TY - JOUR

T1 - The prospects of innovative agri-environmental contracts in the European policy context

T2 - Results from a Delphi study

AU - Kelemen, Eszter

AU - Megyesi, Boldizsár

AU - Matzdorf, Bettina

AU - Andersen, Erling

AU - van Bussel, Lenny G.J.

AU - Dumortier, Myriam

AU - Dutilly, Céline

AU - García-Llorente, Marina

AU - Hamon, Christine

AU - LePage, Annabelle

AU - Moruzzo, Roberta

AU - Prager, Katrin

AU - Riccioli, Francesco

AU - Yacamán-Ochoa, Carolina

N1 - Funding Information: This research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 818190. Boldizsár Megyesi was supported by the Bolyai János Postdoctoral Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. We would like to thank all participating experts for their valuable contributions. We are grateful to György Pataki and Mikołaj Czajkowski for providing comments and suggestions to earlier drafts of this paper, and to Edward Ott for administrative and editing support. We thank Didier Buffière and Lisa Deijl for their help in reaching out to potential Delphi experts, and Balázs Sipos for his support with the graphic design. Finally, we express our gratitude to three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments which helped us strengthen the paper.

PY - 2023/8

Y1 - 2023/8

N2 - Innovative agri-environmental contracts are increasingly studied in the literature, but their adoption has been relatively slow and geographically scattered. Action-based agri-environmental measures remain the predominant policy mechanism across Europe. A three-round Policy Delphi study was conducted with policy makers, scientific experts, farmers’ representatives, and NGOs from across 15 different European countries, to investigate how and under which circumstances novel contractual solutions could be implemented more widely. The expert panel perceived result-based and collective contractual elements as the most promising. Although considered beneficial from several aspects, value chain contracts were perceived less relevant to the policy environment. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Pillar 2 measures were highlighted by the experts as the key policy area to implement novel contracts by national or regional authorities, but Pillar 1 eco-schemes, being launched in the CAP 2023–2027, were also considered as a potentially suitable framework for testing and implementation. The Delphi panel envisaged innovative contracts should be adopted by governments in iterative steps and not as a complete substitute for current payment schemes, but rather as an additional incentive to them. Such an incremental approach allows contractual innovations to capitalise on existing best practices. But it also implies the risk that innovative contracts could remain marginal and fail to substantially change farmers’ behaviour, resulting in a failure to improve environmental conditions.

AB - Innovative agri-environmental contracts are increasingly studied in the literature, but their adoption has been relatively slow and geographically scattered. Action-based agri-environmental measures remain the predominant policy mechanism across Europe. A three-round Policy Delphi study was conducted with policy makers, scientific experts, farmers’ representatives, and NGOs from across 15 different European countries, to investigate how and under which circumstances novel contractual solutions could be implemented more widely. The expert panel perceived result-based and collective contractual elements as the most promising. Although considered beneficial from several aspects, value chain contracts were perceived less relevant to the policy environment. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Pillar 2 measures were highlighted by the experts as the key policy area to implement novel contracts by national or regional authorities, but Pillar 1 eco-schemes, being launched in the CAP 2023–2027, were also considered as a potentially suitable framework for testing and implementation. The Delphi panel envisaged innovative contracts should be adopted by governments in iterative steps and not as a complete substitute for current payment schemes, but rather as an additional incentive to them. Such an incremental approach allows contractual innovations to capitalise on existing best practices. But it also implies the risk that innovative contracts could remain marginal and fail to substantially change farmers’ behaviour, resulting in a failure to improve environmental conditions.

KW - Agri-environmental schemes

KW - Collective contracts

KW - Contract design

KW - Policy Delphi

KW - Result-based payments

KW - Value chain contracts

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159114548&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106706

DO - 10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106706

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85159114548

VL - 131

JO - LAND USE POLICY

JF - LAND USE POLICY

SN - 0264-8377

M1 - 106706

ER -