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.

Aligning agri-environmental-climate public good supply and desire in a sustainable Dutch agricultural sector.

European agricultural policies increasingly incorporate mechanisms for delivery of public goods. Sustainable public good delivery requires alignment between societal demand and landscape supply. However, the variation of demands or desires regarding future public good delivery among society is hardly known.

The Role of Different Types of Actors In The Future of Sustainable Agriculture In a Dutch Peri-urban Area.

Peri-urban areas support a broad range of multifunctional demands for public goods. In northwest Europe, peri-urban areas tend to overlap with intensive agricultural land, resulting in conflicts between agricultural use and the public good demands of residents. Sustainable intensification (SI) of agriculture might help reconcile agricultural and well-being goals, but it is unclear how the mix of actors in a peri-urban setting can trigger or restrain SI.

Assessing the contribution of mobility in the European Union to rubber expansion.

Nearly three-quarters of global natural rubber production is used to produce tyres, supporting mobility around the globe. The projected increase in mobility could contribute to further expansion of rubber plantations and impact tropical ecosystems. We quantified the use of natural rubber in tyres in the European Union (EU), the corresponding land footprint, and explored drivers of tyre use using country-specific transport statistics and trade registers of rubber goods.

Developing stakeholder-driven scenarios on land sharing and land sparing - Insights from five European case studies.

Empirical research on land sharing and land sparing has been criticized because preferences of local stakeholders, socio-economic aspects, a bundle of ecosystem services and the local context were only rarely integrated. Using storylines and scenarios is a common approach to include land use drivers and local contexts or to cope with the uncertainties of future developments. The objective of the presented research is to develop comparable participatory regional land use scenarios for the year 2030 reflecting land sharing, land sparing and more intermediate developments across five different European landscapes (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Spain).

Perspectives of farmers and tourists on agricultural abandonment in east Lesvos, Greece.

Multi-stakeholder perceptions of landscape changes are increasingly recognized as essential inputs to discussions on future landscape developments, particularly when addressing the future of European rural areas experiencing agricultural abandonment. This research presents a case exploration of abandonment of olive plantations in east Lesvos, Greece. We conducted two sets of semi-structured interviews to relate an exploration on local farmers' ability and willingness to maintain the plantations, to the results of a landscape preference survey undertaken with tourists.

Assessing the influence of historic net and gross land changes on the carbon fluxes of Europe.

Legacy effects of land cover/use on carbon fluxes require considering both present and past land cover/use change dynamics. To assess past land use dynamics, model-based reconstructions of historic land cover/use are needed. Most historic reconstructions consider only the net area difference between two time steps (net changes) instead of accounting for all area gains and losses (gross changes).

Uncertainties in ecosystem service maps: a comparison on the European scale.

Safeguarding the benefits that ecosystems provide to society is increasingly included as a target in international policies. To support such policies, ecosystem service maps are made. However, there is little attention for the accuracy of these maps.

Improving national-scale carbon stock inventories using knowledge on land use history.

National-scale inventories of soil organic carbon (SOC) and forest floor carbon (FFC) stocks have a high uncertainty. Inventories are often based on the interpolation of sampled information, often using a number of covariables to help such interpolation. The rationale for the choice of these covariables is not always documented, despite the fact that many local-scale studies have identified the factors explaining spatial variability of SOC and FFC stocks.