Abstract
Agri-environmental policies and planning influence agricultural landscape management, and thus the capacity to deliver landscape services and to contribute to rural viability. Numerous models and frameworks have been developed to improve comprehension of the mechanisms and interrelationships between policies, landscape and socio-economic values and benefits. As social-ecological systems, landscapes are closely depending from the socio-institutional and territorial context of the specific rural locality. The paper proposes an enhanced framework for assessing these mechanisms by acknowledging the critical role of the regional macro-environment. A literature review and the revisiting of evidence from eight European case studies are applied to establish a comprehensive understanding and exemplification of the links between the policies, landscape, ecosystem services and value flows. Results highlight the need for integrative, inter- and transdisciplinary research approaches. Efficient landscape policies require enhanced regional embeddedness and targeting, acknowledgement of user demands and the capability of regional community and governance structures for policy implementation and natural capital valorisation.
Highlights
Agricultural landscapes deliver multiple landscape services (LS), which directly or indirectly satisfy human needs, such as food production, pollination, water regulation, or recreation (Termorshuizen and Opdam, 2009)
The conceptual model presented in this paper draws particular attention to the place-specificity of landscape development and the deliberate utilisation of LS for human well-being and vitality in rural areas
Reviewing state-of-the-art literature and insights from case studies covering heterogeneous European regions, we have shown how both the socio-institutional and territorial characteristics of the rural locality are decisive for the valuation of goods and services associated to landscape, the capacity to derive socio-economic benefits from them and the effectiveness of landscape-related policies
Summary
Agricultural landscapes deliver multiple landscape services (LS), which directly or indirectly satisfy human needs, such as food production, pollination, water regulation, or recreation (Termorshuizen and Opdam, 2009). While the cascade frameworks of Haines-Young and Potschin (2010) and van Zanten et al (2014a) focussed on disentangling the general functional links between landscapes and socio-economic benefits, no explicit attention has been given to geographic perspective, and to the role of the socio-institutional (i.e. local actors, stakeholders and governance structures) and territorial (i.e. geographic and socioeconomic situation) contexts (Ilbery, 1986; Robinson, 2004) In this direction, the concept of a place-based, territorial development was brought forward by the OECD (2006) in the formulation of the ‘New Rural Paradigm’.
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