23 4.2.1 Programs for Producers/Businesses....................................................................................................................... 23 4.2.2 Programs for Supporting Institutions ..................................................................................................................... 28 4.2.3 Review of Funding/Program Organizations............................................................................................................ 31 4.2.4 Opportunities to Expand Market Presence ............................................................................................................ 32 4.3 Working Forests and Woodlands ......................................................................................................33 4.3.1 Programs for Producers/ Businesses ...................................................................................................................... 33 4.3.2 Programs for Supporting Institutions ..................................................................................................................... 36 4.3.3 Review of Funding/Program Organizations............................................................................................................ 37 4.3.4 Opportunities to Expand Market Presence ............................................................................................................ 40 4.4 Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Shellfish Operations ...............................................................................41 4.4.1 Programs for Producers/Businesses....................................................................................................................... 41 4.4.2 Programs for Supporting Institutions ..................................................................................................................... 43 4.4.3 Review of Funding/Program Organizations............................................................................................................ 45 4.4.4 Opportunities to Expand Market Presence ............................................................................................................ 46 4.5 Supporting Landscapes and Systems .................................................................................................46 4.5.1 Programs for Producers/Businesses....................................................................................................................... 46 4.5.2 Programs for Supporting Institutions ..................................................................................................................... 49 4.5.3 Review of Funding/Program Opportunities ........................................................................................................... 51

4.5.4 Opportunities to expand market presence ............................................................................................................ 52

4.6 Summary by Region and State ..........................................................................................................53 4.6.1 Areas of regional significance ................................................................................................................................. 53 4.6.2 State Summaries ..................................................................................................................................................... 58 Part 5: Conclusions and Recommendations ...................................................................................59 5.1 Increasing farm profitability and sustainability..................................................................................61 5.2 Positioning agriculture and forestry as primary leaders in mitigating climate change .........................63 5.3 Building resiliency of rural and urban communities ...........................................................................67 5.4 Increasing the appeal of agricultural professions to a wide range of young people .............................69 References ...................................................................................................................................72 Appendix .....................................................................................................................................75

ADVISORY GROUP AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The following individuals served as the Advisory Group supporting, guiding, and advising the Fellows throughout the research and writing process.

Darrell W. Donahue, West Virginia University Stephan Goetz, Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development and Penn State University Megan Hirschman, Extension Foundation Mark Hutton, University of Maine David Leibovitz, Northeast Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors Ali Mitchell Dunigan, Association of Northeast Extension Directors Rick Rhodes, Northeast Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors Diane Rowland, University of Maine Stephen K. Swallow, University of Connecticut Jennifer Volk, University of Delaware

Special thanks are given to the teams at Clark University and University of Massachusetts Amherst for their work with Extension Foundation to facilitate all necessary contracts in support of the Fellows.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Photo Credit: UMASS CAFÉ: The Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment

In the coming decades, the U.S. Northeast is expected to experience a number of the consequences of climate change, including rising temperatures, changes in precipitation and seasonality, and sea-level rise, among others (Horton et al. 2014). These consequences have varying implications for working lands and landscapes across the region as well as for the ecosystem services produced as part of working lands operations. Incentivizing the production of ecosystem services is critical to promote specific land management behaviors that improve ecological performance and ultimately sustain an environment for present and future generations. Broad regional adoption of ecosystem service production practices at scale, with the right support, can increase agricultural and forest profitability and sustainability, position working landscapes as a primary leader in the fight against environmental degradation (rather than a primary culprit), and drive a new generation of young people to consider a career across supply chains of working landscapes. In this report, we document results from a regional assessment of over 1,300 ecosystem service provisioning programs and policies across the U.S. Northeast, in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia as well as in the District of Columbia. Our assessment describes the programs' institutional arrangements, their incentive structures, and the ecosystem services they provide. This analysis was grounded in four overarching goals for the Northeast region named in the RFP by the Association of Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors):

1. Increase farm profitability and sustainability. 2. Position agriculture as a primary leader in mitigating climate change. 3. Build the resiliency of rural and urban communities. 4. Increase the appeal of agricultural professions to a wide range of young people.

