Climate change and the cost-effective governance mode for biodiversity conservation

Optimal planning of biodiversity conservation and habitat location is paramount for the cost-effective implementation of nature and biodiversity conservation measures. Established approaches for land use planning and conservation site selection however might not be optimal in a world with changing climatic conditions. Generally, conservation organizations can choose one of two main governance modes: (1) buy land to implement conservation measures themselves on their land, or (2) compensate landowners for their voluntary provision of conservation measures on their land. We analyse in a conceptual ecological-economic simulation four different conservation site selection strategies in either of the two governance modes. Afterwards, we investigate the ecological and economic effectiveness of each governance-mode-strategy combination in a climatically changing environment, and in particular the influence of climate change characteristics. We show that the choice of the two governance modes and four patch selection strategies influences the cost-effectiveness of the implementation, generally suggesting that buying land, combined with the a species targeting patch selection strategy generates the highest cost-effectiveness.