Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of the importance implicitly attached by local stakeholders to different environmental objectives in agri-environmental schemes in Europe. For at least 20 years, increasing the sustainability of agriculture has been a major policy concern in Europe. However, the relative importance of specific objectives of agri-environmental schemes is rarely quantified, and this strongly affects the ability to assess the actual effectiveness of such schemes. This paper adopts a methodology based on the use of the concept of «weight» as a quantitative measure of the importance of each objective. The objectives have been identified using a hierarchical grid of indicators based on the EU framework for the mandatory evaluation of agri-environmental schemes. The quantification of weights was based on a questionnaire submitted to more than 70 stakeholders in 10 case study regions in different EU countries. The results highlight different regional profiles, denoting strategies with very different objective-related agri-environmental scheme specialisations, with some programs focusing on specific individual environmental issues such as landscape and biodiversity, and others focusing on several environmental objectives. Such results emphasise the need to integrate academic and institutional evaluation exercises in the measurement of the policy priorities, hence enabling to provide robust evaluations of policy effectiveness.
Highlights
More than 400 different policy measures concerning environmental issues in agriculture have been implemented in OECD countries (OECD, 2009)
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the importance of different environmental objectives in the agri-environmental schemes (AES) of 10 case study areas (CSA) in Europe
There is a significant gap in the literature on AES with respect to the definition, interpretation and assessment of the importance of program objectives, which is the key prerequisite for a robust evaluation of policy
Summary
More than 400 different policy measures concerning environmental issues in agriculture have been implemented in OECD countries (OECD, 2009). In the European Union (EU) agri-environmental schemes (AES) are the main policy option. AES generally contain a very wide range of measures, addressing virtually all the main environmental issues connected to agriculture. The decentralized design of the AES requires the identification of the specific environmental objectives, the choice of the measures and the selection of specific prescriptions composing each measure. An unclear identification of the objectives does not allow the Decision Maker (DM) to evaluate adequately the program results during both the policy design and the implementation processes (Howlett and Ramesh, 1995; Weiss, 1998; Finn et al, 2009)
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