Identifying institutional configurations for policy outcomes: A comparison of ecosystem services delivery

This paper employs the Institutional Analysis and Development framework across six ecosystem delivery measures in the European Union to develop a configurational explanation of (un)successful outcomes. By undertaking comparative institu tional analysis, we systematically examine the effect of varia tion across rule types and generate insights on how different institutional configurations result in varying degrees of success ful implementation of ecosystem delivery measures. We apply explanatory typology methods to identify the institutional features that best explain variation in implementation success across a number of cases. We argue that institutional rules shape outcomes in conjunction rather than in isolation. The findings show that differences in implementation success across cases can be explained by the interplay of differences in knowledge exchange, flexibility in implementation, and participation in the policy design process.We are very grateful to our H2020 EFFECT project partners for the precious assistance in col lecting background information about the cases under scrutiny and in conducting interviews with relevant stakeholders. We are also grateful to the research funding received for the research project EFFECT from the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 817903

Patterns of Coordination in the European Commission: An Analysis of Interservice Consultations around Climate Change Adaptation Policy (2007-2018)

Organising effective policy coordination has become a key principle of EU policymaking in recent decades. Within the European Commission, interservice consultations (ISCs) play an important role to coordinate between the different directorate-generals. In spite of this importance, ISCs have so far not been analysed in a systematic way. This paper addresses this gap by systematically analysing the numbers, types and content of comments made in ISCs around climate change adaptation. Our analysis shows that ISCs were primarily used to provide substantive comments, related to problem analyses, objectives or instruments, as well as to strengthen or weaken connections with policy efforts in adjacent domains. Institutional comments, related to mandates or resources, proved rare. Moreover, we find that the types of comments given in ISCs are mediated by institutional factors that shape the temporal dynamics of policy processes. Rather than reflecting the ideal types of ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ coordination, the overall pattern of policy coordination in the ISCs typifies an in-between form of ‘incremental policy coordination.

Improving the resilience‐enabling capacity of the Common Agricultural Policy: policy recommendations for more resilient EU farming systems

One of the aims of the post‐2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is to improve the resilience of Europe's farming systems. The CAP of the budget period 2014–2020, however, has insufficiently supported the resilience of farming systems. The ongoing CAP reform process offers an appropriate opportunity to integrate a broader perspective on resilience in the CAP. We therefore propose a set of policy recommendations on how to improve the capability of the CAP to support more fully the resilience (i.e. robustness, adaptability and transformability) of farming systems in the EU. The policy recommendations are based on a comparative analysis of six national co‐design workshops with stakeholders and a final EU‐level workshop with Brussels‐based experts. We concluded three key lessons about the CAP's influence on resilience: (1) resilience challenges, needs and policy effects are context‐specific; (2) resilience capacities are complementary, but trade‐offs between robustness, adaptability and transformability occur at the level of policies and due to budget competition; (3) there is a need for a coordinated long‐term vision for Europe's agriculture, which is difficult to achieve through the bargaining processes associated with a CAP reform. We propose specific policy recommendations that could contribute to a better balance between policies that support robustness, adaptability and transformability of Europe's farming systems

Agrarische ondernemers over de mestwetgeving : beleving van het mestbeleid: draagvlak, knelpunten en oplossingen

Akkerbouwers, melkveehouders en varkenshouders vinden het goed dat er een mestbeleid is en hebben de intentie om hier nauwkeurig aan te blijven voldoen, ook als het verder wordt aangescherpt. Het draagvlak voor het huidige mestbeleid, ofwel de mate waarin ondernemers achter het beleid staan, is echter gering bij agrarische ondernemers en andere belanghebbenden. Dit is een belangrijke conclusie uit het onderzoek naar de beleving van het mestbeleid door agrarische ondernemers en andere belanghebbenden dat is uitgevoerd in het kader van de evaluatie van de mestwetgeving in 2016

