Identifying obstacles to the design and implementation of payment schemes for ecosystem services provided through farm trees

An important determinant of ecosystem services provision from European farmland is the amount and spatial arrangement of trees, shrubs, and woodlands that are integrated into the respective land use systems. Farm trees are considered ‘keystone structures’ of agroecosystems because of their disproportionally large ecological value (relative to their low abundance), but are threatened by agricultural intensification, land abandonment, and urbanization. While the preservation of farm trees is a component of several command-and control approaches and while numerous payment schemes for ecosystem services (PES schemes) provided through agricultural practices do in general exist, there are few incentive-based policies that specifically target the conservation of farm trees. This paper uses an institutional economics framework for the analysis of PES schemes that enhance the establishment, protection, and management of farm trees. Using the German state of Saxony as a case, it elaborates on the reasons for the very reluctant participation of farmers in these schemes. The obstacles identified include high production and opportunity costs, contractual uncertainties, and land tenure implications. Further, since scheme adoption has been low compared with the total area covered by the respective farm tree types, the PES schemes alone cannot explain the substantial increase in number and size of some farm-tree types. Options to improve participation comprise regionalised premiums, result-oriented remuneration, and cooperative approaches. The example of PES schemes for farm trees highlights one of the major challenges for the protection and preservation of cultural landscapes: they are man-made and thus need to be preserved, managed, and maintained continuously.Payments for ecosystem services (PES), agroecosystems, trees outside forests, institutional economics, East Germany, Saxony, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Characteristics of resources and the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Germany: the cases of fruit tree meadows and wolf protection

Work on common pool resources has paid scant attention to the role of properties of natural resources for the way their provision is governed. This paper scrutinizes determinants of institutions that regulate the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Two cases of maintaining ecosystem services are compared (protection of wolves and management of scattered fruit tree meadows). Distinct characteristics of resources (mobility) and differences in the overarching European regulatory framework explain their different institutional embeddedness. Cost-effectiveness considerations seem to be paramount in the design of institutions. In the case of wolf protection, the state uses its power to modify property rights in order to increase acceptance of wolf management. This is essential for political reasons as well as to prevent EU sanctions. On the other hand, scattered fruit tree maintenance is subject to voluntary, long-term agreements, justified by medium-term irreversibility and asset specific investments.Institutions, Governance, Wolf Management, Scattered fruit trees, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A Systematic Review of Landscape Corridor Conservation and Management in Europe

Since EU Commission initiated Green Infrastructure (GI) strategy, an important step has been taken to help public to understand benefits of nature, such as providing food, clean air, and water resource. Besides, Green Infrastructure plays an important role in climate regulation, stormwater prevention, sustaining biodiversity. And its recreational function is also valuable for human society. Therefore, it is necessary to invest more resources in Green Infrastructure to develop, maintain and sustain it (Green Infrastructure COM, 2013). Green Infrastructure is planned as a strategically network of natural and seminatural areas with environmental functions and its elements are designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services it (European Environment Agency, 2011), which also provide solutions for urban and rural landscape conservation and sustainable development under the background of rapid and fundamental transformations in European landscapes. Landscape corridor is identified as thin strips that connect isolated patches (Joshua J. T. et al., 2002). It has similar features such as connectivity, functionality, integration, and can be considered as a part of Green Infrastructure network from systems thinking, ecological thinking and social thinking. Landscape corridor can be defined as the linear landscape elements with cultural properties that represent the combined works of nature and of man. It is important due to its connectivity as well as its scenic, cultural, social, economical, ecological and recreational functions. Comparing with the concept of Green Infrastructure, we can find that Landscape corridor (LC) shares many common features with GI, but it also has its own properties gained from its unique linear form, such as connectivity and/or forming boundaries

What Difference Does Public Participation Make? An Alternative Futures Assessment Based on the Development Preferences for Cultural Landscape Corridor Planning in the Silk Roads Area, China

