Land and power framework for assessing Ecosystem Essential Area policy

This paper outlines a land and power framework for assessing whether a new voluntary conservation area policy is a return to the classical bureaucratic status quo or anticipates the opportunity to establish new bureaucratic norms. The application of this conceptual framework produces two possibilities. The first possibility is that outcomes are tied to the conventional bureaucratic models of conservation with management regimes that remain unchanged. The second possibility is the anticipation of new management forms, in which goals are not to fulfill the bureaucratic process, but rather, produce adaptive outcomes reflective of the interests of diverse actors engaged in site-specific voluntary conservation initiatives.•The land and power framework methodology is rooted in an interest-based power framework.•The framework analyses the land and power inputs for both conservation bureaucracies or actors participating in multi-stakeholder arrangements struggling to achieve their interests and establish their agendas.•The framework proposes a conceptual framework to assess two possible process outcomes, namely that management regimes will either be tied to the conventional bureaucracy or that actors anticipate new bureaucratic norms that achieve outcomes accommodating their broader interests.