Nature State: Incentivized Forests in Southern Ontario

Abstract

Nature State: Incentivized Forests in Southern Ontario investigates the rapid growth of voluntary private land conservation efforts in suburban and rural Ontario, focusing on the rise of incentivized management from the mid-1990s until present day. Using a mixed methods approach the study combines semi-structured interviews, archival research, and GIS analysis with case studies in southern Ontario. This research considers the coevolution of new taxation schemes for conservation, devolved governance, and privatized approaches to owning land and resources. In particular, this work examines the growing use of programs such as the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program in order to manage environmental change and biodiversity of forested lands within an extended urban fabric. Incentivized environmental management raises important questions about the growing interdependence between suburban land conservation and urban housing affordability, the changing scales of stewardship, and the increasing role of finance in land conservation. My findings reveal the development of new actor assemblages and knowledge geographies that have come about due to the transfer of forest management activities from the state to landowners, the new spatialities of protected areas and their land use dynamics, as well as the integrated role of civil society and stewardship in addressing urban climate futures. Committee: Neil Brenner, Charles Waldheim, Sonja Dümpelmann