As of September 2021, a sample of approximately 1,300 programs were identified for their objectives to incentivize ecosystem service provisioning and practices on working lands in the Northeast. Overall, these programs target four primary working landscapes: 1) farming, food, and agriculture; 2) working forests and woodlands; 3) fisheries, aquaculture, and shellfish; and 4) non-industrial supporting landscapes and systems. These programs operate on national-, regional-, and state-levels and are organized through private and public sectors as well as public-private partnerships. They also contain a number of programs that allow ecosystem service producers to expand market presence and gain traction in their respective industry. As seen in Table i, four main conclusions were drawn from this assessment and are intended to inform policy, programming, and research among Cooperative Extension and Agricultural Experiment Stations in the U.S. Northeast.

Table i. Conclusions and recommendations of this report

Conclusion 1: Producers and land managers operate according to the "safety-first" principle and are often risk-averse. In order to be successful, practices and programs must sufficiently and sustainably offset these risks in concrete ways.

Recommendation 1.1

Balance long-term ecological considerations with short-term economic returns by avoiding tradeoffs and diversifying direct and indirect incentives.

Recommendation 1.2

Promote ecosystem service provisioning on smaller scales (e.g. the household, farm, or community) to illustrate value, ensure long-term sustainability, and maintain local stakeholder participation.

Conclusion 2: Programs are structured to incentivize either a single ecosystem service or multiple layered services. There are strengths and weaknesses to both approaches. Project design should account for those strengths and weaknesses as well as for the potential to scale practices from individual farms to multifunctional landscapes.

Recommendation 2.1

Conduct an expert panel of the strategic ecosystem services priorities for the region and compare to IPBES priorities for the Americas to assess gaps and opportunities for cross-scalar synergies.

Recommendation 2.2

Programs to provision ecosystem services are differentially accessible. Ecosystem services themselves impact communities differently. It is important to consider not only the effects of programs on ecosystem services but also their effects on equity.

Conclusion 3: Very few programs reviewed in this assessment directly address resilience, and even fewer address resilience beyond the farm scale. Programs focused on resilience, especially as it functions across scale and between urban and rural areas, should be a priority..

Recommendation 3.1

Identify the indicators of resilience (e.g. for whom, by whom, for what, over what time period) at various scales and for various stakeholders across the U.S. Northeast.

Recommendation 3.2

Evaluate the effect of regional consortia and the role of existing governance and institutional structures, especially conservation districts and higher education.

Conclusion 4: Ecosystem service provisioning programs for young and beginner farmers, while important, may not be enough to entice young people into working lands-related careers. Programs that couple ecosystem service provisioning with incentives that directly support livelihood

provisioning, such as cash-in-hand (basic income), land access/acquisition, free education/professional development, childcare and health care, may help.

Recommendation 4.1

Evaluate the regionally specific factors inhibiting youth from working-lands careers in the U.S. Northeast, with a particular eye on issues of land tenure, childcare, health care, and higher education.

Recommendation 4.2

Evaluate the role of cash-transfer and basic income programs to supplement conventional, market-based systems.

Part 1: Project Overview

1.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Funded by the Association of Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and the Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (NERA) with advisory support from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD), this ecosystem services landscape assessment disseminates primary source data related to ecosystem services practices, policies, and organizations of the U.S. Northeast. The assessment is intended to build capacity and expand the portfolio of the Cooperative Exte nsion and Agricultural Research Station System’s work in supporting producers to deliver ecosystem services on working lands, with a goal to: increase farm 1 profitability and sustainability; position agriculture as a primary leader in mitigating climate change; build resiliency of rural and urban communities; and increase the appeal of agricultural professions to a wide range of young people. In support of such goals, the research objectives of the project were described in the Request for Proposals and are the following: Increase the knowledge that Northeast Land Grant University (LGU) Extension and Research partners and producers have about current Northeast agricultural ecosystem services activities, opportunities, and gaps. • Integrate fragmented knowledge for future program, practice, and policy design. • Encourage dialogue among producers, LGU Extension and Research programs, and policymakers. • • Inform the design and audience of a series of virtual listening sessions and a working symposium. • Along with the results from the virtual listening sessions and the working symposium, inform the potential development of funding streams and integrated Extension and research activities, policy proposals, and more.

