A novel management-based system of payments for ecosystem services for targeted agri-environmental policy

T. Rodríguez-Ortega, A.M. Olaizola and A. Bernués

Ecosystem Services, 2018, vol. 34, issue PA, 74-84

Abstract: Agricultural policy should recognize the farmers’ role in delivering ecosystem services (ES) to society, for which both farmers and policy makers need improved tools to set objective environmental targets and fair distribution of subsidies. We aimed to quantify the effect of beneficial agricultural practices on ES delivery, and to develop and apply a generic framework of management-based payments for ES (PES). We carried out a Delphi expert consultation (researchers and technicians/managers) on the interface agriculture-environment by which we measured the contribution of current agricultural practices at farm level to relevant ES in Mediterranean agroecosystems. Next, we designed a novel framework of PES that used these contributions to rank the practices that satisfied three agri-environmental policy objectives (equal importance of ES, focus on biodiversity and climate, and focus on social demands). We found that the relative contribution of practices to individual ES delivery was rather similar, especially for those ES influenced by many agricultural practices. However, when considering different objectives in the PES framework, differences in practice prioritization were apparent. The framework was able to reward farmers according to their objective contribution to conservation priorities. The PES system also showed that grazing management practices were multifunctional and delivered ES in bundles.

Keywords: Agricultural practices; Biophysical assessment; Mixed sheep-crop farming systems; Expert knowledge; Mediterranean agriculture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041617307659
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:34:y:2018:i:pa:p:74-84

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2018.09.007

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().