Studies on Agri-environmental Measures: A Survey of the Literature

Abstract

Agri-environmental measures (AEM) are incentive-based instruments in the European Union (EU) that provide payments to farmers for voluntary environmental commitments related to preserving and enhancing the environment and maintaining the cultural landscape. We review the AEM literature and provide an overview of important research topics, major research results and future challenges as discussed in the available literature concerning these measures. This review contributes to the existing literature by attempting to equally consider ecological and economic perspectives. The reviewed articles are analyzed regarding their regional focus, topics and methods. The analytical section of the article seeks to discuss commonly asked questions about AEM on the basis of results from reviewed studies. The vast amount of available literature provides valuable insights into specific cases and reveals a complex picture with few general conclusions. The existing research is usually either biased toward ecological or economic perspectives and fails to provide a holistic picture of the problems and challenges within agri-environmental programming (e.g., multiple measures, multiple target areas, legal aspects, financial constraints, transaction costs). Most empirical studies provide detailed insights into selected individual measures but are incapable of providing results at a level relevant to decision-making, as they neglect the role of farmers and the available AEM budget. Predominantly economic approaches often only consider rough assumptions of ecological and economic processes and are also not suitable for decision-making. Decision-support tools that build on these disciplinary results and simultaneously consider scheme factors and environmental conditions at high spatial resolution for application by the responsible authorities are rare and require further research.

Grain legume decline and potential recovery in European agriculture: a review

“…28). The ecological effectiveness of such policies clearly depends on the individual scheme's design and is under debate (Kleijn et al 2001;Marggraf 2003;van Hecken and Bastiaensen 2010;Uthes and Matzdorf 2013). However, as the decision to include legumes in the requirements is at the discretion of member states or regional authorities, the overall volume of support to legumes via this measure is comparably small, but may be very relevant in specific regions (Bues et al 2013).…”

The design of agri-environmental schemes: Farmers’ preferences in southern Spain

“…Not surprisingly, AES have been the subject of much attention by researchers (Uthes and Matzdorf, 2013). Their work has focused mainly on the barriers to participation in such schemes (Falconer, 2000;Christensen et al, 2011;Broch and Vedel, 2012), and on improving their design (Ruto and Garrod, 2009;Espinosa-Goded et al, 2010).…”

“…AES are multiannual and voluntary incentive-based payments to farmers for preserving and enhancing environmental public goods. They usually consist of a per-hectare payment implemented regionally and co-financed by the EU and each of its Member States (Espinosa-Goded et al, 2010;Uthes and Matzdorf, 2013). AES stand out as one of the most significant CAP tools as they have assigned an aggregated expenditure of 22.2 billion euro (that is, 22% of the budget of the European Rural Development Policy 2007Policy -2013 to ECA, 2011).…”

Creating restoration landscapes: partnerships in large-scale conservation in the UK

“…Agri-environment contracts are a major source of funding for LSCAs (e.g., Utes andMatzdorf 2013, Hodge 2014) awarded to landscape partners. Agri-environment payments play a key role in securing biodiversity targeted land management interventions by landowners, operating within a broad regulatory framework designed as part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) under other pressures and with different priorities (Hodge et al 2015).…”