1.2 SCOPE OF WORK

Our scope of work was driven by four research objectives as laid out in the original RFP:

• Identify the organizational scope of relevant policies and programs. • Document ag-related practices that procure ecosystem functions/services. • Report the breadth of incentives and rewards offered to ag-related producers for ecosystem function/service practices. • Describe producers’ strategies to advertise ecosystem functions/services and boost revenue. This landscape assessment is grounded in a database of incentives programs and based on a review of select scholarly literature, internet research, and baseline documentation provided by the members of NEED and NERA. This database catalogs various types of incentive structures (e.g., financial mechanisms, programs, partnerships) that fund specific practices in agriculture, animal husbandry, and land management and, as result, procure ecosystem functions and services (e.g., water conservation, soil conservation, carbon sequestration). The geography of interest focuses exclusively on the U.S. Northeast and covers the following states, commonwealths, and districts: Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia. Through the duration of the project, the Fellows team met for at least one hour, once per week, between June and November 2021.

1 Through this report, the term “farm” broadly includes a number of working lands and affiliated practices, including agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, and fish or water-based cultivation.

NOTE: The programs evaluated in this report can be viewed as a digital database, hosted by the Extension Foundation. When you click on the above link, an Excel spreadsheet with the data will be downloaded to your computer. This spreadsheet can be searched, manipulated, and saved on your computer. The following states and district are included in the database:

Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Maine Maryland

Massachusetts New Hampshire New Jersey New York Pennsylvania Rhode Island Vermont West Virginia

Part 2: Introduction

2.1 BACKGROUND

In March 2021, the Extension Foundation released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for projects that would research and produce an assessment of ecosystem services practices, policies, and relevant organizations in the U.S. Northeast. Funded by the Association of Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and the Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (NERA) with advisory support from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD), the goals of this RFP were twofold. First, the research would help to “build capacity and expand the portfolio of the Cooperative Extension and Agricultural Research Station Systems to support and encourage producers to deliver ecosystem services on working lands.” Second, the research would inform the design and audience of a Northeast Ecosystem Services Symposium, with the goal to encourage dialogue among producers, Land Grant University (LGU) Extension and Research programs, and policy makers across the Northeast. This report describes a range of mechanisms, programs, and organizations presently available to incentivize the production of ecosystem services on farms, identifying the source of funding as well as the range of eligible recipients. This assessment also begins to delineate the contingencies of various incentive mechanisms and the ways in which advocacy for civic concern and/or land management practices affect the pursuit of improved ecosystem services for sustainable production systems, ecological health, and the livelihood security 2 of producers, managers, and surrounding community members. The framework of landscape multifunctionality is used to account for inherent multidimensionality of ecosystem services and how these services manifest across geographic and political scales. By doing so, this report relies on newly expanded de finitions and constructs of ecosystem services, or nature’s contributions to people ( IPBES 2017), to map the webs of socio-ecological systems in the U.S. Northeast and better connect livelihoods and landscapes with practice and policy.

2.2 THE U.S. NORTHEAST IN AN AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

Incentivizing the production of ecosystem services is critical to promote specific land management behaviors that improve ecological performance and ultimately sustain an environment for present and future generations. Broad regional adoption of ecosystem service production practices at scale, with the right support, can increase agricultural and forest profitability and sustainability, position working landscapes as a primary leader in the fight against environmental degradation (rather than a primary culprit), and drive a new generation of young people to consider a career across supply chains of working landscapes. The U.S. Northeast is not unique in its need to sustain a healthy regional landscape and land-based economies, but there are several unique attributes in this region that propel the urgency to assess the production of ecosystem services on working lands: present and future land cover trajectories, expected and unknown regional shocks and threats, and opportunities to leverage natural capital as a direct and indirect source of income. Within the United States, the Northeast is “ the most heavily forested and most densely populated region in the country” ( U.S. GCRP 2017), and the urban coastal corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston is one of the most developed environments in the world (Horton et al. 2014). Between 1996 and 2010, upland forests (51%), agriculture (13%), and open waters (13%) were the most common land covers of the

