Insights into innovative contract design to improve the integration of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural management

Time to incentivize cost-effective conservation in agricultural landscapes

“…Despite the growing scientific support, and increasing feasibility thanks to advances in conservation science, indicator development, empirical modeling and digital platforms for policy administration, schemes that link payments with conservation outcomes, or limit overcompensation, remain rare (Bredemeier et al, 2022). With the ongoing global biodiversity crisis, it is high time to implement policies that increase the costeffectiveness of payments schemes to maximize the benefits of conservation budgets.…”

Institutional analysis of actors involved in the governance of innovative contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes

“…For the first step, we use a mix of different methods to identify potential cases combining literature review, web search, and expert consultation (cf. Bredemeier et al, 2022 ). We choose a sample of 19 cases to represent the four contract types, focusing only on Europe.…”

“…We also acknowledge that other options to group innovative contracts are possible (cf. Bredemeier et al, 2022 , Olivieri et al, 2021 ), but opt for these four contract types to explore how far each type calls for additional actors who then assume critical roles.…”

“…Furthermore, since mainstream contracts usually use individual contracting between governmental entities and single farmers, they typically do not offer engagement options for other important actors who can also affect the production of ES in a given region ( Hodge, 2001 , Mack et al, 2020 ). This can include landowners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), food processors and retailers, consumers, or residents ( Bredemeier et al, 2022 ).…”

Metadata to describe the dataset on involved actors and their roles in the governance of innovative contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes

“…Methods and materials used for the first step in our experimental design: To identify potential cases we employed a method mix combining literature review, web search, and expert consultation (cf. [1] ). For expert consultation, we approached team members of the Contracts2.0-project ( https://www.project-contracts20.eu/ ), under which umbrella the research related to the described dataset was conducted, to list possible case examples for result-based, collective, land tenure and value chain contracts for agri-environment and climate schemes.…”