Volunteering for land care - A typology of civil society organizations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland as the basis for establishing new initiatives

Abstract

Traditional agricultural landscapes are hotspots of biocultural diversity but often threatened by land abandonment or changes in cultivation methods. This is a particular challenge for protected areas and their mission to safeguard the local biocultural heritage. The aim of this article is to present a typology of civil society organizations that coordinate the voluntary engagement of non-farmers for collective land care and to provide insights for those who want to initiate similar volunteers' activities to preserve cultural landscapes. We analyse 20 volunteer organizations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland with regard to the formal structure, the goals pursued, the integration of volunteers and the spatial scope of the activities. In an empirically grounded, inductively deduced typification, we identify six types of volunteer organizations: (1) volunteer tourism facilitated by agencies, (2) national nature conservation associations, (3) cultural heritage volunteering, (4) regional land care associations, (5) local landscape protection initiatives, and (6) corporate volunteering. This heterogeneity has to be taken into account when discussing options for initiating new voluntary land care action as not all types can meet the practical and formal requirements in different geographical and organizational contexts.