2 A livelihood “comprises the capabilities, assets (stores, resources, claims, and access) and act ivities required for a means of living; a livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for the next generation” (Chambers & Conway 1992).

region; however, more than two-thirds of all new development during this time was classified as low intensity or open space developed, converted from lands previously categorized as upland forest and agriculture (NOAA n.d.). At the same time, the region has struggled with a declining productive landbase (e.g., agriculture and other working lands), decreasing regional self-reliance (Griffin et al. 2015), and population migrating towards the coastline (Horton et al. 2014). The need to sustain critical ecosystem services (e.g., food, fiber, clean water) across multiple spatial scales is an accepted tenant of modern resource management (Rickenback et al. 2011) and is highly relevant to the U.S. Northeast; however, the expansion of privately owned lands challenges cooperative, multi-scale sustainable land management strategies. Ten million private individuals and families own over 35% of all U.S. forestlands, with concentrations exceeding 85% in parts of the eastern United States (Butler 2008). Moreover, many ecologically important sites are on or connect to small private lands (Scott et al. 2006; Ruhl et al. 2007). Balancing land conversion — from forested or agricultural land covers — with land conservation remains a notable trend (U.S. GCRP 2017). Shocks and threats to the U.S. Northeast also motivate the need to increase the pace and scale of ecosystem service provisioning. The COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 laid bare a number of fault lines within production systems of the United States, including food and agriculture, forestry and wood products, and aquaculture and fisheries. However, the pandemic has also stoked public interest in food system resilience (Béné 2020; Hendrickson 2020) and access to outdoor public places (Pouso et al. 2021; Rollston & Galea 2020), and has subsequently driven political will to deliver on these interests. The U.S. Northeast is also expected to experience regionally specific impacts of a changing climate, including rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and a warming ocean, especially in the Gulf of Maine (Horton et al 2014). An example of projected impacts is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Examples of projected climate change impacts to the U.S. Northeast

Projected Impact M Magnitude of Impact

Citation

Rising temperatures

US Global Change Research Group 2020

• More than 3.6°F (2°C) warmer annual average temperatures than during the preindustrial era • Considered the largest temperature increase anywhere in the contiguous United States • Extreme precipitation greater than in any other region in the United States • Frequency of heavy downpours is projected to continue to increase over the remainder of the century. • The greatest increase in sea level rise rate globally has been documented on the stretch of coastline from the Delmarva Peninsula in Virginia to the elbow of Massachusetts (2 to 3.7 mm per year — more than three times the global average). • Less distinct seasonal changes, including milder winters and earlier springs, threaten to alter ecosystems and environments in ways that adversely impact tourism, farming, and forestry.