Landscape corridor planning (LCP) has become a widespread practice for promoting sustainable regional development. This highly complex planning process covers many policy and planning issues concerning the local landscape, and ideally involves the people who live in the area to be developed. In China, regional planners and administrators encourage the development of landscape corridor planning. However, the current LCP process rarely considers ideas from local residents, and public participation is not recognized as beneficial to planning outcomes. We use a specific Chinese case of LCP to analyze how citizen involvement may enrich sustainable spatial planning in respect to ideas considered and solutions developed. To this end, we compare a recently approved landscape corridor plan that was created without public participation with alternative solutions for the same landscape corridor, developed with the involvement of local residents. These alternatives were then evaluated by professional planners who had been involved in the initial planning process. We demonstrate concrete differences between planning solutions developed with and without public participation. Further, we show that collaborative processes can minimize spatial conflicts. Finally, we demonstrate that public participation does indeed contribute to innovations that could enrich the corridor plan that had been produced exclusively by the decision-makers. The paper closes with a discussion of difficulties that might accompany the involvement of local residents during sustainable LCP in China

A social-ecological analysis of ecosystem services supply and trade-offs in European wood-pastures

Los pastizales de bosques son sistemas socio-ecológicos complejos (SES), que son el producto de la interacción a largo plazo entre la sociedad y el paisaje que la rodea. Tradicionalmente caracterizados por una gestión multifuncional de baja intensidad que mejoraba una amplia gama de servicios de los ecosistemas (SA), la gestión actual de las explotaciones agrícolas ha cambiado hacia modelos de explotación más intensivos. Este estudio evalúa la oferta de SA en cuatro áreas de estudio dominadas por los pastizales de bosques manejados en España, Suecia y Rumania. Sobre la base de 144 encuestas en granjas y el uso de técnicas multivariadas, caracterizamos el manejo y la estructura de las granjas en las áreas de estudio e identificamos las compensaciones en el suministro de SA asociados a este manejo. Vinculamos estas compensaciones a múltiples factores que caracterizan la gestión de la tierra: económicos, sociales, ambientales, tecnológicos y de gobierno. Finalmente, analizamos cómo los valores y perspectivas de los propietarios de la tierra tienen un efecto en las decisiones de gestión. Los resultados muestran un patrón diferenciado de la oferta de SA en las cuatro áreas de estudio. Identificamos cuatro tipos de compensaciones en la oferta de SA que aparecen dependiendo de lo que está siendo promovido por la administración de la finca y que están asociadas con diferentes dimensiones del manejo de los pastizales de bosques: compensaciones relacionadas con la productividad, compensaciones relacionadas con la producción de cultivos, compensaciones relacionadas con la multifuncionalidad y compensaciones relacionadas con la accesibilidad de la finca. Estas compensaciones se ven influidas por complejas interacciones entre las propiedades del CSE, que tienen una influencia directa en las perspectivas y motivaciones de los propietarios de las tierras. Las conclusiones de este documento hacen avanzar la comprensión de la dinámica entre los agro-ecosistemas y la sociedad y pueden servir de base para las políticas agrícolas y de conservación basadas en el sistema.Wood-pastures are complex social-ecological systems (SES), which are the product of long-term interaction between society and its surrounding landscape. Traditionally characterized by multifunctional low-intensity management that enhanced a wide range of ecosystem services (ES), current farm management has shifted toward more intensive farm models. This study assesses the supply of ES in four study areas dominated by managed wood-pastures in Spain, Sweden, and Romania. On the basis of 144 farm surveys and the use of multivariate techniques, we characterize farm management and structure in the study areas and identify the trade-offs in ES supply associated with this management. We link these trade-offs to multiple factors that characterize the landholding: economic, social, environmental, technological, and governance. Finally, we analyze how landholders’ values and perspectives have an effect on management decisions. Results show a differentiated pattern of ES supply in the four study areas. We identified four types of trade-offs in ES supply that appear depending on what is being promoted by the farm management and that are associated with different dimensions of wood-pasture management: productivity-related trade-offs, crop production–related trade-offs, multifunctionality-related trade-offs, and farm accessibility–related trade-offs. These trade-offs are influenced by complex interactions between the properties of the SES, which have a direct influence on landholders’ perspectives and motivations. The findings of this paper advance the understanding of the dynamics between agroecosystems and society and can inform system-based agricultural and conservation policies.• European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme. Grant nº 613520 (Project AGFORWARD)peerReviewe

