Innovative Contract Solutions for the Provision of Agri-Environmental Climatic Public Goods: A Literature Review

Factors Influencing the Perceived Economic Benefits of Innovative Agri-Environmental Contracts

Continued innovation in contract design may enhance the delivery of agri-environmental climate public goods (AECPG), but barriers to adoption arise in terms of how farmers perceive the economic benefits. Therefore, this paper examines survey data from Ireland and the Netherlands to analyse whether land managers agree that results-based, collective action, value chain and land tenure contracts for the delivery of AECPG are understandable, applicable to their farm and economically beneficial. Using Probit models, we also identify groups of land managers who perceive the different contract types as being economically beneficial, and these findings can inform policymakers of farmer groups who need adequate consideration during the design of agri-environmental contracts. For example, greater incentives could encourage older farmers to enrol in results-based contracts in Ireland and value chain contracts in the Netherlands. We also find a link between contract duration and the perceived economic benefits of collective action contracts in both countries, with land managers in Ireland desiring a longer duration. We highlight that policymakers and land managers in Ireland could apply lessons from the design of agri-environmental contracts in the Netherlands, where they are more common and varied. Greater knowledge exchange between users and non-users of such contracts would also help bridge the gap between theory and practice in both countries.

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

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19 cases of result-based, collective, land tenure and value chain contracts from six countries are analyzed.

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Innovative contracts involve a higher number and more diverse actors than mainstream agri-environmental and climate schemes.

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Actors perform 16 critical roles in contract governance, often sharing or taking on several roles.

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(Non-)Performance of roles can potentially affect contracts’ environmental effectiveness.

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Which actors take on which role is context-dependent.

In this study, we used institutional analysis to investigate the design of innovative contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes. The aim of such contracts is to better incentivize farmers for the provision of environmental public goods in comparison to current ‘mainstream’ contracts. For the analysis, we differentiated four contract types: result-based, collective, land tenure, and value chain contracts. To represent each type in the analysis, we selected 19 case examples from six European countries. Cases were identified through a mix of methods, combining literature review, web search, and expert consultation. After a structured data collection based on Ostrom’s institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, we focused our analysis on the involved actors and their roles in contract governance. Our results highlight the great diversity of public, private, and civil actors involved from the local, regional, national or international governance level, each performing one or several critical roles in contract governance. We found that it is highly context-dependent which actors assume certain roles. We also discuss how provision of environmental public goods through the contracts might potentially be impacted by certain roles and their assignment to specific actors.

Modelling the Economic, Social and Environmental Components of Natural Resources for Sustainable Management

The recognition of the multifunctional role of natural areas has resulted in a growing interest in sustainable natural resource management, in order to prevent degradation and depletion, ensuring income-generation activities, sustaining culture and employment, and increasing environmental benefits, such as carbon sequestration, hydrogeological protection, biodiversity enhancement, and many others [...]