Increasing precipitation extremes

Rising sea levels

Changing seasons

2.3 FROM ECOSYSTEM SERVICES TO MANAGING MULTIFUNCTIONAL & MULTISCALAR LANDSCAPES

Ecosystem services are generally understood as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems,” (MEA 2005). The concept was developed to rationalize and economically value the functions of ecosystems (Danly and Widmark 2016). Indicators of ecosystem services — and the value they provide — include clean water, healthy wildlife habitat, soil formation, and nutrient cycling. By definition, ecosystem services of working landscapes include the produced materials or goods with market value, for example, food for humans or livestock, field wood, timber, or carbon sequestration. However, a stringent focus on only the products or outcomes of discrete ecological processes avoids the complexity of socio-ecological systems (Selmen 2009) involved in the production of ecosystem services and de-emphasizes the operations and production processes of working landscapes. Therefore, the framework of landscape multifunctionality (the joint supply of multiple, stacked ecosystem services at the landscape scale, Mastrangelo et al. 2014) is used to situate this report’s assessment of incentive programs that support and encourage producers to deliver ecosystem services on working lands. Incorporating theoretical and applied principles from the fields of landscape ecology, agroecology, and ecological design, landscape multifunctionality is an approach to planning environmental, social, and economic functions of contiguous or regional landscapes while emphasizing land owners, managers, and users as primary stakeholders (Lovell and Johnston 2009). This means that the rural-urban divide can be unified as a continuous, interdependent matrix (Selman 2009) with functions beyond shared locations and single places or processes (Lovell and Taylor 2013). While intentionally designed working landscapes could serve independent functions (e.g. separating forests for timber from places for recreation), the institutional environment in the United States has not traditionally encouraged multiscalar thinking and cross-boundary collective action among landowners, resource managers, and policy makers (Rickenbach et al. 2011). As a result, few resources exist to evaluate the design of multifunctional landscapes independently (e.g. at the scale of the whole farm) and in aggregate (e.g. across multi-state regions) (Lovell et al. 2010). Both of these evaluation methods are important in designing and evaluating programs and policies that support a producer’s capacity and ability to deliver ecosystem services on working lands, to sustain economic viability, and to build resilience across working landscapes. Figure 1 illustrates example configurations of landscape multifunctionality and can be described through the lens of working landscapes. Unlike a mono-functional landscape (a), multifunctional landscapes support multiple functions in the same place and at the same time (b). For example, an acre of land used to exclusively produce corn can provide fewer ecological functions than an acre of land used to produce a mix of annual vegetables, perennial berries, and a cover crop. In addition, different landscape functions can be supported in the same place during different times (c); for example, inland floodplains function as stormwater retention after heavy rainfall and can serve as seasonal breeding habitat for amphibians. Last, different landscape functions can be supported by different places that interact (d), and these spatial combinations can differ in scale (e). e.g. upland forests support cleaner downstream waters that can be used as supplemental irrigation by farmers and healthy fishing ecosystems for anglers. Ultimately, the value of landscape multifunctionality depends on the ways in which stakeholders interpret different functions (f). e.g. the same field hedgerow could be seen by a farmer as a windbreak and by a hunter as deer habitat.

Figure 1. Depictions of landscape multifunctionality, created by Rolf et al. 2019 (based and extended as reported by the authors in the text below. From Brandt & Vejre 2004 and Selman 2009)

The framework of landscape multifunctionality is used in two ways for this assessment of incentive programs that support and encourage producers to deliver ecosystem services on working lands.

First, landscape multifunctionality values the provisioning of ecosystem services that occur within the spatial boundaries of private or public property as well as the regional matrices of land cover types and land management arrangements that exist in the U.S. Northeast. Thus, this outlook considers private landowners (from households to private-sector institutions) and public land owners (from federal, state, or local governments) as interdependent shareholders that manage ecosystem health at and above the scale of an individual property parcel. Table 2 itemizes several differences between land management practices exclusively tailored to an individual parcel and those practicing cross-boundary, multiscalar management (Rickenback et al. 2011). Second, across a landscape, the spatial combination of functions inherently cross institutional boundaries and require “cross -boundary, mul tiscalar management”. This interwoven complexity offers an opportunity to monitor and prioritize the variety of relationships among ecological processes, ecosystem service scope (i.e. what constitutes a service?) and scale (i.e. how to bridge local practices with global challenges, such as climate change mitigation?), and socio-economic functions embedded in the landscape (i.e. food and commodity production, livelihood provisioning, cultural heritage).

Table 2. Comparison of “owner - centric” versus cross -boundary land management models, by Rickenback et al. (2011)

Part 3: Methods

3.1 OVERVIEW

From the outset, three primary types of information were of interest for this landscape assessment, including program administration, incentive structure, and ecosystem functions/services (Table 3). An initial list of inclusion/exclusion criteria was established a-priori , and a selection of public and private agencies/organizations was systematically used as an initial point to “snowball” and expand the search to additional agencies/organizations. This assessment considered programs available from the federal government or national organizations, regional collaborations, and state agencies or state-level entities; highly localized programs available only at the county or municipal level were not considered in this report.

