Abstract
BackgroundPhosphorus (P) is a vital and non-substitutable nutrient for agricultural production. However, P is often used inefficiently in European agriculture. To ensure food security while avoiding environmental damage caused by improper fertilization, a sustainable P management is required. Although P-related problems are partly addressed by existing agricultural and environmental legislation, e.g., in the EU, the current regulation lacks sufficient governance effect. In addition, the existing legal framework is strongly characterized by detailed command-and-control provisions and thus suffers from governance problems such as enforcement deficits, rebound and shifting effects. This paper focuses on how these challenges could be addressed by economic instruments. The article highlights not only the impact of the instruments on P management, but also on adjacent environmental areas. We pay particular attention to the governance effects on reaching international binding climate and biodiversity objectives, for which fertilization and agriculture play a major role.ResultsThe analysis builds on two economic instruments that ensure compliance with the climate target of the Paris Agreement and the Aichi targets of the Biodiversity Convention: a cap-and-trade scheme for fossil fuels and a cap-and-trade scheme for livestock products. We state that both instruments simultaneously address a large part of P-related problems. Moreover, if the two emissions trading schemes are combined with a livestock-to-land ratio at farm level, only little need for regulatory supplementation relating to P remains. The latter includes in particular a threshold value for contaminants in P-containing fertilizers. Furthermore, we discuss an almost complete phasing-out of fertilizers containing rock phosphate by means of a further certificate trading scheme.ConclusionsThe article shows that a wide variety of problems can be tackled with a few overarching instruments. This is true even for very specific and diverse problems such as those related to P use in agriculture.
Highlights
Phosphorus (P) is a vital and non-substitutable nutrient for agricultural production
This paper develops the core elements of P governance in such a way that, in addition to P, climate and biodiversityrelated challenges of agriculture are taken into account as well
The only remaining regulation addresses the contamination of P fertilizers as well as the conservation of limited rock phosphate resources
Summary
Phosphorus (P) is a vital and non-substitutable nutrient for agricultural production. P-related problems are partly addressed by existing agricultural and environmental legislation, e.g., in the EU, the current regulation lacks sufficient governance effect. The non-substitutable nutritional element secures our food production, P fertilization in European agriculture is often inefficient [1, 2]. The finite rock phosphate resources are concentrated in a few, partly politically unstable regions of the world, such as Morocco and Western Sahara [9]. This bears the risk of supply shortages [1, 10], which is why the EU has classified phosphate rock and P as critical raw materials [11,12,13]. Rather than recycling P as much as possible, P losses occur along the entire value chain in the EU, and significant amounts of P in wastewater and waste streams remain unused for recovery [14,15,16,17]
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