Research for AGRI Committee : preserving agricultural soils in the EU - Study

This study explains how threats to soils and soil services are linked to agricultural soil management, how threats can be mitigated, and which barriers complicate this. It highlights trade-offs and synergies that exist between different interests affected by soil management, such as climate change mitigation, water and air quality, biodiversity, food security and farm income. Conservation of peatland and extensive agro-forestry systems, and protecting soils against sealing, erosion and compaction are ranked as highest priorities. Potential policy elements are suggested

Research for AGRI Committee : preserving agricultural soils in the EU - Study

This study explains how threats to soils and soil services are linked to agricultural soil management, how threats can be mitigated, and which barriers complicate this. It highlights trade-offs and synergies that exist between different interests affected by soil management, such as climate change mitigation, water and air quality, biodiversity, food security and farm income. Conservation of peatland and extensive agro-forestry systems, and protecting soils against sealing, erosion and compaction are ranked as highest priorities. Potential policy elements are suggested

Mise en ½uvre de pratiques de gestion des sols en Europe et dans quelques états membres : contexte politique

This deliverable analyses the relationships between the various policy packages involved in soil sustainable management, and the soil management practices they foster or restrict, at the European level and in eight Member States. Soil processes are at the interface between agricultural production and ecosystem services provision, and making sure that these processes work properly is a matter of multi-layered policies and actors, in an uncertain environment. To analyse the policy context, we have built a method that grouped together two different frameworks. Using these two frameworks together, we have designed a grid in which each relevant policy measure favours (or hampers) the adoption of each BMP, with which objectives, and if they are implemented on a mandatory way, or with incentives, or even in a voluntary way. Soil protection is at the interface of three major policy packages: Agricultural and rural policies, where soil is considered as a production mean that needs sometimes to be preserved, environmental policies where the soil is considered as a medium towards air, water or biodiversity protection, and urban policies where forest or agricultural soils have to be preserved from urban sprawl. Since the last twenty years, soils are also a matter of policy packages related to climate change, mostly under the Kyoto protocol. The immediate consequence is the existence of a bundle of soil-related policy measures, with expected direct or indirect effects on soils: In 2008 for instance, Kutter et al. (2011) accounted for 410 different soil conservation measures in the European Member states, while Eurostat breakdown of Agri-Environmental Measures (AEM) considered in 2008 that 8 % of the EU-27 agricultural area under AEM benefit from actions to conserve soils. A proposal for a Soil Framework Directive has been initiated in 2006 with the objective of simplifying the way soils stakes are considered in policies and initiating comprehensive legislation on soil protection. This Directive was unfortunately withdrawn in May 2014. Since this withdrawal, the Soil Thematic Strategy takes actions to integrate soil stakes into all relevant policies when renewed. The main results lie on the expected impacts on the region oriented approach led by the new CAP on decentralized effects which may, in turn, affect existing political and institutional relationships. There is a balance between the freedom of regions to design a variety of instruments to protect soil, directly or indirectly, and administrative burden linked to the new governance schemes where changes have to occur. Limited budgets for environmental protection in a context of economic crisis also require improving the cost-effectiveness of policy measures, which results, depending on the region and country, on putting less emphasis on soils protection objectives, or on combining measures so as to protect soils by side effects of promoted practices. We have found three different strategies in the surveyed countries: -Some have designed for long a comprehensive strategy towards soil protection; they consider that soil provides multiple functions, from habitats to raw material extraction through production of food and building materials. For these countries, raising concern about soil protection at EU level enforces national and regional policies, sometimes permits to design harmonized policy packages at national level (more coordination from regional initiatives). -Some countries took the opportunity of implementing EU strategy to design some place-based policies to deal with local soil issues, mostly erosion. -Last set of countries relies more on side-effect of already existing measures to ensure a minimum soil protection, and instead focus on other stakes like biodiversity or water proection. Disregarding of theses strategies, countries and regions usually mix mandatory measures for a baseline, incentives for more demanding practices and encourage training of farmers. The strategies are visible only in the relative use of the different instruments and the way countries and regions combine them. Soil stakes are included in national and regional policy packages with respect to the policy design tradition of each Member State. In other words, depending on the country, policy design uses consensus processes, consultation of stakeholders, or deeper co-design with farmer unions; there is also a general tendency towards more involvement of various groups of stakeholders. Anyway, sometimes, there are some discrepancies from the national level where objectives are set up, and the regional and local levels where policies are implemented and precise measures designed. This leaves romm for more ambitious towards sustainable soil management

Options de politiques publiques visant une gestion durable des sols en Europe et dans 8 États Membres

