Regional Partnerships

Programs & Projects

The Centre for Land Conservation is committed to building partnerships with conservation practitioners, governments, funders, industry and the public to collaborate nationally and regionally to find innovative ways to conserve, restore and sustainably manage more land in Canada.

Regional Partnerships for Conservation and Climate

A Regional Conservation Partnership (RCP) is a network of conservation organizations, Indigenous peoples, communities, landowners, governments, and other partners working together to achieve conservation and climate action at a landscape scale. RCPs are often informal, with structure and governance tailored to the needs of each region.

By working together for their local landscapes, individuals and organizations can achieve lasting conservation outcomes, designed with their communities and the climate in mind.‍

A typical PCR creates a conservation vision for the geography in question and agrees on landscape-level conservation, stewardship, restoration, and climate action priorities, as well as sustainable development actions. They then implement the agreed actions and ensure that partner coordination is sustainable over the long term. Aligning around a common vision increases the likelihood of achieving shared goals, enabling partners to build a stronger case for support and increasing the capacity of all partners.

Building on research and consultations with similar partnerships in Canada and the United States, the Centre for Land Conservation is currently exploring the possibility of establishing regional conservation and climate partnerships to accelerate the pace of conservation in Canada.

Building a Landscape Conservation Approach

The Centre for Land Conservation has released new research exploring how Regional Conservation and Climate Partnerships could accelerate conservation efforts across Canada. This comprehensive working paper examines the growth and success of Regional Conservation Partnerships (RCPs) in the United States and analyzes existing partnerships operating in Canada to determine their potential for supporting whole-landaboutscape conservation approaches.

The research is particularly relevant for southern regions of Canada, where private landowners history and community-based conservation organizations often work in overlapping areas. Through detailed analysis of partnership models and consultation with similar initiatives across North America, the paper identifies key gaps and challenges in forming and maintaining effective regional partnerships, while highlighting the characteristics that drive success.

A significant contribution of this research is its recommendation to expand the traditional RCP model to directly incorporate climate objectives, proposing a new framework for Regional Conservation and Climate Partnerships (RCCPs). The findings demonstrate that RCCPs warrant further investigation for broader application across Canada, with the potential to significantly expand both geographic reach and conservation impact.

The research affirms that fostering the establishment and development of these partnerships could be transformative for Canada’s conservation landscape, offering a proven pathway to strengthen and accelerate conservation outcomes at scale.

The full paper is available on the Lincoln Institute’s website here.