A Social‐Ecological Systems Approach to Enhance Sustainable Farming and Forestry in the EU

Abstract

Summary The two concepts of public goods and ecosystem services are often used to describe the same welfare benefits potentially generated by agriculture and forestry, but they originate from different perspectives and each offer only partial analysis of these relationships. A more holistic approach – Social‐Ecological Systems (SES) – has been adapted and applied in new research to understand more fully how the relationships can best be characterised, and beneficial change promoted, through policy reforms and practical action. An important and novel part of the description of a SES, as developed under the PEGASUS project, is the assessment of its ‘valorisation cascade’. Through the mapping and consideration of assets, actors, interactions, drivers and the nature of the valorisation cascade in 34 diverse case studies, the project highlighted the importance of multi‐actor approaches and social processes to foster beneficial change. These include collective action, co‐learning and trust between actors, promoting experimentation and innovation, developing public and/or consumer awareness and identifying new valorisation options, including via commercial supply chains and enhanced community involvement.

Payments for Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources in Agriculture: One Size Fits All?

“…In essence, the results confirm not only that farmers’ perceptions about the environmental and social benefits of the local breeds matter, but also increase their participation in related support schemes. Moreover, awareness and positive perception of environmental and social benefits of local breeds are a precondition for a successful (market- or policy-related) valorisation of these local breeds along the value chain [ 62 ].…”

New Highlander Entrepreneurs in the Swiss Alps

“…These sectors can be 'multifunctional' in the sense that they produce outputs such as beautiful landscapes, biodiversity, and protection against flooding and erosion. The general issue raised by these outputs is that they do not generate any economic returns, unless there are public policy arrangements to internalise costs and benefits; an issue currently being considered in the Public Ecosystem Goods and Services from land management -Unlocking the Synergies (PEGASUS) project, funded through Horizon 2020 (Dwyer et al 2015).…”

Stimulating collective action to preserve High Nature Value farming in post-transitional settings. A comparative analysis of three Slovenian social-ecological systems

“…Consequently, there are strong Europe-wide trends of declining farmland biodiversity (European Union 2018; European Commission 2019), farmland abandonment, overgrowth (Perpiña Castillo et al 2018) resulting in loss of production potential, and depopulation (ESPON 2017). Therefore, the question arises as to how farmers as land managers can be incentivised to continue managing their land in a way that preserves environmental and social benefits, such as farmland biodiversity, cultural landscapes and rural vitality (Dwyer et al 2018). This paper builds on previous research demonstrating the potential of doing this through improved market valorisation of products stemming from marginal production systems through collective action of smallholders, which helps to reduce transaction costs through resourcepooling (e.g.…”

“…One of the framework's advantages is its flexibility; it has been expanded and applied to numerous different situations in assessing the sustainability of SESs (Partelow 2018). One such expansion of the framework is the conceptualisation of agricultural and forestry systems as not only extractors of biomass, but as systems in which human action and natural processes interact to jointly provide environmental and social services (Dwyer et al 2018); this application draws on the concepts of ecosystem services (Costanza et al 1997;Daily 1997) and public goods (Samuelson 1954;Musgrave 1959). It is this conceptualisation that is used in the present paper, applied to HNV farming systems, in which farmers are seen not merely as resource users but as actors interacting with the ecological system to provide certain services that would otherwise not exist, i.e.…”

“…The paper is organised as follows. Following a description of the methods of analysis, we provide an analyti cal description of the main elements of each SES, applying the modified framework developed by Dwyer et al (2018). This is followed by the results of our attempt at stimulating collective action towards improving the valorisation of the products stemming from these systems and a comparison of findings from all three systems.…”