This deliverable explores the various ways soil stakes and soil management practices are fostered, or restricted by the existing (early 2015) strategies in Europe and selected Member States and regions. Soil processes are at the interface between agricultural production and ecosystem services provision, and making sure that these processes work properly is a matter of multi-layered actors, in an uncertain environment. Soil quality, as the foundation of agricultural production, is generally considered in the economic literature as a private good and capitalized into rental and sale prices. It is generally agreed in the political sphere that public effort is better targeted at public goods: equity between firms generally prevents policy makers to design policies that directly subsidise private goods. Relations between private and public goods supplied by soils are however far from being straightforward. The legislation we analysed and most of policy makers we have met support - in line with literature - the general idea that it is worthwhile to promote sustainable soil management towards the supply of land-based ecosystem services, besides protecting the soils themselves for private concerns. To feed the debate about the need (or not) of soil related policies, we try in this paper to answer three questions: -What would be the more suitable level for policy design regarding sustainable soil management? -Are soil related strategies and measures linked to countries’ assets and strategies towards development paths? -What can be the paths towards a higher ambition for promoting sustainable soil management? In this report, we have distinguished soil stakes sensu stricto (they are related to the preservation of soil itself) versus a broader set of soil stakes. Soil erosion, compaction, and the declines of soil organic carbon (SOC) content and of soil biodiversity all affect the quality of the soil itself (being physical, biological or chemical) and soil functioning, and all impact directly associated local public goods (like the regulation of hydrology and prevention of landslides, siltation of dams and water ways). Alternatively, a broader set of soil stakes is linked to the provision of landscape-based ecosystem services such as water quality, air quality, and biodiversity in more general sense, all of which have a mostly public value with far wider (than local) outreach. These services are more determined by soil management practices implemented than by the soil properties themselves; the practices do not necessarily affect or degrade the soil itself, nor its capacity to function. The European Soil Thematic Strategy aims at a better integration of soils and soil stakes into policies. We found that most existing soil stakes are considered at the European level but not necessarily at the national or regional levels. Salinization, acidification or sealing by urban sprawl, if not included yet in policies directly dealing with agricultural soils, can easily be added in European packages. But so far, the embeddedness of soils and soil stakes in policy packages at national and regional levels appears rather low and is still far from being homogenous between countries. Some countries (Austria for example) chose a limited set of stakes and strongly embody these into policies, while others (like Italy or the Netherlands) consider a large set of stakes but with little emphasis in policies. Still, ex-post assessment of policy impact is seldomly considered. In addition, the level at which the policies are designed matters. When designed at the regional (provincial) level, policy packages could put more emphasis on specific soil stakes in particular regions, and request both farmers and policy makers to make more efforts towards soil protection in some region than others, even if we have found nowhere any evidence towards a “race to the bottom”; some national harmonisation could at least frame minimum requirements and some harmonisation of efforts across the country. This is especially important for the supply of global public goods like mitigating climate change. The other way around, when designed at the national level, policies are considered as sometimes too strict by regional policy makers who wish some flexibility to address more local stakes. The policy makers we have met mentioned quite often, however, the influence of interest groups at local level and feel more comfortable in applying nationaly designed measures (even if they wish for more flexibility). To sum up, the physical features of soil stakes could suggest that it is more efficient to design policies at local level for local stakes and at European or national levels for global stakes. But, from our interviews, policy makers emphasize that the management practices they can promote for soil protection, even at local level, are intertwined with other stakes (like food security, water quality, air, biodiversity). Spillover effects can occur, even for strict local soil stakes as soon as a regular depletion of soil properties offers short term competitive advantages to a region. Both intertwins between stakes and spillover plead for more connections between local and national/European levels in policy design. In this report we have analysed in which ways the embeddedness of soil and soil stakes into policy packages are linked to institutional factors, country assets and the way countries mix mandatory, incentive based and voluntary instruments. From our results, interest groups seem to have little influence on the embeddedness of soil stakes into policy packages, at least at the national level. Among the variables tested, only the share of agricultural land on farmers’ ownership as a significant effect, and this effect is positive (it tends to increase the probability of higher embeddedness). Moreover, from our dataset, countries putting much effort on innovation and renewable energy seem to better embed soil stakes in their policies: with the increase of national and regional programming documents (even if not directly related to soils), it appears that the awareness of policy makers on the ecosystem services that soils can supply, is increasing. Apart from Austria and Germany, most countries seem however to protect soils where there is imminent danger or nuisance, but very few have a general effective protection against disappearance of productive land (sealing by urban sprawl), or against gradual decline (organic matter, compaction, soil biodiversity, soil pathogens). Going from embeddedness to the policy measures that are actually implemented, we found that there is a strong significant and negative effect of interest groups on the number of measures that policies propose to deal with a given soil stake. This result is in line with the analysis of legislation we have performed (Deliverable D5.524), where we found that even when soil stakes are mentioned in the policy strategic and operational objectives, soil stakes are often omitted in the practical measures proposed. This negative effect of interest groups on the number of management practices proposed by policies is counterbalanced by two positifve effects: countries that imbed more soil stakes into their policy packages and countries that make efforts towards renewable energy, tend to propose a wider variety of management practices to farmers to deal with these stakes. The two variables, land on ownership and farm income, do act opposite to each other: in countries where the farmers own a larger share of agricultural land, embeddedness is higher, which in turn fosters larger set of management practices proposed to farmers, while higher farm incomes restricts this variety. Last, but not least, the trust level of citizens to EU institutions does not affect the embeddedness of soil stakes into policy packages but does have a significant effect on the variety of measures proposed to deal with these stakes. A coherent policy framework, with clear and shared objectives, which makes explicit R&D priorities, designs policy measures that are targeted and implemented at the appropriate level, and that reports progress using relevant indicators, is essential to establish, in the future, a comprehensive strategy for sustainable soil management in agriculture. Even if it appears difficult to policy makers to choose appropriate soil indicators and to link them to policy options with the aim of assessing policy impacts, both at short and long terms, implementing a framework that enables these measurements appear necessary or we’ll end up with poorly designed policy options. First steps towards better monitoring have been initiated to harmonise the monitoring of soil parameters throughout Europe with the European Soil Data Center. This interesting first attempt should be complemented by in-depth local impact analysis of policy options, along with gathering of the knowledge these analyses provide. Opportunities to this pathway exist, especially in the mapping of ecosystem services that the EU biodiversity strategy requests; this mapping may help to enhance concern about public goods supplied by sustainable soil management at local or global scale. Also, forstering knowledge building and data collection on trade-offs between the various aspects of soil management practices - and of their long term impact on soil quality and the ecosystem services they supply - would be of great help. From the very local to the European level, a better embeddedness of soil stakes into policy packages, up to implementation and impact analysis, could be improved by several elements. The first one is that local levels should have the possibility to include very local and specific soil related stakes into their policies, especially those that are linked to European ones. It is often argued that local stakes can be dealt by local policy measures, but stand-alone local policies are liable to be inefficient for two main reasons: (i) policy makers tend to invest more in environmental issues when they share the cost with other regions (which is due possible by the EU-led feature of a policy), and, maybe more important, (ii) local policies can generate spillovers (and depletion of resources like soil) when regions compete. Typical examples of local stakes that would gain from being included in EU frameworks are the protection of specific landscapes that mix ecosystem services in a different way than usually done in the rest of Europe, like the Dehesa agro-forestry system, or acidification of soils in certains parts of Europe. The second element to improve embeddedness takes place at the interface of the local and national levels. Most of the soil management practices that have been analysed in Catch-C project have effects on soil ecosystem services that differ (and sometimes strongly) in relation with local conditions. Policy makers are aware of this differentiation, but they can’t promote measures without a clear idea of their local effects. Moreover, in some countries, the absence of independent advisors impedes knowledge spreading among farmers. It is our opinion that without this local knowledge gathering and independence of advisors, even if soil stakes are better embedded into policy package in a near future, it is likely that all efforts will remain paperwork and will meet with little implementation. The third and last element is at the interface of national and EU levels. Would the Member States put more money into environmental policy packages and on the second CAP pillar, the existing institutional framework might have been not under-utilised as it appears to be so far. This is however a weak argument in a context of crisis, where it is well known that individuals and countries always tend to favour short term strategies, and whatever the long term consequences can be. In this context, the Soil Thematic Strategy aims at rising awareness of policy makers at all levels about the importance of soil stakes. However, if this effort is perceived (negatively) as an attempt to pinpoint major and urgent environmental needs, or (even more negatively) as a move towards raising more funds from national levels, then it has little chances to succeed. In spite of these strong negative attitudes, European level efforts could have important effects on better embedding of soil stakes, if they concentrated on the following: (i) increasing the returns for countries of sharing knowledge, (ii) measuring impacts of policy measures on soil and the ecosystem services soil supply, (iii) encourage countries to overcome gradual decline of soils, and maybe more important, (iv) take advantage of local endowments to serve global goals and stress such positive contribution potential, thus fighting the notion that soil conservation is about restrictions only