Scanning agroforestry-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation in Europe

Agroforestry, the integration of trees and shrubs with livestock and/or crops, can make a substantial contribution to mitigating and enabling adaptation to climate change. However, its full potential will only be achieved if the challenges to agroforestry implementation are identified and the most efficient and sustainable solutions are made widely known. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore these challenges and to determine the most suitable set of solutions for each challenge that combines local effectiveness with European scale relevance. We performed a two-step “solution scanning” exercise. First, the main challenges to sustainable agroforestry in Europe were identified through 42 participatory workshops with 665 local stakeholders. The solutions to each challenge were scanned and classified into either direct solutions (28) to address climate change or indirect solutions (32) that improve the sustainability of agroforestry. In a second step, the direct solutions were prioritized through expert consultation in terms of their potential benefits for mitigation and adaptation. The most commonly reported barriers were a lack of knowledge and reliable financial support to which the most widely suggested indirect solutions were agroforestry training programmes and the development of safe economic routes. The direct solutions considered as holding the greatest mitigation and adaptation potential were the adoption of practices capable to increase soil organic carbon pools and the implementation of multifunctional hedgerows and windbreaks respectively. Our solution scanning approach can inform the implementation of the European climate strategy in general and to the Common Agricultural Policy in particular by pointing to concrete climate beneficial actions

Do European agroforestry systems enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services? A meta-analysis

Agroforestry has been proposed as a sustainable agricultural system over conventional agriculture and forestry, conserving biodiversity and enhancing ecosystem service provision while not compromising productivity. However, the available evidence for the societal benefits of agroforestry is fragmented and does often not integrate diverse ecosystem services into the assessment. To upscale existing case-study insights to the European level, we conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of agroforestry on ecosystem service provision and on biodiversity levels. From 53 publications we extracted a total of 365 comparisons that were selected for the meta-analysis. Results revealed an overall positive effect of agroforestry (effect size = 0.454, p < 0.01) over conventional agriculture and forestry. However, results were heterogeneous, with differences among the types of agroforestry practices and ecosystem services assessed. Erosion control, biodiversity, and soil fertility are enhanced by agroforestry while there is no clear effect on provisioning services. The effect of agroforestry on biomass production is negative. Comparisons between agroforestry types and reference land-uses showed that both silvopastoral and silvoarable systems increase ecosystem service provision and biodiversity, especially when compared with forestry land. Mediterranean tree plantation systems should be especially targeted as soil erosion could be highly reduced while soil fertility increased. We conclude that agroforestry can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem service provision relative to conventional agriculture and forestry in Europe and could be a strategically beneficial land use in rural planning if its inherent complexity is considered in policy measures

How to run a sustainability science research group sustainably?

Rigorous sustainability science includes addressing pressing real-world problems, weaving multiple knowledge systems, and striving for transformative change. However, these key attributes of sustainability science often conflict with university structures and established academic work practices, for instance with regard to frequent long-distance travel. Such contradictions between key principles of sustainability and everyday practices are experienced by many researchers not only at university level, but also in their individual behaviors. To help resolve this widespread divergence, we present ten principles to foster the sustainability of a research group working in sustainability science, based on our personal experiences and experiments as research group leaders. These principles comprise: (1) monitor the environmental footprint, (2) foster learning and innovation, (3) reduce the environmental footprint, (4) nurture campus sustainability, (5) embrace sustainability in private life, (6) constructively deal with environmental anxiety, (7) design research projects for sustainability impact, (8) engage with stakeholders, (9) capitalize on sustainability teaching, and (10) recognize biases and limits. Applying sustainability principles in everyday research practices can provide important social tipping points that may trigger the spreading of new social norms and behaviors

Public participation geographical information systems (PPGIS) Participatory research methods for sustainability – toolkit #1

Participatory mapping is a useful approach to engage the general public and stakeholders to communicate place-based values, behaviour, preferences and observations. The approach informs social-ecological research and land-use planning. In land-use planning, PPGIS is applicable, for example, in initial phases or for assessing project outcomes. This toolkit gives guidance on participatory mapping surveys. </p