Table 3. Inclusion and exclusion criteria that helped identify relevant programs

Category

Inclusion criteria

Exclusion criteria

Program Administration

U.S. public agencies, regional commissions/ coalitions: • Federal government • State government • Multi-state actors • Agricultural experiment stations/ Cooperative Extension U.S. private organizations, for example: • Audubon Society chapters • The Nature Conservancy • Watershed organizations • Land trusts • Foundations

Municipal policy/ordinances, specific county- or municipal-level programs

Corporations with missions outside the scope of this project

Incentive Structure

Programs that fund: •

Sponsorship, advertisement, fundraising programs, fee for service

Compliance/regulatory standards

• Income lost or costs accrued as a result of conservation practice(s)

Timeline Ongoing: presently active during FY 20/ 21 In development: legally backed/funded program that is not yet implemented

Repealed, de-funded, or suspended programs

Any USD amounts/eligible land units

All practices related to agriculture, animal husbandry, and land use/management

Practices related to the capture/release of wildlife for leisure

All types of producers (small farm/second income to large industrial operations)

Ecosystem Functions/Services

All types of ecosystem functions and services

Not tied to ag-related practices

Early in the data collection process, it became clear that the U.S. Northeast, in varying capacities, is not in deficit of public-facing programs or organizations working towards the provisioning of ecosystem services on working lands. Due to constraints of time and insider knowledge of emerging (but unadvertised) programs, our data collection does not represent a census of all programs in existence but, rather, can be considered a quasi-representative sample of programs available to land managers and producers. Analysis of incentive programs began by separating the data between the specific types of working landscapes eligible for an incentive program. From these data, four broad categories emerged: 1) farming, food, and agriculture; 2) working forests and woodlands; 3) fisheries, aquaculture, and shellfish; and 4) non-industrial supporting landscapes and systems.

Within each of these categories, the data was further coded for several program attributes, including:

• The named funder or purveyor of the incentive program as well as its agency and department, affiliation with the public or private sector or a public-private-partnerships (PPPs), and the geographic reach (or scale) of the program in its entirety (listed by state in Section 4.5.2) • The specific entity stated to be eligible for the incentive program (if not stated clearly, eligibility was determined from the program description) • The type of indirect or direct incentives and mechanisms by which the incentives are offered to the eligible entities (in Section 3.2.3) (Some incentive mechanisms were not clearly in the program description and were assigned a category based on the inferred benefit of the incentive.); • The primary, dominant category of ecosystem functions and services that the inventive is intended to assist (in Section 3.2.1) (While it was clear that many programs undoubtedly incentivize more than one ecosystem function and service, programs were conservatively assigned a category based on the predominant inferred intention and mission of the incentive.) Next, programs were analyzed based on the relationships among eligible entities, purveying organizations, and target ecosystem services, especially as relevant among private, public, and PPPs. To visualize these connections, alluvial plots were used to link the relationships among these categories of interest (Figure 2).

Figure 2. What is an alluvial plot?

Alluvial plots are a type of flow diagram, showing the connections among different categories of data (Brunson 2020). The overall quantities, or frequency, of data per category are connected by ribbons, where narrower ribbons represent fewer quantities (and smaller connections) and thicker ribbons represent larger quantities (and more robust connections). The alluvial plots shown in this report connect: • The institutional sector issuing or administering each incentive program The IPBES ecosystem function and services that the incentive program is intended to enhance or produce.

Photo Credit: R Studio Community (2019)

Last, programs were evaluated for the opportunities they provide for improved and/or expanded market presence generated by the provisioning of ecosystem functions/services for farmers, land managers, and working lands. This section was created from descriptive observations and emergent themes in the database.

3.2 GUIDING CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

As relevant to the U.S. Northeast, the ecosystem functions and services of four primary working landscapes we focused on were 1) farming, food, and agriculture; 2) working forests and woodlands; 3) fisheries, aquaculture, and shellfish operations; and 4) supporting landscapes and systems. Our scope of work and subsequent analysis were guided by the following definitions and assumptions.

