Towards an efficient implementation of the EU biodiversity strategy in forests – An analysis of alternative voluntary conservation mechanisms and selection criteria

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the European Union's Biodiversity Strategy aim to halt biodiversity loss by 2030. Both include ambitious goals to increase the area of protected land and sea to 30 % with 10 % devoted to strict protection. The required land areas are large and challenge current instruments tailored to meet much less ambitious conservation goals. Forest conservation traditionally relies on voluntary flat-rate or cost compensation policies inviting predominantly conservation-minded landowners to conserve their forests. More efficient instruments are needed to meet the ambitious goals of forest biodiversity conservation. We examine how alternative auction mechanisms perform relative to the current instruments under different selection criteria in promoting strict conservation targets. We demonstrate that the studied mechanisms differ in their ability to invite sites to the conservation program. The auction incentivises higher participation from landowners who do not have strong conservation motives and decreases information rents from landowners with strong conservation motives. When selection criteria favour high-quality sites, like old-growth stands, the auction mechanisms outperform the cost compensation policy by providing the largest area of conserved land and the highest ecological values. Thus, auctions offer a promising option for implementing forest biodiversity conservation in accordance with the EU Biodiversity Strategy. • Ambitious biodiversity conservation targets for forests require new policy instruments. • Conservation auctions analysed against a cost compensation policy, data from a Finnish PES scheme. • Auctions outperform the widely applied cost compensation policy in most studied cases. • Auctions invite sites of higher quality and sites from landowners with low conservation motives. • Auctions can cost-effectively implement the conservation goals of the EU biodiversity strategy.