Rethinking biodiversity governance in European agricultural landscapes: Acceptability of alternative governance scenarios

Velten, Sarah; Schaal, Tamara; Leventon, Julia; Hanspach, Jan; Fischer, Joern; Newig, Jens

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.05.032

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…This article has important implications for policy making and rethinking agrobiodiversity governance within European agricultural landscapes (Pimbert 2011;Velten et al 2018). 21 In the recent literature, the main focus has often been on how seed exchanges maintain genetic diversity in plant populations and the role of key individuals with strong social capital in these exchanges (Thomas et al 2011;Pautasso et al 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commoning the seeds: alternative models of collective action and open innovation within French peasant seed groups for recreating local knowledge commons

2020

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In this article, we expand the analytical and theoretical foundations of the study of knowledge commons in the context of more classical agrarian commons, such as seed commons. We show that it is possible to overcome a number of criticisms of earlier work by Ostrom (Governing the commons. The evolution of institutions for collective action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990) on natural commons and its excludability/rivalry matrix in addressing the inclusive social practices of "commoning", defined as a way of living and acting for the preservation of the commons. Our empirical analysis emphasizes, using the most recent advances in the IAD/SES framework, the distributed and collaborative knowledge governance in a French peasant seed network as a key driver for reintroducing cultivated agrobiodiversity and on-farm seed conservation of ancient and landrace varieties. These inclusive peasant seed groups developed alternative peer-to-peer models of collaborative peasant-led community-based breeding and grassroots innovations in the search for more resilient population varieties. Our results highlight the various models of collective action within the network and discuss the organizational tradeoffs of opting out of peasant seed activities and recreating a shared collective knowledge base on the benefits of restoring cultivated agrobiodiversity. It helps us better understand how modern peasant seed groups function as epistemic communities which contributes to envisioning alternative agricultural systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commoning the seeds: alternative models of collective action and open innovation within French peasant seed groups for recreating local knowledge commons

2020

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“…The outcomes of such discussions are published as Velten et al (2018). We created our scenarios as part of a broader project that examined the governance of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, 1 with case studies in Saxony and Lower Saxony, Germany, and Skania, Sweden.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have taken these theoretical scenarios to workshops with stakeholders in each of the study areas and used them as a tool to explore barriers and opportunities to governance change. The outcomes of such discussions are published as Velten et al (2018). In this way, our scenarios facilitated a process to share experiences among stakeholders, and for colearning and understanding different viewpoints, and provided space for discussing future changes (Oteros-Rozas et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape‐scale biodiversity governance: Scenarios for reshaping spaces of governance

et al. 2019

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In this paper, we present an alternative governance system for managing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Focusing primarily on the European Union (EU), we start with the premise that there is a need to rethink biodiversity governance to bring together land managers for collaboration and to close mismatches between levels of governance and ecological scales. We therefore create four archetypal governance scenarios that represent hypothetical extremes in two variables. The first variable is the scale of governance and differentiates between a primary focus on administrative units (e.g., country, state, and county) versus ecological scales (bioregion and landscape). The second variable is the degree of decentralization and devolution and differentiates between a top-down, central-state system, versus a bottom-up, broad actor-network system. On the basis of their considered strengths and weaknesses, we present a hybrid scenario as our proposed alternative governance system. This system brings together decision makers, land managers, and a broader range of stakeholders at a landscape scale to plan biodiversity goals and actions. This, in turn, will more closely match the biophysical conditions for effective biodiversity conservation than existing EU approaches, without overly increasing the administrative burden.

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“…Already some 20 years ago, the institutional economist Daniel Bromley argued that "[f]inally, we come to the contemporary setting in which property rights in land are giving way to the social obligations of property owners," which also implies the question as to "why those who own land should be granted special privileges as against those who hold other assets in their portfolio" [6] (p. 42). Today, in the face of an increasing severity of environmental crises, many of which can be linked to agriculture [45], societal demands for land management that is more oriented towards the common good (i.e., protecting biodiversity, securing ecosystem services) are increasing [46]. However, these interests and demands are currently not properly represented in the property rights regime in the context of agricultural land and soils.…”

Section: Governance Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional Economics of Agricultural Soil Ecosystem Services

et al. 2018

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Who owns the soils? What seems to be a straightforward legal issue actually opens up a debate about the ecosystem services that can be derived from soils and the distribution of benefits and responsibilities for sustaining functioning and healthy soils. In particular, agricultural land use may be constrained by a lack of properly defined property rights. Using the new institutional economics perspective, we show that multifunctionality of soils and an attribute-based property rights perspective substantiate the intuition that land property implies special obligations towards the common good. The concept of ecosystem services can illustrate the variety of beneficiaries of multifaceted soil ecosystem services. This allows identification of reasons for unsustainable soil management that result from imperfections in the definition of property rights. We suggest implications for improved governance of agricultural soils using two case studies in the EU context: the EU Common Agricultural Policy and the use of planning instruments to steer agricultural soil use in Germany. Thus, we contribute to achieving the societal goals of more sustainable land use by detecting causes of shortcomings in current land regulation and by suggesting governance approaches to support a more sustainable management of agricultural soils.

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Rethinking biodiversity governance in European agricultural landscapes: Acceptability of alternative governance scenarios

Cited by 23 publications

References 44 publications

Commoning the seeds: alternative models of collective action and open innovation within French peasant seed groups for recreating local knowledge commons

Commoning the seeds: alternative models of collective action and open innovation within French peasant seed groups for recreating local knowledge commons

Landscape‐scale biodiversity governance: Scenarios for reshaping spaces of governance

Institutional Economics of Agricultural Soil Ecosystem Services

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