Do conservation covenants consider the delivery of ecosystem services?

•Conservation covenants promote the conservation of biodiversity and compatible ecosystem services.•However, it is not clear whether ecosystem services co-benefits arise incidentally or through explicit policy design.•We undertook a content analysis of conservation covenant documents and policy frameworks to examine this issue.•We found that the requirements of conservation covenants did not widely consider the management ecosystem services.•When covenant clauses did focus on ecosystem services, they primarily considered the ecosystem services flows.•Conservation covenants can improve the delivery ecosystem services by considering ecosystem services supply and flows within the policy design process.