Summary
This paper examines the effectiveness of, and interactions between policy instruments for land-use governance in tropical regions, as regulation moves away from command-and-control interventions and towards a more collaborative market-based and demand-driven approach to promoting sustainable land-use. The new instruments are identified as eco-certification, geographical indications, commodity roundtables and moratoriums, and payments for environmental services; despite a lack of rigorous studies, there is evidence to suggest that they can lead to improvements in land use sustainability. The authors assess the synergies between these instruments and public land-use regulations, providing examples, and suggesting a typology to describe potential interactions as complimentary, substitution, and undermining effects on the agenda setting, implementation, and monitoring and enforcement stages of the regulatory process. Sustainability interventions are hindered in contexts where governments come into competition with NGOs and corporations, however well-designed public-private instruments have been shown to be effective where institutional and governance contexts are favourable. Further research is needed understand how best to combine, sequence, and target public-private policies for sustainable land-use outcomes.