Spatial Scale Mismatches in the EU Agri-Biodiversity Conservation Policy. The Case for a Shift to Landscape-Scale Design

Francesca L. Falco, Eran Feitelson and Tamar Dayan
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Francesca L. Falco: The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel
Eran Feitelson: Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel
Tamar Dayan: The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 8, 1-24

Abstract: Agriculture is a major driver of the ongoing biodiversity decline, demanding an urgent transition towards a system that reconciles productivity and profitability with nature conservation; however, where public policies promoting such transitions are in place, their design often poorly fits the relevant biogeophysical systems, decreasing the policies’ expected effectiveness. Spatial scale mismatches are a primary example in this regard. The literature reviewed in this paper, drawing from both ecology and policy studies, suggests to foster policy implementation at the landscape scale, where most functional ecological processes—and the delivery of related ecosystem services—occur on farmland. Two strategies are identified for coordinating policy implementation at the landscape scale: the promotion of farmers’ collective action and the partition of space on an ecologically sound basis through spatial planning. As the new European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2023 is currently being defined, we assess if and how the draft agri-biodiversity legislation includes any of the strategies above. We find no comprehensive uptake of the landscape-scale perspective at the EU level, thereby suggesting that a powerful tool to overcome the CAP underperformance on biodiversity is being overlooked.

Keywords: functional agri-biodiversity; ecosystem services; spatial scale mismatch; landscape scale; EU common agricultural policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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