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Assessing long-term sustainable environmental impacts of agri-environment schemes on land use

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Abstract

The lack of generic methods to assess the environmental consequences of agricultural practices and the lack of consensus on monitoring and evaluation of environmental, agricultural and socio-economic effects of agri-environment schemes (AES) in EU Member States call for better evaluation methods. The ‘Agri-environmental Footprint’ project proposed to deal with these problems by establishing a new evaluation method, the Agri-Environmental Footprint Index (AFI). The AFI is an index customised to local stakeholder preferences, using expert knowledge for assessment of impacts and sensitivity, and indicators of the environmental state at farm level. In a Danish test case, agricultural practices at twenty-five farms in two groundwater protection zones were assessed. Data was collected from databases, registers, maps and interviews with farmers. The index was calculated for 1996/7 and 2006/7 to track temporal development and effects of entering an agri-environmental scheme. The Danish case demonstrated that the index can be used to track changes in environmental impacts and that entering agri-environmental scheme had a positive impact on the index value. However, the index should be used with caution. It is important to consider the robustness of each indicator: to assess whether changes will occur over time; whether changes are linked to management practices or external factors; and whether data are available up to date. Indicators dependent upon uptake data from agri-environmental schemes should be used with great caution. Retrospective use of stakeholder preferences is subject to uncertainty because preferences may have changed over time.

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Acknowledgments

This work is based on a multi-disciplinary EU-funded project (‘AE-Footprint’), the goal of which is to develop a common generic methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of European Agri-environmental schemes (SSPE-CT-2005-006491). We acknowledge the assistance of all members of the project consortium (details available at: http://www.footprint.rdg.ac.uk/) and the valuable inputs and comments of a number of European environmental science and policy specialists. This work does not necessarily reflect the view of the European Union and in no way anticipates the Commission’s future policy in this area. The final part of the work has been carried out within the MULTILAND project supported by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries (details available at: http://www.multiland.dk). In addition, we want to thank the 17 stakeholders, 25 farmers and 10 members of our technical panel who have contributed their time to this project, and without whom it could not have been completed. This work was previously presented at the Eforwood conference with the title ‘Shape your Sustainability Tools—and let your tools shape you’, and has been slightly revised for publication in this journal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Forest and Landscape, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 23, 1958, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Jens Peter Vesterager & Henrik Vejre

  2. Centre for Tourism and Culture Management, Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Kasper Teilmann

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  1. Jens Peter Vesterager
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Correspondence to Jens Peter Vesterager.

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Communicated by K. Rosen.

This article originates from the context of the EFORWOOD final conference, 23–24 September 2009, Uppsala, Sweden. EFORWOOD—Sustainability Impact Assessment of Forestry-wood Chains. The project was supported by the European Commission.

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Vesterager, J.P., Teilmann, K. & Vejre, H. Assessing long-term sustainable environmental impacts of agri-environment schemes on land use. Eur J Forest Res 131, 95–107 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-010-0469-x

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