1. A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmlandLorna J. Cole, David Kleijn, Lynn Dicks, Jane C. Stout, Simon G. Potts, Matthias Albrecht, Mario V. Balzan, Ignasi Bartomeus, Penelope J. Bebeli, Danilo Bevk, Jacobus C. Biesmeijer, Robert Chlebo, Anželika Dautarte, Nikolaos Emmanouil, Chris Hartfield, John M. Holland, Andrea Holzschuh, Nieke T. J. Knoben, Anikó Kovács-Hostyánszki, Yael Mandelik, Heleni Panou, Robert J. Paxton, Theodora Petanidou, Miguel A.A. Pinheiro de Carvalho, Maj Rundlöf, Jean-Pierre Sarthou, Menelaos C. Stavrinides, Maria Jose Suso, Hajnalka Szentgyörgyi, Bernard E. Vaissière, Androulla Varnava, Vilà Montserrat, Romualdas Zemeckis, Jeroen Scheper, 2020, original scientific article Abstract: Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake.
A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources.
EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early-season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived.
Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator-friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes.
Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert elicitation highlights the need to create a variety of interconnected, well-managed habitats that complement each other in the resources they offer. To achieve this the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 should take a holistic view to implementation that integrates the different delivery vehicles aimed at protecting biodiversity (e.g. enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and agri-environment and climate measures). To improve habitat quality we recommend an effective monitoring framework with target-orientated indicators and to facilitate the spatial targeting of options collaboration between land managers should be incentivised.
Keywords: agri-environment schemes, bees, CAP Green Architecture, Common Agricultural Policy, Ecological Focus Areas, habitat complementarity, pollination services, pollinator conservation
Published in DiRROS: 22.07.2024; Views: 134; Downloads: 207
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2. Forest subsidy distribution in five European countriesElena Haeler, Andreas Bolte, Rafael Buchacher, Harri Hänninen, R. Jandl, Artti Juutinen, Katharina Kuhlmey, Mikko Kurttila, Gun Lidestav, Raisa Mäkipää, Lydia Rosenkranz, Matevž Triplat, Urša Vilhar, Kerstin Westin, Silvio Schueler, 2023, original scientific article Abstract: Forest subsidies are widely used to achieve policy objectives aimed at maintaining and supporting the provision of the various ecosystem services provided by forests. In the European Union, an important instrument is the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) within the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but countries also have national subsidy systems. In both cases, individual countries determine which objectives they want to achieve with the subsidy schemes and which measures are supported. In this comparative study, we investigate which forest-related measures are subsidized across Europe and which forest owners, representing a very heterogeneous group, are involved in the activities of the subsidy systems. We collected data on subsidies paid out for forest-related measures from Austria, Finland, Germany, Slovenia and Sweden from the EAFRD funding period 2014–2020 for a comparison of the funded activities. Further, we analysed how subsidies were distributed among private forest owners with forest holdings of different sizes by performing G-tests to compare the observed with the expected subsidies received by forest owners in the different size categories. The results show that through the flexibility given by the CAP for countries to adjust their subsidy programmes to the specific national needs, EAFRD funds and equivalent national subsidies are indeed used for a wide range of activities instead of only a few following one common European goal. Reflecting the different needs and various forest functions, the subsidized activities range from the more ecology-oriented “investment to increase resistance and the ecological value of forests” to the more management-oriented “purchase of new machinery and new equipment for forestry operations”. In all five countries, small-scale forest owners with holdings smaller than 200 ha are the largest owner group and manage a large share of the forest area in private hands (from 47% in Austria to 97% in Slovenia). However, especially owners of the smallest holdings (< 20 ha) rarely use the funding scheme of the EAFRD framework and thus receive a disproportionately low share of subsidies. There might be several reasons for this. Small-scale forest owners are generally less involved regarding policy issues (including subsidy schemes) than owners of larger forest holdings and may not be aware of all funding opportunities. In addition, the considerable effort to apply, including project preparation, administration and documentation may be perceived as a barrier. It became clear that the current subsidy systems of the countries focus on different forest policy objectives. Our study further revealed that the documentation of subsidy distribution is partly unclear and inconsistent across countries hampering European comparisons. However, understanding current subsidy distribution is urgently needed for increasing the effectiveness of subsidy systems to achieve European policy goals of vital multifunctional forests.
Keywords: European agricultural fund for rural development, EAFRD, policy, incentives, multifunctional forests, small-scale forest owners, bioeconomy
Published in DiRROS: 05.01.2023; Views: 731; Downloads: 430
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3. Farmers' preferences for result-based schemes for grassland conservation in SloveniaTanja Šumrada, Anže Japelj, Miroslav Verbič, Emil Erjavec, 2022, original scientific article Abstract: Government-funded payments for ecosystem services (PES) have increasingly been used to facilitate transactions between users of environmental services and their providers. In order to improve the link between payments and the service provided, some countries in the EU have promoted result-based schemes (RBS), which remunerate farmers for ecological results, as part of their agricultural policy. Since PES programs are voluntary, it is important to understand farmers’ responses before more large-scale implementations of RBS are initiated. Using a choice experiment and a mixed logit model, we elicited the preferences of farmers in two Natura 2000 sites in Slovenia for different design elements of a hypothetical scheme for dry grassland conservation. We found that the majority of farmers preferred the result-based approach over the management-based scheme both in terms of payment conditions and monitoring; one group of farmers preferred the RBS very strongly (average WTA of more than 500 EUR/ha/yr) and another group less strongly (average WTA about 200 EUR/ha/yr). Farmers also showed a higher preference for on-farm advise and training in small groups than for lectures, which would be offered to a larger audience. A collective bonus, which would incentivise coordination and could potentially increase participation rates in the scheme, significantly influenced the farmers’ willingness to adopt the scheme. However, the estimated average WTA was comparable or lower than the 40 EUR/ha annual bonus payment. Older farmers and those who managed small and semi-subsistent farms were significantly more likely to be highly resistant to scheme adoption no matter its design.
Keywords: agrarna politika, kmetijstvo, subvencije, ekosistemske storitve, plačilo za ekosistemske storitve, agricultural policy, agriculture, subsidies, payments for ecosystem services, abiodiversity conservation
Published in DiRROS: 04.02.2022; Views: 1065; Downloads: 766
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