Civil-Public-Private-Partnership (CP3)

Agricultural landscapes are predominant across Europe and deliver a multitude of ecosystem services (ES) essential to sustain biodiversity and human life on earth. As of yet, there is still a mismatch between the spatial and temporal levels that are relevant for effective ES provision, including agricultural food production and biodiversity protection and the ones of established governance structures that are meant to safeguard these ES. Current governance approaches mostly include command and control type arrangements valid for different administrative units in the EU (e.g. Natura 2000 network, Water Framework Directive). This is supplemented by incentive and market based approaches for individual farmers, such as agri-environmental schemes as part of the CAP. However, these approaches are often ineffective because they are too short-term, scattered across the landscape and not well matched to the spatial and temporal processes corresponding to flows of ecosystem benefits between ES providers and beneficiaries. The proposed project will investigate governance models that go beyond command and control or market-based approaches. The focus will be on collaborative governance approaches involving partnerships between actors from all spheres of society, including state, market and civil society. Innovative governance models will include partnerships, where local stakeholders participate in the design of the models, social entrepreneurs or technological innovators from the market sector are involved, or citizens take on the role of monitors as lay experts through honorary work. The objectives of the proposed research are to (1) identify, describe, and analyze such collaborative governance models that are successful in providing an institutional fit between the level of governance and the required spatial and temporal scales necessary to reach specific ES, food production and biodiversity targets; (2) identify, describe and analyze agricultural production practices linked to the different governance models and explore their relations to ES, food production and biodiversity targets, including existing trade-offs and synergies; (3) develop an inventory of ES provided by and needed to sustain agro-ecosystems, including spatial and temporal scales of delivery, and ES flows; and (4) derive recommendations for stakeholders, i.e. policy makers, market actors, civil society initiatives, farming community, how development of such collaborative governance models can be supported by specific policies and administrative conduct. The methodological approach is based on inter- and trans-disciplinary research involving natural and social scientists cooperating closely with stakeholders from practice and the policy domain who are involved in the development of the collaborative governance models. The project will examine and compare three selected case studies representing different governance models in agro-ecosystem management for effective ES provision, agricultural production and biodiversity conservation. The involvement of IDC and Dr. Angela Meyer as researcher in charge will primarily focus on analyzing to what extend the collaborative governance models identified in the case studies are suited to provide an institutional fit between the spatial and temporal scales necessary to reach specific ES and biodiversity targets. The selection of case studies includes both, successful and already approved governance models, but also mismatched governance models still in the process of adaptation and improvement. Furthermore, the selected case studies exemplify different combination in regard to the following aspects: protection status for biodiversity conservation (e.g. national park, nature park, national landscape, biosphere reserve, etc.), agro-ecosystem management type and intensity (arable, grassland, wine, fruit production under extensive vs. intensive management), and, linked to this, different sets of ES they provide and are dependent upon. IDC leads WP2 (Governance models), which is based on extensive literature review, assessment activities and field research with particular emphasis on the case study in Austria, the Naturpark Jauerling-Wachau. Additional focus will be set on the role played by civil society organisations (CSO). The production of participatory movies in one or two of the case studies will be used as a way to capture and visualize the local stakeholders perspectives. The main hypotheses to be investigated are (1) that there are collaborative approaches in governance that help in providing an institutional fit between agro-ecosystem management and the required spatial and temporal scales necessary to reach specific ES, food production and biodiversity targets in rural landscapes; and (2) that from such collaborative approaches valuable lessons can be learned to inform stakeholders in governance and policy and in the civil society who are confronted with similar challenges.

No additional funding sources recorded.