TY - JOUR

T1 - Cross Compliance as payment for public goods?

T2 - Understanding EU and US agricultural policies

AU - Meyer, Claas

AU - Matzdorf, Bettina

AU - Müller, Klaus

AU - Schleyer, Christian

N1 - Funding Information: The study was performed within the scope of the CIVIL and Research Group funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the Social–ecological Research (SÖF) program under contract no. 01UU0911 and the Testing and Development Project (T + D) FKZ: 3510 88 0300 funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) . The authors are grateful to Jennifer Jacquet, Katrina M. Wyman, and David Frank, who helped with its focus, as well as to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and suggestions significantly improved the paper.

PY - 2014/11

Y1 - 2014/11

N2 - Cross Compliance (CC) is a mechanism for encouraging farmers to fulfill certain environmental conditions in return for governmental support payments. Introduced to United States (US) and European Union (EU) agricultural policy from the 80s onwards, upcoming new US (Farm Bill 2012) and EU (Common Agricultural Policy after 2013) policies will include CC. Cross Compliance is seen (i) as a policy for enforcing environmental objectives or (ii) as a way to organize and reward agricultural public good production. In recent years, the instrument's effectiveness and efficiency have been criticized. To validate the deviating understandings, we drew back on an economic institutionalist perspective. We found that regarding EU CC as payment for public goods does not generally align with the existing German property rights distribution. In both the EU and US, CC standards above those contained regulatory law have characteristics of a payment for public goods but create severe problems. We conclude that CC, even if useful for triggering and broadening environmental protection efforts, may cause several long-term problems. Therefore, the rights structure should be clearly communicated, law enforcement function should be temporary, the instrument should be included in an overall concept, and payments should be better linked to the environmental output.

AB - Cross Compliance (CC) is a mechanism for encouraging farmers to fulfill certain environmental conditions in return for governmental support payments. Introduced to United States (US) and European Union (EU) agricultural policy from the 80s onwards, upcoming new US (Farm Bill 2012) and EU (Common Agricultural Policy after 2013) policies will include CC. Cross Compliance is seen (i) as a policy for enforcing environmental objectives or (ii) as a way to organize and reward agricultural public good production. In recent years, the instrument's effectiveness and efficiency have been criticized. To validate the deviating understandings, we drew back on an economic institutionalist perspective. We found that regarding EU CC as payment for public goods does not generally align with the existing German property rights distribution. In both the EU and US, CC standards above those contained regulatory law have characteristics of a payment for public goods but create severe problems. We conclude that CC, even if useful for triggering and broadening environmental protection efforts, may cause several long-term problems. Therefore, the rights structure should be clearly communicated, law enforcement function should be temporary, the instrument should be included in an overall concept, and payments should be better linked to the environmental output.

KW - CAP

KW - Conservation compliance

KW - Direct payments

KW - Ecosystem services

KW - Environmental policy

KW - Payments for ecosystem services

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84907569751&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.08.010

DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.08.010

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84907569751

VL - 107

SP - 185

EP - 194

JO - Ecological economics

JF - Ecological economics

SN - 0921-8009

ER -