3.2.1 Ecosystem functions and services While definitions vary, ecosystem functions and services are popularly known as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems” (MEA 2005). As part of this initial conceptualization, ecosystem services were descri bed in four categories: provisioning services, regulating services, supporting services, and cultural services (Figure 3). To assign value to the diversity of benefits people receive from their environment, these benefits include not only economic functions such as production and profitability but also ecological and social functions (Bolund and Hunhammar 1999; MEA 2005). As such, ecosystem services have been framed to support the production of food and material goods and to maintain the continued function of the ecosystems that underlie these broader economic functions.

Figure 3. Traditional conceptualization of ecosystem services, developed by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)

However, a stringent focus on only the products or outcomes of discrete ecological processes curtails the complexity of socio-ecological systems (Selmen 2009), especially those inherent to working lands and landscapes. Therefore, this assessment relies on the framework of landscape multifunctionality (the joint supply of multiple, stacked ecosystem services; see Section 2.3 for further discussion) and a broader, contemporary framework of ecosystem services created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2017). The expanded IPBES framework codes a variety of nature’s contributions to people — or ecosystem services — into 18 categories. These four categories are grouped by their specific function to people and include regulating contributions, material contributions, and non- material contributions (Table 4).

Table 4. Conceptualization of nature’s contributions to people (NCP) or ecosystem services by the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2017)

As laid out in the IPBES framework, regulating contributions consist of ecosystem services that regulate and maintain the natural processes of an environment (see Díaz et al. 2015). These include everything from habitat creation and maintenance to soil formation and the regulation of detrimental organisms and natural hazards. Material contribution s consist of material flows from the environment to people and include

everything from energy provisioning and food production to medicine and other harvestable materials. Non- material contributions consist of non-material flows from the environment to people and include things such as educational and volunteer opportunities, recreation, and cultural values. The benefits of using the IPBES framework for this assessment were twofold. First, the spectrum of sub- categories outlined a generalized, standardized rubric by which to understand the complex interactions between practices and policies and the natural environment of the U.S. Northeast. Because the framework is standardized and supported by an international group of subject-area experts, it can be compared to other studies in the future. Second, the IPBES framework’s three broad categories— regulating, material, and non- material contributions — includes important resources, services, and commodities as well as the interdependencies of social, cultural, spiritual, and experiential contributions (Díaz et al. 2018). These services are conceptualized as “nature’s contributions to people,” which serves to frame economic and natural science measures of ecosystem services to scale beyond individual parcels and landowners.

3.2.2 Working lands and producers/managers Using concepts and definitions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and scholars in landscape ecology, Table 5 itemizes the definitions of working landscapes and its producers/managers used in this assessment.

Table 5. Definitions of working landscapes and producers/managers used in this report

Working Lands & Premises

Producer, Manager

Agricultural Land Agricultural land is used primarily for the production of farm commodities. The categories of "agricultural land" are cropland and pasture; orchards, groves, vineyards, bush fruits, and horticultural areas (such as nurseries); feeding operations; and others (USDA NAL 2021).)

Crop and livestock farm owner/operator A farmer, otherwise known as the “farm operator” (USDA 2020), is the person who runs a farm and makes day-to-day management decisions. Given the complex ownership and land access arrangements in U.S. farming, federal program incentive benefits are available to an owner-operator, a landlord, a tenant, or a sharecropper who shares in the risk of producing a crop and is entitled to a share of the crop produced on the farm (P.L. 101 – 171, Sec. 1001).

Farmstead Land used primarily for dwellings, barns, pens, corrals, gardens, and other uses in connection with operating farms or ranches (USDA NAL 2021)

Woodland and forestland “Woodlands” are land used primarily for the production of adapted wood crops and to provide tree cover for watershed protection, beautification, etc; this does not include farmstead and field windbreak plantings (USDA NAL 2021). “Forestland” is any land at least 10% occupied by forest trees of any size or formerly having had such tree cover and not currently developed for non-forest use (USDA NAL 2021). Fishery A “fishery” is any premise on which breeding, hatching, or fish-rearing facilities are situated when the premise is required to have a license by the state fish and game code, including ponds for commercial use (USDA NAL 2021). Supporting regional landscape These landscapes are areas of land that encapsulate working lands, with ecological structures, processes, and dynamics that affect and are affected by (interact with) working lands (Forman 2014)

Woodland and forestry owner/operator The corporate, family, or other private owner and tribal owners of forest or woodlands are known as “private forest and woodland owners” (Butler et al. 2016).

Fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants farm owner/operator The production of aquatic organisms under controlled conditions throughout part or all their life cycle is known as “aquaculture” (USDA 2021).

Other land owner, manager, or operator This is the person or entity that retains ownership or legal operation of the land and enacts its access and use rights (to be on the land and use its resources).

3.2.3 Incentive or finance mechanisms Compensation for the provisioning of ecosystem functions and services comes in several ways (Figure 4), and incentives generally fall into one of two categories: direct and indirect. Direct incentives provide monetary support to protect, restore, enhance, or improve natural resources and land management practices; create an immediate impact on individuals and/or the community, either because they are given directly in cash (sum of money) or in-kind (provide transferable benefit that clearly improves everyday life) (de Camino Velozo, R. 1987). Direct incentives can be delivered in-cash — as in the case of payment for ecosystem services (PES) — cooperative/cost-share agreements, implementation grants, loans, loss adjustment, or land acquisitions/easements. In-cash compensation also includes marketable permits, which provide tradable credit for maintaining environmental impacts beyond a certain predefined baseline. These are often seen in the case of various mitigation banks for carbon or pollution. Direct incentives can also be delivered in-kind , as in the case of facility and/or infrastructure redevelopment or by providing access to tools and equipment. On the other hand , indirect incentives are intended to protect, restore, enhance, or improve natural resources and land management practices without the transfer of direct monetary value. This includes fiscal support through certain tax abatements/credits, in-lieu fees, or certification based on the implementation of certain conservation activities or sustainable practices. Indirect incentives also include services , such as technical assistance and technical education, which provide access to medium- to upper-level technical staff or access to instruction free of charge. In addition, social benefits, whether through partnership programs aimed at harnessing the advantages of organized operations or preferred vendor programs, are also considered forms of indirect incentives.

Figure 4. Water Funds are an example of a collaborative ecosystem service incentive program. “Upstream” water providers are allocated funding to enhance or restore water quality best management practices, paid by “downstream” water users that directly receive benefit fr om upstream practices.

Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy, Water Funds Toolbox

Part 4: Results

4.1 OVERVIEW

In total, this assessment identified just over 1,300 relevant incentive programs for the U.S. Northeast. These programs functioned at a variety of geographic scales, from the national to the regional to the state and also came from a variety of institutional actors, both private and public as well as various PPPs. The topical categories covered in this assessment include: • Food, farming, and agriculture (Section 4.2) • Working forests and woodlands (Section 4.3) • Fisheries, aquaculture, and shellfish operations (Section 4.4) • Supporting landscapes and systems (Section 4.5).

Figure 5. Distribution of incentive programs from this sample, separated by the eligible entity and funding sector

At the highest level, the results are shown by relative frequencies across the range of eligible groups for each incentive program as well as by the issuing institutional sector of each program and geographic reach (Figure 5). As applicable for the U.S. Northeast, national-scale incentive programs constitute about one- quarter of this sample (n=316, 24.2%). From this sample, it is clear that more federal programs (national scale, public sector) are directly available to individual producers/managers (which includes privately owned businesses, co-ops, and management institutions) (n=110) than they are to other institutions/organizations, like municipal or state governments and research institutions (n=72). Overall, incentive programs from federal agencies and departments included those available to the nation as a whole as well as to the U.S. Northeast region specifically. Of all federal agencies, most programs from this database were available through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (total n=139), followed by the U.S. Department of the Interior (n=22) (Table 6).

Private-sector incentive programs, provided by national organizations (available across the country), are also most available to individual producers/managers (n=97). These private organizations represent a range

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