Europe's ecological backbone: recognising the true value of our mountains

Europe's mountain areas have social, economic and environmental capital of significance for the entire continent. This importance has been recognised since the late 19th century through national legislation; since the 1970s through regional structures for cooperation; and since the 1990s through regional legal instruments for the Alps and Carpathians. The European Union (EU) first recognised the specific characteristics of mountain areas in 1975 through the designation of Less Favoured Areas (LFAs). During the last decade, EU cohesion policy and the Treaty of Lisbon have both focused specifically on mountain

Ex Ante Impact Assessment of Policies Affecting Land Use, Part B: Application of the Analytical Framework

The use of science-based tools for impact assessment has increasingly gained focus in addressing the complexity of interactions between environment, society, and economy. For integrated assessment of policies affecting land use, an analytical framework was developed. The aim of our work was to apply the analytical framework for specific scenario cases and in combination with quantitative and qualitative application methods. The analytical framework was tested for two cases involving the ex ante impact assessment of: (1) a European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) financial reform scenario employing a modeling approach and combined with a comprehensive indicator analysis and valuation; and (2) a regional bioenergy policy scenario, employing a fully participatory approach. The results showed that European land use in general is less sensitive to changes in the Common Agricultural Policy, but in the context of regions there can be significant impacts on the functions of land use. In general, the implementation of the analytical framework for impact assessment proved to be doable with both methods, i.e., with the quantitative modeling and with the qualitative participatory approach. A key advantage of using the system of linked quantitative models is that it makes possible the simultaneous consideration of all relevant sectors of the economy without abstaining from a great level of detail for sectors of particular interest. Other advantages lie in the incontestable character of the results. Based on neutral, existing data with a fixed set of settings and regions, an absolute comparability and reproducibility throughout Europe can be maintained. Analyzing the pros and cons of both approaches showed that they could be used complementarily rather than be seen as competing alternatives

Landscape Scenarios and Multifunctionality: Making Land Use Impact Assessment Operational

Ex ante impact assessment can help in structuring the analysis of human-environment interactions thereby supporting land use decision making for sustainable development. The contributions to this special feature focus on some of the challenges of making land use impact assessment operational for policy making. A total of nine papers deal with the needs and uses of assessment tools for policy making at the European level, with the value-based influence in scenario development, and with ex ante impact assessment studies in different contexts, spatial systems, and for different purposes and user groups. The concept of landscape multifunctionality was implicitly or explicitly employed as an integrating entity between socioeconomic and biogeophysical features of a spatial system. Three major aspects were revealed that could improve the relevance of the policy of land use impact assessment: the involvement of decision makers early on in the design of the impact assessment study; the integration of quantitative analysis with participatory valuation methods; and the robust and transparent design of the analytical methods

Key policy questions for ex-ante impact assessment of European agricultural and rural policies

Policies in the agricultural and rural sectors are of key importance in shaping their sustainable development. These policies are changing from market-based policies to policies that aim to influence farmers' decision-making. Thus, the scientific literature supporting evidence-based policy-making must develop models that simulate individual decision-making (IDM) by farmers. This study aims to understand key policy objectives, related policy questions and benchmark scenarios relevant to the European agricultural sector to define the research agenda for a suite of IDM models. This research goal has been addressed following a five-step process that involved different research tools and heterogeneous actors, including key stakeholders. Results suggest that environmental policy objectives are the most relevant for European agriculture in the coming decades. Thus, the scenario modelling exercise should focus mainly on the agri-environmental policies' impacts while properly considering the potential trade-offs between economic and environmental objectives

An assessment of the impact of climate adaptation measures to reduce flood risk on ecosystem services

Measures of climate change adaptation often involve modification of land use and land use planning practices. Such changes in land use affect the provision of various ecosystem goods and services. Therefore, it is likely that adaptation measures may result in synergies and trade-offs between a range of ecosystems goods and services. An integrative land use modelling approach is presented to assess such impacts for the European Union. A reference scenario accounts for current trends in global drivers and includes a number of important policy developments that correspond to on-going changes in European policies. The reference scenario is compared to a policy scenario in which a range of measures is implemented to regulate flood risk and protect soils under conditions of climate change. The impacts of the simulated land use dynamics are assessed for four key indicators of ecosystem service provision: flood risk, carbon sequestration, habitat connectivity and biodiversity. The results indicate a large spatial variation in the consequences of the adaptation measures on the provisioning of ecosystem services. Synergies are frequently observed at the location of the measures itself, whereas trade-offs are found at other locations. Reducing land use intensity in specific parts of the catchment may lead to increased pressure in other regions, resulting in trade-offs. Consequently, when aggregating the results to larger spatial scales the positive and negative impacts may be off-set, indicating the need for detailed spatial assessments. The modelled results indicate that for a careful planning and evaluation of adaptation measures it is needed to consider the trade-offs accounting for the negative effects of a measure at locations distant from the actual measure. Integrated land use modelling can help land use planning in such complex trade-off evaluation by providing evidence on synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services, different policy fields and societal demands

QUICKScan: a pragmatic approach to decision support

Decision Support Tools (DST) are a key instrument for preparing legislative proposals and policy initiatives. They provide insight about options, conflicts, synergies and trade-offs between issues, sectors and regions at multiple scales. DST range from integrated systems modelling to value-based knowledge systems resulting from expert groups. The results of the expert groups do not provide regional differentiation making it difficult to obtain useful insights for policy making. The ‘black-box’ complex tools are found not transparent by the decision makers that seek to understand the modelling behind the results to be able to cope with the scientific uncertainty and changing policy context. In addition, the policy questions need to be answered in a short period to fit the time horizon of policy making, e.g. a couple of months, which is possible with expert groups, but the complex models are often not ready to deal with this urgency. The QUICKScan tool aims at filling the gap in the pallet of available tools by defining a methodology -supported by modelling software to visualize quantitative and value-based modelling in the decision process. The tool enables the creation of alternative storylines for policy questions by the stakeholders, and translates these in-situ into a model by combining tacit expert knowledge with available spatial explicit monitoring- and statistical-data. QUICKScan builds on concepts from Participatory Modelling and Participatory GIS and uses visualisation and interpretation tools which are essential to support the exploration of options allowing and facilitating the discussion and interaction on the definition of alternatives, analysing their consequences, determining trade-offs and synergies and compare the consequences of alternatives. The QUICKScan tool is designed to calculate fast, and therefor perform multiple iterations of a modelling exercise during a workshop. The results of each iteration feed the discussion among stakeholders and policy makers creating input for a next iteration