Policies and Farming System Resilience

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy appears essential for farming systems’ resilience, but its resilience-enabling effects in practice remain underexplored. We assessed how farming system actors perceive the CAP’s effects on resilience. The CAP contains a robustness-oriented approach, which actors expect to buffer stress and shocks, while adaptation receives less support and transformation is neglected. Policies need to a take a broader, integrated approach towards farming systems’ resilience

There is No Single Challenge, Nor Single Solution, for Food Systems Transformations: Making plurality visible

There is a growing call (and agreement) to transform food systems towards sustainable, just and healthy systems, understanding that transformation is about fundamental, system- wide changes, beyond piecemeal interventions (see Box 1 for the new FACCE-JPI approach to food systems). But, what does transformation look like? Is there a consensus about what we want to transform in food systems, who will do it and how? The objective of this policy brief is to call for fairer, more inclusive and eventually, more effective decisions on food systems transformations. For doing so, it focuses on decision-making under uncertainty, highlighting complexity and framings as two components of this: On one hand complexity requires us to avoid oversimplification of messages (see the livestock section) and on the other, framing calls for the integration of a plurality of values and worldviews (see the governance section). Thus, in the context of the UNFSS objective of transforming food systems, this brief aims to raise awareness of decision makers about the need of developing and using knowledge and tools that i) tackle the complexity of food systems as complex social-ecological systems, and ii) recognise the existence of different framing and values in a context of uncertainty. We also reflect on the role of science in this process. While our focus is global, we focus on Europe to exemplify our arguments. Yet, transformation cannot happen in one world region independently from the others. A global movement requires first adopters to start the process.Peer reviewe

A framework to assess the resilience of farming systems

Agricultural systems in Europe face accumulating economic, ecological and societal challenges, raising concerns about their resilience to shocks and stresses. These resilience issues need to be addressed with a focus on the regional context in which farming systems operate because farms, farmers’ organizations, service suppliers and supply chain actors are embedded in local environments and functions of agriculture. We define resilience of a farming system as its ability to ensure the provision of the system functions in the face of increasingly complex and accumulating economic, social, environmental and institutional shocks and stresses, through capacities of robustness, adaptability and transformability. We (i) develop a framework to assess the resilience of farming systems, and (ii) present a methodology to operationalize the framework with a view to Europe’s diverse farming systems. The framework is designed to assess resilience to specific challenges (specified resilience) as well as a farming system’s capacity to deal with the unknown, uncertainty and surprise (general resilience). The framework provides a heuristic to analyze system properties, challenges (shocks, long-term stresses), indicators to measure the performance of system functions, resilience capacities and resilience-enhancing attributes. Capacities and attributes refer to adaptive cycle processes of agricultural practices, farm demographics, governance and risk management. The novelty of the framework pertains to the focal scale of analysis, i.e. the farming system level, the consideration of accumulating challenges and various agricultural processes, and the consideration that farming systems provide multiple functions that can change over time. Furthermore, the distinction between three resilience capacities (robustness, adaptability, transformability) ensures that the framework goes beyond narrow definitions that limit resilience to robustness. The methodology deploys a mixed-methods approach: quantitative methods, such as statistics, econometrics and modelling, are used to identify underlying patterns, causal explanations and likely contributing factors; while qualitative methods, such as interviews, participatory approaches and stakeholder workshops, access experiential and contextual knowledge and provide more nuanced insights. More specifically, analysis along the framework explores multiple nested levels of farming systems (e.g. farm, farm household, supply chain, farming system) over a time horizon of 1-2 generations, thereby enabling reflection on potential temporal and scalar trade-offs across resilience attributes. The richness of the framework is illustrated for the arable farming system in Veenkoloniën, the Netherlands. The analysis reveals a relatively low capacity of this farming system to transform and farmers feeling distressed about transformation, while other members of their households have experienced many examples of transformation

EU food-system transition requires innovative policy analysis methods

Governing food-system transitions requires innovation in the study of impacts and futures. Current approaches to impact assessment require greater complexity in systems modelling and complementation with alternative mechanisms to overcome limitations in scoping, conceptual assumptions and methodologies